Māori Television’s award-winning news and current affairs show took its bold name from a colonial government department. This 2017 episode profiles four non-conformists: Mongrel Mob boss Rex Timu’s war on P; Raihania Tipoki's waka protest against East Coast oil surveying; Taranaki mother Tina Tupe's preparations for her own tangi; and globetrotting screenwriter David Seidler. Seidler makes an annual trip to a Tarawera cabin – he has a Kiwi son to a Māori woman – and talks about his Oscar-winning movie The King’s Speech, and his admiration for kapa haka.

Set during the 1974 Commonwealth Games, The Games Affair was a thriller fantasy series for children. Remembered fondly by many who were kids in the 70s, the story follows three teenagers who battle a miscreant professor who's experimenting on athletes with performance enhancing drugs. This first episode include some SFX jumping sheep; John Bach as a blonde, grunting villain, and a youthful Elizabeth McRae. It was NZ telly's first children's serial, the first independently produced long-form drama, and an early credit for producer John Barnett.

Set during the 1974 Commonwealth Games, thriller-fantasy series The Games Affair was NZ telly's first children's serial. Remembered fondly by 70s kids, it follows three teenagers battling a miscreant professor who's experimenting on athletes. The second episode begins with the trio finding a performance-enhanced (by nifty stop-motion) beach runner. The trail takes them to QEII Park for the Games' opening ceremony where they confront the villains, and — via pioneering DIY FX — deflate John Bach Flat Stanley-style. Note: the episode has nothing to do with toilets.

The Mackenzie Affair told the story of colonial folk hero James Mackenzie: accused of rustling 1000 sheep in the high country that would later bear his name. This fifth and final episode sees the manhunt for Mackenzie over, with ‘Jock’ facing a sentence of hard labour and provoking sympathy from equivocal sheriff Henry Tancred. Adapted from James McNeish’s book, the early co-production (with Scottish TV) imported Caledonian lead actor James Cosmo (Braveheart, Game of Thrones) and veteran UK TV director Joan Craft. It was made by Hunter’s Gold producer John McRae.

In July 1985 French government agents bombed Greenpeace vessel The Rainbow Warrior while it was moored at an Auckland wharf. The boat was set to protest French nuclear testing at Mururoa; photographer Fernando Pereira was killed. This TVNZ documentary, which screened in April 1986, explores the international incident and its fallout. This excerpt, featuring dramatic reconstructions, covers the arrival of the spies in New Zealand and their movements up to and after the bombing. Witnesses and key figures, such as Prime Minister David Lange, are interviewed.

A special tribute to 20 years of TV3's late night news show Nightline — including interviews with most of its regular newsreaders and major contributors of the previous two decades. Belinda Todd pops up in Los Angeles via satellite link and Darren McDonald is "door-stepped" at home while the others celebrate in a Ponsonby Road bar. There's a tribute to the late Dylan Taite; and other packages are devoted to Belinda Todd's more notorious antics, Bill Ralston's gonzo approach to politics, the show's arts coverage and its on-going love affair with nudity.    

NZ’s leading interviewer of the day Ian Fraser puts the questions to his British counterpart, international media star David Frost, on this TVNZ current affairs show. The urbane Frost backgrounds his landmark 1977 interviews with disgraced former American president Richard Nixon (later the subject of Frost/Nixon). He is also on the brink of launching breakfast TV in the UK at a time when the media world is more finite and he can describe the venture as the “last new frontier”; and he discusses the then vexed subject of private/public media ownership.

In this famous edition of current affairs show Gallery interviewer Brian Edwards turns conciliator in a long-running industrial dispute. Post Office workers had imposed a go-slow after wage negotiations broke down. Producer Des Monaghan managed to get the Postmaster General Mr McCready and Mr Reddish of the Post Office union into the studio together. In the interview’s final minutes Edwards forced an agreement between the two men to stop union action and go back into mediation. This programme won Edwards a Feltex Award for ‘Best Performance as Frontman’.

In this Gallery episode David "Mr Current Affairs" Exel politely interrogates Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk on his first 250 days in office; ranging from Britain's changing role in the Commonwealth to Kirk's weight loss. Dairne Shanahan comments on the PM’s image and Ross Stevens weighs in on broken election promises. Exel became Gallery host in 1971, when Brian Edwards quit after NZBC refused to screen a notorious pilot for an Edwards-fronted show (then-Finance Minister Rob Muldoon sparring with young critics Tim Shadbolt, Chris Wheeler and Alister Taylor).

Marae (now Marae Investigates) is the longest running Māori current affairs programme. First broadcast in 1992 the hour long magazine programme aims to keep its audience in touch with the issues, political or otherwise, that affect Māori, and explain kaupapa Māori from a Māori perspective. The Marae Digipoll gives the programme publicity in other media as a respected barometer of matters Māori. One of Marae's high points is its post-election mustering of successful Māori candidates — this 2008 edition features the five Māori Party and two Labour Party MPs.