It started with grunge and ended with Spice Girls; Di died, Clinton didn't inhale and the All Blacks were poisoned. On screen, Ice TV and Havoc were for the kids and a grown-up Kiwi cinema delivered a powerful triple punch. Tua's linguistic jab proved just as memorable, Tem got a geography lesson and Thingee's eye popped and reverberated around our living rooms.

Hosted by Charlotte Dawson, How’s Life? saw a rotating panel of guests responding to letters from viewers in an effort to help them navigate their day to day struggles. In this episode, the panel is made up of Paul Henry, Suzanne Paul, a pre-Outrageous Fortune Robyn Malcolm and ex Department of Work and Income boss Christine Rankin. The issues under discussion include a difficult five-year-old, strangers sneezing on your food, and a teenager who doesn't approve of their ex's new boyfriend. There is also meningococcal awareness advice from Auckland District Health Board.

Hibiscus (Suivai Pilisipi Autagavaia, from short Manurewa) and no nonsense Ruth (Anna-Maree Thomas) have been friends since school. But now Hibiscus is finishing university, and her domineering mother doesn't want boyfriends getting in the way. So Hibiscus enlists Ruth's help, to handle any temptations. Hibiscus & Ruthless marks the second movie for writer/director SQS (Stallone Vaiaoga-Ioasa) — who won keen audiences in 2015 for his first feature, Samoan-set comedy Three Wise Cousins. Stuff reviewer James Croot praised the new film's casting, comedy and pathos.  

Awkward Auckland love stories abound in this web series about four 20-something female friends. Holly Shervey (Shortland Street) plays Alice, who turns to dating app Tinder after her boyfriend (Dean O'Gorman) dumps her. Alice's flatmates — the hard-drinking Vicky (Lucinda Hare) and hippie Grace (Jess Holly Bates), plus promiscuous friend Zoe (Jess Sayer) — fail at their own love lives, but always have each other's backs. Shot on a low budget of just under $5,000, series one was selected for several global film festivals. Shervey based it on her own dating experiences.

Actor and law student Georgia Rippin mined her own experience to create this web series, a tragicomic portrait of a young woman at Auckland University. Rippen plays Audrey, whose misadventures span exam stress, boyfriend angst, anxiety, and sexism in the legal world. In 2017 The NZ Herald rated Dislawderly among the best new local web series; Karl Puschmann praised the amount of satire squeezed into the short running time, saying that each of season one's seven episodes "features a couple of genuine lols and offers a new spin on the classic style of cringe comedy." 

Written by Fiona Samuel (Marching Girls, Bliss, Home Movie) and produced by Ginette McDonald for television’s Montana Sunday Theatre, Face Value is a trilogy of monologues delivered by three separate women. While each woman’s story and background are vastly different, they are all united by their shared quest to find happiness amidst personal trauma. In A Real Dog, Carol Smith’s performance is spot-on as Lynette, a conflicted new-age hippie who struggles to recreate harmony when a new flatmate (and her estranged boyfriend) moves in.

This sex in the capital city series centres around 30-something Melissa (Luanne Gordon), who has shed a corporate legal career to set up a male strip revue. The Gibson Group-produced show married the fretful modern woman protagonist of Ally McBeal with the hen's night appeal of Ladies Night; it screened for two series on TV3. In this episode from the first series Melissa enjoys her towel-clad new flatmate Adam (Robbie Magasiva), while her copper boyfriend Shane (Stephen Lovatt) doesn't. And Mel's teenage daughter contemplates 'the first time'.

This series follows the interconnecting lives of eight 20-something characters — one of them dead — as they search for happiness. An ambitious 'meta' concept, strong performances from the ensemble cast and stylishly-shot Wellington locations won the Gibson Group drama awards and acclaim, particularly from its targeted youth demographic. In this excerpt from Chapter Eleven, Lindy accepts a job in Toronto but fails to tell boyfriend William; Barry and James discuss Chaos Theory and relationships; and Sam uses flowers in an attempt to fix things with Tina.

'Ship girls' are the subject of this episode of the NZBC’s Probation Service drama. Hapless Janice (Freda Costley), a 19-year-old with a father who moved to Whakatane and a mother she doesn’t see if she can help it, is looking for love in the wrong places: sneaking onto the wharves to party with sailors in the hope she’ll find a boyfriend. Now the police have arrested her and, if she’s not careful, she’ll end up in borstal. Will the Probation Officers (Ewen Solon and Glynis McNicholl) be able to "stop her gangway habit becoming an addiction"?

In these excerpts from his last TV series — a family based sitcom — Billy T has to deal with his radical older daughter who wants to get a moko, a teenage boy trying to smuggle beer into his younger daughter’s birthday party, a defamation writ, and another tribe becoming his landlord. There are varying degrees of help from his wife (Ilona Rodgers), his aggressively dim Australian brother-in-law (Mark Hadlow) and his daughter’s painfully politically correct pakeha boyfriend (Mark Wright), as well as cameos from Temuera Morrison, Martin Henderson and Blair Strang.