100 and Me

Making a bigger picture much smaller

Those lovely people over at The Spinoff – one of the last places in this country where you can see actual journalists in their natural environment – have spent their week counting down the Top 100 NZ TV Shows of the 21^st Century.

Whilst I am totally opposed to turning creativity into some kind of competition, I am also totally into it.

This creates an existential chasm in me. Luckily, over the years, I have learnt that the best way to deal with existential chasms is to gravitate to the side of the chasm that seems the most fun.  With that in mind I fully and wholeheartedly support The Spinoff in their holy work. At a time when the local production industry is a desert, it is a good thing to send a little message to the world, especially when it reminds the world that we have made (and can still make) some damn fine TV.

Having lurked around the NZ TV industry for all of the 21^st century, I am thoroughly chuffed to find that a bunch of the Top 100 shows are things which, for better or worse, carry my shabby name.  10 of them, in fact.  Being associated with 10% of the Top 100 is pretty cool, I reckon. Yay, me.

Mind you, it could very well have been more. Possibly.

Then again, it could have been less.

Don’t worry, should you choose to hang in and read on, I’m not here to blow my own trumpet, as the stupid saying goes. Yes, there might be a hint of hubris in some of what follows, but mainly I just want to: (a) tell stories or make observations about the show in question, from the inside looking out; and/or (b) correct a few factual errors along the way.

So away we go, starting with…

#96 – SPIN DOCTORS

In The Spinoff blurb it says that Spin Doctors “boasted a big writing team” and that it “needed the numbers to serve its most remarkable ambition”.

No, no, no.

Yes, on the “ambition” thing – which was the genius of the show – but otherwise a big no.

Every episode of Spin Doctors was written by three people.  Overwhelmingly these people were me, Tom Scott and Roger Hall.  When either Roger or Tom couldn’t make the week, for outside reasons, Dave Armstrong would fly up from Wellington to join us.

[Tiny Hubris Moment - I was the only one who wrote on every episode.]

On Friday the three of us writers would meet with smart people like Jane Clifton and Finlay Macdonald to examine the political landscape of the week and to pick our targets. By the end of the day Tom, Rog and I would each have a story mapped out. Also, the catering was always awesome, on the Friday.

On Saturday me, Roger and Tom would retreat to our bunkers and write our scripts.  They would get shared on Saturday night.

Early Sunday morning I would walk along K Rd, taking in the early Sunday morning K Rd vibe, to the production office.  There I would spend the day stitching together the three scripts, into a single episode script.  Meanwhile R & T and Tony the Producer would be doing joke beat-ups in another room and by mid-afternoon a script was heading off to the actors and crew, to start shooting on Monday morning.

And, on Wednesday night (I think) we got to watch on TV what we did last weekend.

Not a huge team. Just a great idea, well executed. And the fact that we haven’t done anything like it since is a huge tragedy.  Doing political satire, in the moment, is the hallmark of a grown-up industry.

#92 – STREET LEGAL

When The Spinoff says that Street Legal’s writers “included Greg McGee and James Griffin” this is, strictly speaking, true. 

But only just.

Street Legal was created, written and produced by some people I still love to this very day: Greg; the late great Dean Parker; and the two Chris’s - B & H.  Top people, all of them. Thus I was, in my relative youth, chuffed that they should ask me to write an episode. Especially because star Jay Laga’aia has been a family friend, pretty much since the year dot.

So, I wrote the first draft of an episode of Street Legal. In this episode Jay, as lawyer David Silesi, was tasked with righting some injustice involving a Samoan family, living in my neighbourhood of Ponsonby/Grey Lynn.  I was proud of the draft.

Then the network notes came back.

These were much simpler times, back then.  It was newly good to have brown people on TV.  But in moderation. Because too many of them might scare off middle palagi New Zealand.  So, to cut to the chase, the network notes were along the lines of: happy so far, but any chance the Samoan family David is fighting for can not be, you know, Samoan?

Sensing I was about to have a moral implosion, Greg suggested that maybe he should do the 2^nd draft and I would step aside.  I was not unhappy with this option. If anyone was going to end up between a rock and a network hard place, it seemed only fair that Greg should carry that load.

Greg McGee, just quietly, has been an inspiration to me. His landmark play, Foreskin’s Lament, is one of the reasons I became a writer. To turn rugby into art? Hell yeah, I wanted to create something half as good as that!  That I subsequently got to know Greg and to work with him and now to occasionally play golf with him at the People’s Republic of Chamberlain Park, is one of the highlights of my alleged career. 

[But I will never forgive him for his cynical late tackle when our two social football teams met in a so-called friendly, back in the 80’s.  Some grudges are built to last.]

So, in terms of #92 - Street Legal, a one-draft co-credit, is all I can and will lay claim to.  Not exactly an essential cog in the machine.

