This 1946 film surveys New Zealand housing: from settler huts to Ernest Plischke’s modernist flats. Architect William Page bemoans sun-spurning Victorian slums with their unneeded “elaboration”. But more fretful than fretwork is a housing crisis that sees 26,000 families needing homes, with owning or renting out of reach of many. Michael Savage’s pioneering (but war-stalled) state housing scheme and newly-planned suburbs offer hope. Fed by wood and cement, NZ can build again with brio: “For a home is the basis of the simple things that make victory worthwhile.”

Director Alyx Duncan set out to make an experimental documentary about her childhood home. What eventually resulted was this acclaimed and award-winning "fictional essay", her first full length feature. Blurring the line between documentary and drama, she cast her conservationist father and Chinese born step-mother as characters partially based on themselves. As they journey from a small NZ island to a big Chinese city, Duncan examines their cross cultural relationship and explores nostalgia, childhood, dreams, environmentalism, globalisation and the meaning of home.

This Touchdown reality series puts a Kiwi family in the shoes of a family of 1852 English immigrants to Canterbury. The challenge for the Huttons is to see if they have the 'pioneer spirit' and can live with colonial clothing, housing and food for 10 weeks. From a gentler, non-competitive era of reality TV, this first episode sees the Owaka family of six (including baby Neil) experience six days of life on a settler ship – seasickness, food rations, restrictive clothing and bedding and chamber pots – while relaying their personal reflections to the camera.

New Zealand television's first sitcom, Buck House centred on the antics of a group of university students sharing a flat in Wellington. In this sixth episode of the first series, Reg — played by a fast-talking, afro-headed Paul Holmes — gets embroiled in his flatmate Joe's latest illicit moneymaking scheme. 'Escorts Unlimited Ltd', as Joe (Tony Barry) tries to explain, is a surefire winner. That is, until Buck House's other flattie, the left-leaning Jo (Jacqui Dunn) invites a member of the local constabulary home for a cup of tea. The late night comedy was considered edgy when it debuted in 1974.

In the first episode of this reality series, groundwork is done to allow a 21st century family to live for 10 weeks as their ancestors did in 1900. The right house has been found — but the largely unmodernised Grey Lynn worker's cottage still needs an army of workers and consultants to muck in and turn it into a fully functioning home of the era. Meanwhile, the family search has produced the Feyens from Palmerston North. They appear ready for the challenge, but the realities of different standards of housework, hygiene, and clothing are slowly dawning.

Open House revolved around the ups and downs of a drop-in house run by Tony Van Der Berg (Frank Whitten, later Outrageous Fortune's Grandpa Ted). In this first episode there's money trouble, court trouble, domestics, a pregnant teenager and an abandoned baby ... but there's community spirit aplenty as the house's whānau prepares for its first birthday celebration, complete with Scottish brass band and Samoan drums. Tony's first lines to a raving old man on Petone Beach? "Good onya mate!". Features author Emily Perkins as Tony's idealistic stepdaughter.

Planning and preparing dinner becomes a sweaty ordeal in the second episode of reality show/'social experiment', Pioneer House. The family have moved into 2 Elgin St and are dealing with the hands-on chores involved in running a typical lower middle class household in 1900. The summer heat makes a trip to the shops clad in corsets and petticoats "like running a marathon", and 17 year old Anneke feels stifled by the restrictions placed on young women of the day. On the plus side, Michael appreciates the extra 'family time' this new/old life is giving him.

Musician Petunia (Jennifer Ludlam) and daughters Polly and Patch are tiring of their lives as land yachting "gypsies of the motorway" in the first episode of this hyperactive children's fantasy drama written by Margaret Mahy. Their salvation could be a magic house owned by Crocodile Crosby — a used car dealer with ambitions to be a pirate — but a devious land agent (Michael Wilson) and a dastardly wealthy couple stand in the way. All powerful narrator Paul Holmes orchestrates the action which features extensive use of music and period video special effects.

This Vice documentary, made as part of its women's suffrage series, asks four past and present politicians — Golriz Ghahraman, Paula Bennett, Louisa Wall and former Prime Minister Helen Clark — about their experience of being a female MP in Aotearoa. It's a mixed picture. Clark celebrates the fact that issues facing half the population are now being addressed by a more equal Parliament, but Ghahraman, whose family fled Iran for New Zealand, regularly receives abusive communications. While each politician responds differently, they all share strong personal beliefs.

In this 1986 Kaleidoscope piece, presenter Mark Wigley offers his take on grand designs in Auckland housing. Fresh from completing a doctorate at Auckland University in architectural theory, Wigley argues that New Zealand has "had a building tradition rather than an architectural tradition". He finds that contemporary houses (from a David Mitchell-designed house in Parnell, to a Paritai Drive mansion) are starting to explore potential beyond simple boxes, toward being works of art. Wigley went on to become Dean of Architecture at Columbia University in the United States.