Bernard Kearns presents a survey of NZ life in the 30s in this episode of the National Film Unit series The Years Back (“people and events that shaped the New Zealand of today”). The documentary includes a wealth of footage taken from NFU stock: the aftermath of the 1931 Napier earthquake, the Depression (as Kearns bluntly states, “there was a lot of misery in the 30s”), and runner Jack Lovelock’s gold medal triumph at the Berlin Olympics. There’s also editorial flair as King George VI’s lavish coronation ceremony is juxtaposed with the A&P show back home.

On 7 May 2009, police executing a search warrant in a Napier suburb were shot at by Jan Molenaar. Senior Constable Len Snee was killed, two officers and a neighbour injured; a 50 hour siege ensued. This adaptation of the events into a telefeature dominated the 2012 New Zealand Television Awards, winning Best One-off Drama, Script (John Banas), Performance (Mark Mitchinson as Molenaar), Supporting Actress (Miriama Smith), and Best Sound Design (Chris Burt). Hawke's Bay Today reviewer Roger Moroney said of the Mike Smith-directed drama: "They got it right".

In this leg of The Big Art Trip, hosts Fiona McDonald and Douglas Lloyd-Jenkins drive through Hawke’s Bay and catch up with artist Dick Frizzell to discuss landscape painting and his Phantom comic series. Then they’re off to Napier to meet musician Paul McLaney and his co-producer David Holmes, who explain their song production techniques. Painter and ceramic artist Martin Poppelwell shares his art, Douglas describes art deco and modernist architecture and they head south to nearby Waipawa to meet potter Helen Mason and painter Gary Waldrom.

Tom Gould’s short film documents the life of Martyka ‘Skin’ Brandt — Mongrel Mob gangster, speedway driver and devoted solo father to 10 children (four of his own, six fostered). Brandt was a rare Pākehā who joined the Mob in the 70s. His stereotype-defying life spans escaping from Sunnyside mental institution as a teen, violence and ‘Mongrelism’, then transformation via parenthood. NYC-based Kiwi Gould filmed Skin in Brandt’s Napier home. Skin won international attention as a Vimeo Staff Pick, Short of the Week, and selection in Dazed magazine’s ‘Doc X’ strand.

This is an NFU account of a 1970 mission to find, net, and train a Bottlenose dolphin for Marineland in Napier. Informative narration scores the hunt as veteran whaler Joe Perano helps two staff search the Marlborough Sounds. Soon, a pod of "submarine surfers" ride the ship's bow, and a young female is dramatically netted (to her mother's distress). A truck ride and flight later she is swimming in her new marine park home. A year on 'Pelorus Jill' makes her public debut, performing spectacular 12 foot leaps and beaching for a tummy scratch from her trainer.

Marcus Lush goes "right up the guts" of the North Island from Wairarapa to Gisborne, in this episode of his award-winning romance with New Zealand's railways. He meets railcar restorers and recounts the murders by rail porter Rowland Edwards in 1884. Particular praise is reserved for the "spectacular and beautiful" Napier to Gisborne line (now mothballed) with its viaducts at Mohaka and Kopuawhara. The latter is on the site of a flash flood that killed 21 workers in 1938; it inspires an idiosyncratic Lush demonstration of Aotearoa's then 10 worst disasters.