A thriller fantasy serial for children. The Games Affair was set in the lead-up to the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. In this series three teenagers battle a miscreant professor and his sidekicks, who are experimenting on athletes with performance enhancing drugs. This was New Zealand's first children’s serial and the first long-form drama to be independently produced in NZ. It was also one of legendary producer John Barnett’s early projects.
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Great to see this again. I do however recall that as a 7-year old it scared the hell out of me (the series starts to get very macabre as it goes on).
Not credited (but definitely deserving of being so) is the NZ composer Ross Harris who created the electronic music for the series on (I believe) an EMS Synthi analogue synthesizer. The piece accompanying the bike ride through Hagley Park (first episode, part two, 1' 37") is utterly charming.
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Darren Schroeder | website
Posted at 11.40AM - 26.10.2008
Classic stuff! Great to see the jumping sheep after all those years. I seem to recall later scenes with a super fast table tennis player, and that the special "athletes" would break like terracotta figures. Christchurch in the 70s, more please :-)