'My favourite moment is...'
We asked some of New Zealand's most famous faces about their
fondest memories of New Zealand television.
Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4
Lisa Chappell - Gloss, McLeod's Daughters, The
Cult:
My favourite TV moment the last 50 years of New Zealand television
would have to be any of the nail biting finishes to the sheep
mustering on A Dogs Show. After watching a brilliant display of
expertise by man and dog, with a bunch of dumb sheep going left
instead of right and following a blind and gormless leader, the
farmer would finally have them all in the pen...bar one...bahhhh
one! And the nail biting would begin!
It was a huge source of entertainment for me and my family when I
was growing up. We'd be on the edge of our seats, then up on our
feet and screaming at the television - well screaming at the sheep.
Massive hollerings and clappings would follow a successful pen and
absolute respect to the stoic farmers who's faces wouldn't even
twitch under such extreme pressure. And huge affection for those
amazing dogs who many years later I would have the pleasure to work
with ( Roy ) in McLeod's Daughters.
Jay Ryan - Go Girls:
The one that springs instantly to mind and conjures up childhood
memories of sitting round the TV at Nana's would have to be when
Thingee's eye popped out with a shocked Jason Gunn and most of the
Kiwi kids watching... and then of course the Goodnight Kiwi
animation when TV shut down for the night and you knew you still up
way past your bed time .. I wish they still played that.
Esther Stephens - Go Girls:
My earliest television watching memory is getting up way too early
to watch cartoons when it was still dark and sitting around waiting
watching the TV test card for hours!
Rob Harte - My House My Castle:
My favourite moment was as a child watching my father play
'Ryan' in 'Hunt's Duffer', a rollicking gold rush story filmed on
the mighty West Coast 35 years ago. Why that doesn't get
rescreened every Christmas I will never know. Half the cast
were hard drinking Irishmen plucked from obscurity when the casting
director snuck into the Wellington Irish Club for a legal Sunday
night drink, and the rest is history. Bring back Hunt's
Duffer!!
Te Radar - Off The Radar, Radar's Patch
Steve Parr's slide on Sale Of The Century. It never got any less
cheesy, in fact like good cheese it got better with age as he slid
again and again and again and again. And when he included a little
skip in the move, oh the exuberance, the joy, the unrestrained
pleasure of presenting. Oh, and "Grant Walker Speaking".
Matt Gibb - Studio 2 LIVE:
My favourite show of all time is definitely Knight Rider. It
used to be the Gibb family Friday night routine - TV2, Fish n'
Chips, and Michael Knight dishing out some street justice with
K.I.T.T.
Dayna Vawdrey - Studio 2 LIVE :
I remember as a kid going behind the scenes of the set of Gloss and
being totally in awe of the bright lights and cameras! I was also
lucky to be an extra in The Billy T James Show, and these two
experiences are the reason I got into TV and do what I do
today!
Tony Murrell - Mucking In
I loved watching with my family when I was a kid, It's In The Bag
with Selwyn Toogood and Hillary Timmons, 'By Hokey' is now very
much a Kiwi colloquialism and most Kiwis know exactly where the
term came from. We would all be sitting there on the couch yelling
out at the TV take the bag!
I also never missed an episode of Dig This with Eon
Scarrow - inspirational stuff for this budding young gardener all
those years ago, I even used to video the show, unfortunately they
all got copied over, the video tapes were expensive back then and
we had to recycle them.
Jim Mora - Mucking In
It's not favourite moments I remember, it tends to be momentous
ones: turning on television to see 9/11, the endless replays of
those planes; Rob Muldoon slurring as he announces the snap
election; the parents of Christa McAuliffe watching,
uncomprehendingly, as the Challenger tragedy unfolds above
them.
A moment I remember well was the first night of The Holmes Show in
1989, Paul Holmes' interview with the dastardly Dennis Conner, and
the question - "You've lost it through bad sportsmanship, you've
lost it because you cheated" - that turned a sympathetic sort of
chat with the man who lost the America's Cup into television
history. Conner walked out of the studio.
There had been blunt confrontation on TV before, but I can't recall
it ever as blunt as this. The NZ Herald described it the next day
as "aggressive, a ratings-generating event rather than a genuine,
tenacious journalistic grilling." I think it was both, and there
was a new template for television current affairs. The interview
was tenacious, it was both grilling and thrilling. Who else on NZ
television could have pulled that moment off, let alone on his
debut night!? His heart must have been in his mouth, proceeding
through the polite early questions, knowing he was about to unleash
the attack. And it could have gone badly wrong. It didn't. The
little master had arrived. I've never forgotten it.
