Country Calendar - Spoofs Special

It’s been described as “iconic’, “the jewel in the crown of New Zealand television” and it’s been around for over four decades. Yes, we’re talking about Country Calendar.

In reality, the programme is something of an enigma. There’s no electronic editing enhancement, background music is minimal, its pace is bordering on slothful. Yet, even after 40 years on air, Country Calendar still attracts a large audience. It’s been voted the most popular New Zealand programme by viewers for the past four years.

But ask people which programmes they remember and inevitably the answer is “the spoofs”; the radio-controlled dog; the farmer who played the fence; the overtly gay couple who ran a “stress-free” flock of sheep.

But before we go any further, it’s necessary to debunk one popular myth. Country Calendar did NOT screen ‘Turkeys in Gumboots’. That accolade should be laid at the feet of Town and Around where it rightfully belongs.

So how did this leg-pulling reputation get established?

To answer that, it’s necessary to step back in time, to the 60s. Within the old NZBC was a group known as the Rural Broadcasters who were scattered throughout New Zealand and responsible for producing the daily farming programmes. They were an independent lot with perhaps a little too much time on their hands. Or perhaps the job attracted a certain calibre of talent with an eye for the ridiculous. Whatever, they regularly broadcast such items as haggis farming, macaroni growing, mouse farming to name just a few.

Now, push the fast-forward button and stop at the mid-70s. By then, the old NZBC had been disestablished and in its place were the two separate entities, Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand, the latter based at Avalon Studios. Heading the now well-established programme Country Calendar was Tony Trotter, one of those ex Rural Broadcasters, a delightful man, with a quirky sense of humour.

Now enters Burton Silver who meets with Tony Trotter. Burton had already established himself as the cartoonist who produced the very popular Bogor cartoon strip, featuring a pot-smoking hedgehog!

It was a liaison based in heaven, or was that hell? Regardless, out of that meeting came the fence-playing farmer and the beginning of a series of “spoof” programmes that got the whole country talking. Then followed the radio-controlled dog, stress-free farming, rural fashions, and more ...

Screening these programmes was not without incident. The viewing public was happy to have their legs pulled by the fence-playing farmer, but there was just a little too much reality in the programme about the radio-controlled dog. Dozens of phone calls poured into the Avalon Studios with people complaining about how “inhumane” it was to interfere with “that poor dog”. Even the then Director General of Television New Zealand, Alan Morris, was fooled. I had taken over the Country Calendar producing reins by this stage, and recall being asked by Alan Morris for more details about this remarkable “breakthrough” in farming! Best of all though was the post graduate student from Australia who wanted to include the programme on his thesis on animal behaviour!

At that time, Country Calendar was a 15 minute programme which made it simpler to sustain a spoof. The essence was to include just sufficient ‘facts’ to leave the viewer wondering. They were also expensive to produce. Burton Silver starred in a couple of these programmes, but most of the time, the production employed professionals to act as “farming” talent.

The last spoof produced by Country Calendar was ‘Night Farming’, a story based around the ‘fact’ of a grass species which grew 24 hours of the day. Therefore the property needed to be run by two farmers; one to cover the day shift another to farm at night. But by now, Country Calendar had graduated to a half hour format. I recall that the programme had some delightful moments but was really “a bit of a fizzer”. Maybe it was the extended format, perhaps the viewing audience were now too sophisticated to be “conned” or perhaps the programme suffered from not having Burton Silver’s input.

Whatever the reasons, it’s unlikely that we will ever again be taken in by another Country Calendar spoof. Or will we? Reckon we’ll just have to keep watching. Just in case!