#72 – THE STRIP

Back in the mists of time, I know I wrote at least one episode of The Strip. I have dim memories of a story involving eggs in a briefcase. I may have written another episode, but then again I may not have written another episode. Back to that mists of time thing.

What I do remember about The Strip, however, is the episode I wrote that I didn’t write.

I was contracted, as a jobbing writer, to write an episode. I was delivered a storyline. The storyline was, well, kind of thin. It was, like, “we want to do a road story episode and here’s how it might go”.

Subsequent phone conversations with Wellington were not reassuring.  This episode did not have good vibes attached to it. There was not a lot of clarity for me to go on.  But a gig is a gig, so I took a stab at it and duly delivered a draft of a road story episode of The Strip.

Then I got a phone call.  The draft was not what they were looking for.  But, weirdly, there was nothing in the conversation that actually defined what they were looking for.  It was one of those calls where, I felt, strongly, that the person on the other end of the line was delivering messages from above that they didn’t actually understand – let alone agreed with.

The kicker in the conversation was that they would like me to take another stab at it.

Despite the fact that I still had no idea what ‘it’ was, my professional instincts kicked in and I said “sure” but that because it was a one draft contract, I would need a new contract.

No, they said, there would be no new contract.

I was confused.  The draft can’t have been that bad, because you’ve already paid the delivery fee.

No, they said, we would like you to do another draft.

For free?

At this point, I laughed. They did not.

And that was the end of my relationship with The Strip.

#53 – THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS

I love The Almighty Johnsons (from here in referred to as TAJ, for typing reasons) and I will continue to love this series until I die and ascend to Asgard.

I have never got why journalists say TAJ is a “strange” show. I grew up with shows like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. And we seem, as a nation, to be okay with TV zombies and vampires living amongst us.  But did I miss the memo that said that, as a nation, New Zealand does not make their own high concept stuff?

The Spinoff blurb on TAJ is written by Chris Schulz.  This is entirely appropriate because what Chris does not know is that he was, in part, responsible for me getting into a shitload of trouble over the show.

It was the end of Season 2 of TAJ. The signs were bleak about there being a Season 3.  So bleak, in fact, that two senior executives from the production company turned up at my house with a bottle of whisky and together we cushioned the blow that the show was dead and gone.

The crucial date in confirming that TAJ was a goner was the day the option on the actors, for a subsequent series, expired.  When this day arrived and nothing happened the actors, bless them, went on social media to announce that they had not been picked up for Season 3, so the show was dead. Sound the funeral bells.

[As an aside the TAJ cast were, to a human, the most supportive cast ever. Their love and enthusiasm for the show was, at times, terrifying. Maybe that is what happens when you get given godly powers in your day job.]

I was in Havelock North, on this day.  I had been following the social media chatter and was resigned to the inevitable.  I was in a supermarket when Chris called me and asked if he could interview me.  Having done heaps of interviews about the show before, I figured why not give it the last rites.  So, as I walked round the supermarket, grabbing what I needed from the shelves, I answered Chris’s questions. In short, I simply confirmed to him what was already out there.

The reason I was in a supermarket in Havelock North was because my mother had recently been admitted to a rest home down there, and I had started commuting back and forth from Auckland, to sort stuff out.  Anyone who has been through this process knows it is not fun and it is emotionally draining.

By the time I got from the supermarket to the rest home, Chris’s story was online.  At the rest home, my phone rang. It was the production company. The shit started raining down on me, for speaking to the press without having been given permission to speak.

The reason I was being shat upon, it turned out, was that by confirming what was public knowledge I had jeopardized top-secret high-level business negotiations to save the show, that neither I nor the senior executives knew about. The surreal nature of walking round a rest home in Havelock North, trying to keep my voice down, as I dealt with the idea that the show might have been saved but that I had screwed it up by doing something I didn’t know not to do, was a mind-fuck of epic proportions.  That, in the middle of this call, I paused outside a room where an old, very dead, guy was lying on a gurney, seemed entirely appropriate.

But despite me stupidly doing my job TAJ, Lazarus-like, rose from the grave.

For one more season and then it died all over again.

Which is, presumably, what also happened to Lazarus, in the fullness of time.

#26 – WESTSIDE

The two really fun things about writing Westside were: (a) for the most part, you already knew the character’s future; and (b) intertwining our fictional characters with actual history.  Oh, and the awesome cast and fellow writers.

#15 – MATAKU

I’ve written about Mataku before, but to reiterate, it was a wonderfully enlightening experience.  I was the script editor on Series 1, working with a bunch of people intent on telling their stories in a whole new way, but in a pakeha-friendly package.  The process of working with Brad and Carey opened my eyes to all sorts of stuff, about how stories can be told.  I can only hope I managed to assimilate some of that spirit, to this very day.

