A delightful animation accompanies this number one single from folk-poppers Avalanche City. With its big, catchy, chorus, the song delivers the feel-good factor and the video captures its quaint essence perfectly with its cast of storybook pirates and penguins. Mass exposure for the song came when it was used for TV2 promos and it took off on release, going gold in four weeks (despite being earlier available as a free download).

The second, but prequel, series to The Insiders Guide to Happiness is chaos theory in action: seven young strangers are linked together by a bizarre incident. In this excerpt from Episode Six, Marty's (Louis Sutherland's) travel writing isn't going anywhere, Nicole (Kate Elliott) gets "wild and crazy and bad" for Halloween, and there's baking romance, sun bed sex, and scratchy shoplifting. The series won several Screen Director's Guild Awards and a clutch of gongs at the 2006 Qantas Film and TV Awards, including Best Drama, Director, Script, Actor and Actress. 

Florian Habicht first won attention for 2003's Woodenhead, a fairytale about a rubbish dump worker and a princess. By then Habicht had already made his first feature-length documentary. Many more docos have followed: films that celebrate his love for people, and sometimes drift into fantasy. In this collection, watch as the idiosyncratic director meets fishermen, Kaikohe demolition derby drivers (both watchable in full), legends of Kiwi theatre and British pop, and beautiful women carrying slices of cake through New York. Ian Pryor writes here about the joys of Florian Habicht.

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.

This episode of the antiques appraisal series was recorded at Auckland Museum with host Dougal Stevenson, Marshall Seifert and Trevor Plumbly joined by Cherry Raymond, and Richard Valentine. Items examined include daguerreotypes, cubist pottery cats by Louis Wain, Edwardian Lavalier pendants and a Marconi radio. It also features a discussion about different types of valuation ... then there’s the piece of pottery, from Auckland artist Cameron Brown’s Titian studio (inspired by the 1956 Springbok Tour), which has the panel very much divided about its merits.

A year on from moving in together, three friends and their surrogate flatmate drink and date their way around Auckland in this second series of Auckward Love. Flatmates Alice (Holly Shervey), Vicky (Lucinda Hare) and Grace (Jess Holly Bates), plus friend Zoe (Jess Sayer), face up to the harsh reality that life in your 20s can be full of tough lessons. Grace loses her sparkle when she finds herself in a polyamorous relationship, while Zoe has to compromise with her alcoholic father, played by John Leigh. Jennifer Ward-Lealand also features, as an enthusiastic sex toy shop worker. 

When Love Comes features Rena Owen as a once were famous singing star who returns to NZ, in need of reinvention. Staying with a close gay friend (Simon Prast), she is reenergised after meeting a wastral songwriter (Dean O'Gorman) and two loved up young musos (Sophia Hawthorne and Nancy Brunning, the former in her big screen debut). Invited to a slew of North American festivals — including Sundance and Toronto — Garth Maxwell's sun and song-lashed tale won stateside praise for its "energetic direction" (The Hollywood Reporter) and impassioned performances.

They came, they battered, they bickered. Peter Hudson and David Halls were as famous for their on-screen spats as their recipes. The couple ("are we gay? Well we're certainly merry") turned cooking into comedy, and won Entertainer of the Year at the 1981 Feltex Awards. This 73-minute documentary explores their enduring relationship and tragic passing — from memorable early days entertaining dinner guests at home and running a shoe store, through to television fame in NZ and the UK. The interviews include close friends and many of those who worked with them in television.

In 1885 the NZ Government used legislation to take ownership of sections of Bastion Point (Takaparawhau) for defence purposes. This ancestral Māori land belonging to Ngāti Whātua was never returned, and in 1976 Crown announced plans to sell off land for housing. Joe Hawke led a group of peaceful protesters which occupied the land for 507 days, until they were forcibly removed by 700+ police and soldiers. This documentary, which screened as part of the Perspective current affairs series, examines some of the issues behind the protest that polarised a nation.

Love, Speed and Loss is an extended documentary about racer Kim Newcombe, who turned heads in the 1970s on a König motorbike he developed and designed himself. Built around home movie footage and interviews with his charismatic, straight-talking widow Janeen, the film charts the couple's travels in Europe, and triumph on the track. Newcombe was killed racing in 1973, and posthumously finished second in that year's World 500cc Championship. Love, Speed and Loss won best documentary at the 2007 Qantas TV Awards and three Air NZ Screen gongs.