This is the first of a six-part TVNZ series which follows seven couples from antenatal classes to the reality of childbirth and parenthood. Along the way they share their hopes and fears as they await the arrival of their first born. This episode focuses on antenatal classes, decisions that have to be made and practical adjustments, including jobs and budgeting. The fathers-to-be provide some of the most humorous lines, mostly displaying their naivety (one looks forward to the chance to "laze back a bit"). But all the participants show an honesty that makes for fascinating viewing.   

Karen and Mark, who are both intellectually disabled, are expecting a child. In this episode from stripped back documentary series First Hand, the couple become a family when baby Terry arrives. Terry's birth means the usual support they receive from IHC must be ramped up, and a new caregiver steps in to help Karen and Mark cope with the 24/7 responsibilities of parenthood. It's a story full of hope and love, but no one close to the couple is under any illusions about the amount of support needed to successfully parent Terry.

This short film follows a five-year-old child (Elizabeth Morris), after her mother's paranoid delusions reach breaking point and she is put in a mental hospital. Writer/director Belinda Schmid's aim was to show how children can respond to situations partly without emotional upset, "because we have no other measure for the ways things are supposed to be, and partly by coping in ways that help us survive at the time". Jennifer Ward-Lealand plays the mother. Nominated for Best Short at the 2000 NZ Film Awards, The Painted Lady was invited to a number of international film festivals.

Movie Vermilion follows composer Darcy (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) over a summer month, as her daughter prepares to marry. Darcy sees colours when she plays musical notes, but after seeing the colour vermilion she is prompted to secretly make her own plans. The exploration of motherhood, family and female friendship marks the feature debut of director Dorthe Scheffmann (Cannes-selected 1995 short film The Beach). The ensemble cast includes Theresa Healey, Goretti Chadwick (Game of Bros), and newcomer Emily Campbell. The production team were 85 per cent female.

Short film Letter for Hope is about a chance encounter of the best kind, at a point when there isn't much hope around. April Phillips (who also wrote the script) plays Jane, who must face the revelation that her pregnancy will be terminal. While trying to process the news, she encounters an old man (veteran actor Don Langridge) whose kindness and humanity will help in surprising ways. The self-funded short competed at multiple film festivals in the United States, and won an Honourable Mention at the 2014 Sarasota Film Festival.

Chris Warner (Michael Galvin) debuted in Shortland Street on the very first episode, when the young doctor got sweaty with an aerobics instructor. Over 25 years the character has been through his share of drama (including five marriages and counting, by 2017). In this short interview, Galvin reflects on his favourite storyline while playing Warner: the shock 2016 arrival of three adult children (triplets!) that he fathered as a sperm donor in the show’s second year. In the accompanying Shortland St clips, Sass Connelly (Lucy Lovegrove) tells Warner that he was "the Dad I never knew".  

Anna Kingston (Outrageous Fortune's Robyn Malcolm) isn't having a good year: her husband has left her and their two teenage daughters, forcing her to relinquish a pampered lifestyle to return to work. Devised by Robyn Malcolm, this TV One comedy-drama follows Kingston as she tries to sell real estate and live with her parents. Her rich friends give her the cold shoulder, and her sleazy work colleague Leon Cruickshank (Adam Gardiner from movie Hopeless) proves he can't be trusted. Rejected by everyone, Kingston turns to self-help CDs for inspiration: "I deserve to win". 

In the first episode of comedy drama Step Dave, solo Mum Cara (Sia Trokenheim) finds herself rescued by womanising barman Dave (Jono Kenyon), after a disastrous blind date ends in a sprained ankle. Dave is convinced he's met 'the one'. Cara's daughters and mother in-law (Lisa Harrow) are horrified. And Cara fears there isn't enough time in her busy life for a man who calls her favourite song "ancient". Meanwhile Dave's flatmate is falling for the workmate who has stolen his desk. Created by Kate McDermott, Step Dave screened for two seasons — and was later remade in Russia.

Little known in its homeland, but an award-winner overseas, director Michael Heath's tragic portrait of mother and child confronts "intense emotion without flinching" (as Lawrence McDonald wrote). Largely bypassing dialogue in favour of a more elemental approach, the filmmakers combine sound and song (courtesy of composer David Downes and singer Mahinārangi Tocker) with lyrical imagery of the family revelling in their rural backblock (shot by Stephen Latty). There is added poignancy in the fact that Tocker — playing the mother who loses her boy — herself passed away in 2008.

In this interview publicising 1996 comedy The Birdcage, Robin Williams turns his humour settings to a surprisingly low level. Quizzed on matters political by Holmes reporter Ewart Barnsley, Williams argues that politically correct people can display the “same kind of repressive tendencies” as others, and admits that the portrait of homosexual parents in the Mike Nichols-directed comedy could be offensive to both gays and straights. But, he adds, the majority of viewers "go and laugh their ass off and find some common ground and humanity in it”.