#9 – THE BROKENWOOD MYSTERIES

I love writing Brokenwood episodes. I mean, where else would you get to kill a Middle-Aged Man in Lycra via a caffeine enema? 

#7 – BRO’TOWN

My job on Series 1 of Bro’town was something I inherited when my predecessor left, saying that the job was “impossible”. Luckily “impossible” is one of the many words that neither I nor the Naked Samoans know the meaning of. My nonsense job title was something like Executive Story Producer. In reality it was telling TV3 that everything was cool and on track, and then going back to the Naked’s and saying, “write faster, they’re freaking out!”

Obviously the job wasn’t impossible, otherwise some other show would be at #7.

#2 – OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

I was sorting through stuff the other day and I came across Diana Wichtel’s Listener review of Ep.1 of Outrageous Fortune.  Hmmm.  Fast forward 19 years and, in her blurb for The Spinoff, Diana says that OF “confounded critics by being really good”.

Little did she know that was our cunning plan all along.

Outrageous was a beast.  On and off screen it was this Thing, that consumed lives. It was like the spirit of the Wests infected everyone around them. Weird shit became normal shit, before you realised it was shit in the first place. I ended up on medication and in therapy. In fact, in a twist straight out of a script, the whole show kind of ended up in therapy.

But that’s a story for another time.  Or maybe not.

Recently, it was suggested to me that, with the 20^th anniversary of OF looming, maybe it was time for a book about the making of the show.  As much as this suggestion filled me with something approaching terror, I thought I should at least see if there was any interest in the idea.  So, I mentioned it to a publisher friend.  He canvassed the major booksellers.  They were not keen – too in the past.

And maybe they’re right.  Let sleeping Munters lie.

Or maybe it will end up as a podcast, because God knows the world needs more podcasts.

For all the drama behind the scenes, OF was a ride well worth taking.  The people were amazing and intense; the parties were great; and I’d like to think that, for those few years, we found a voice that New Zealand could relate to.

#1 – SHORTLAND STREET

Strictly speaking, my association with Shortie ended last century and that particular torch has been picked up by my daughter, who is now a costume standby on the show.

Dear Lord, it makes me feel ancient using the phrase ‘last century’.

But having done my years in the story-mines of the Street, I still feel an affinity for the show and, as such, I fully support the #1 ranking The Spinoff has bestowed upon it.

The big picture benefits of Shortland Street’s existence have been well documented. As a training ground for the industry.  As an entity that has paved the way for shows like the #2 show, above.  As something that is always on air, in our faces and, in doing so, has helped shatter the cultural cringe that haunts our television industry. As a way of keeping Michael Galvin perpetually in acting work and not out there, free ranging it as a DJ playing only 80’s music.

Shortland Street has perpetually fought battles.  Before it launched there was the perception that only Australia did 5-night-a-week soaps, not little old New Zealand.  So they bought in a bunch of Aussies to make it work – and eventually it did.

When I was on the show it was all about making it a Kiwi thing – not just another Grundy production.  This is where the work of people like Rachel Lang should be celebrated.  Shortland Street became ours.

Now the Street is facing its biggest battle – for survival in an industry that has moved on and not in a good way.

I hope it survives. Nay, I hope it finds a way to thrive. Because it is important that it does because, as determined by the experts at The Spinoff and by the people of Aotearoa, it is our #1 show – whether we like it or not.

So, do I agree with the 100 to 1 rankings of The Spinoff’s Top 100 NZ TV Shows of the 21^st Century?

Of course I don’t.

Because that’s the whole point of an exercise like this – to spark discussion and debate.

There’s a lot I might take issue with (where are all those documentary series where Peter Elliott sailed and/or tromped his way round New Zealand?) but for the sake of brevity – and hubris – I will confine myself to only the stuff that is all about me.

I get that Diplomatic Immunity was never going to make the list, despite the fact I love it so much.  Opinion, as they say, is divided on that one.  But what about Serial Killers? Diana Wichtel called it “brilliant” which is the only time she’s ever been nice to me in a review. Top 40, at least.

[Luckily, Serial Killers, unless you are geo-blocked, is available to view, in its awesome 7-episode glory: here.]

And then there's 800 Words. Sure, on paper, it was an Australian show, but it was created by New Zealanders, written by New Zealanders, shot in New Zealand and starred a nomad Scottish/Kiwi/Aussie bloke.  If The Luminaries (#75) counts on this list, then why not a Kiwi show that was the #1 drama in Australia and, in doing so, managed to fool an entire lucky country that it was actually an Australian drama?

Also, 800 Words is way better than The Luminaries.

And the beauty of a list like this, is that no-one can tell me that isn’t true.