Without food life would not only be boring, but impossible. Television networks obviously agree: scan the TV listings, and cooking programmes are visible everywhere from My Kitchen Rules to Masterchef and Come Dine with Me. This Spotlight collection offers the chance to look back to a kinder, les...

Graham Kerr, NZ’s first celebrity chef, abandons his usual show format to answer queries from his studio audience about food and cooking. Topics covered by the soon-to-be world famous Galloping Gourmet include how to stop scrambled eggs drying out (add cream), battering oysters (never) and when to make Christmas cake (at least six months in advance). The show is a fascinating preserve of mid-60s cuisine – from crumbed cutlets and spaghetti bolognese to Kerr’s own curious ‘Long White Cloud’ dessert. Kerr, of course, is as witty, charming and urbane as ever.

It's now been more than 40 years since pioneering soap opera Close to Home first beamed into Kiwi living rooms. For just over eight years, the life and times of Wellington’s Hearte clan screened each Monday and Tuesday night. Toast the Heartes with the first and final episodes, plus a special com...

In this short clip, sponsored by the New Zealand Dairy Board, cookbook queen Alison Holst provides a rundown on four easy meals that can be made out of bread and cheese. Made long before the more hyperactive Food In a Minute, Holst’s calm charisma gently talks us through the ins and outs of mouse traps, cheese rolls, mini pizzas and, of course, cheese toasties. A surprise bell from the microwave threatens to throw Holst off her stride, but then a dive into her rich supply of kitchen tips helps her get things right back on track.

While in Tahiti to scout for locations for a film (ultimately unrealised) on the mutiny of the HMS Bounty, legendary British director David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago) became fascinated by a lost anchor jettisoned by Captain Cook in 1773. Produced for New Zealand’s South Pacific Television, this film follows the anchor’s discovery — by River Kwai bridge exploder Eddie Fowlie — and salvage. A rare 'documentary' credit for Lean, the film was written by his regular scripting collaborator Robert Bolt; Kiwi Kelly Tarlton provides expert dive guidance.

This jaunty early National Film Unit film promotes the alpine scenery of Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park and its recreational opportunities. It includes slalom at the 1946 New Zealand ski champs, ice-skating at Lake Tekapo, comic pratfalls in the snow, a mass snow-fight and ... landscape painting. Dancing at the Hermitage Hotel is "a good way to loosen the muscles after skiing". As well as human interest, the film features the expected majestic mountains, glaciers, and avalanches, as well as curious kea at Ball Hut, and amusing dogs in snow-glasses.

From Māori myth to climbing and photography, to gliding and paraponting around its peak, Aoraki-Mt Cook is vividly captured in all its moods in this award-winning NHNZ portrait. Filmed for the centenary of the first ascent of a mountain that has claimed over 100 lives, it follows mountaineers as they climb toward the summit, re-enacting Tom Fyfe's pioneering pre-crampon route. Climbers, including Edmund Hillary, reminisce about encounters with NZ's highest and most iconic peak; and Bruce Grant takes the quick way down: a vertiginous ski descent.

Wildtrack was a long-running series that infected a generation of kids who grew up in the 80s and early 90s with enthusiasm for all-things native’n’natural. This 1991 Taylormade episode (neon-lit as ‘Wild T’) explores the mountain life of Aoraki-Mt Cook: from Māori myth, to cheeky kea and solar-powered butterflies. Peter Hayden presents from the studio with a homegrown HAL: Archie the computer. Future actor/director Katie Wolfe is the young cub in field: glacier-skiing, hanging from a crevasse, meeting Mt Cook School’s eight pupils, and hugging vegetable sheep.

This series from Kiwi cooking legend Alison Holst is made up of six 15 minute episodes in which Holst cooks a selection of family favourite meals. Taking a relaxed pace, far removed from the typical energetic cooking show format, she talks through some simple recipes, to please even the pickiest eater. Alison Holst Cooks was made in association with Beckett Publishing, to support the release of the cookbook of the same name.

After bad weather curtailed an ambitious film about Mount Aspiring in 1949, Brian Brake returned to the Southern Alps the following year to shoot Mount Cook — the first NFU film to feature Brake's mountain imagery in glorious blue and white colour. The wait was worth it: the longtime mountain-lover coaxes a succession of breathtaking images of the cloud-piercing mountain — plus a rollicking snow fight scene. The plot, what there is of it, centres on some skiers wandering closer to Aoraki/Mt Cook to get a better look, then demonstrating the joys of descent.