50 Years of New Zealand Television: 4 - Winners and Losers
This fourth episode in Prime’s series on Kiwi television history series charts 50 years of sports on TV. Interviews with veteran broadcasters are mixed with clips of classic sporting moments. Changes in technology are surveyed: from live broadcasts and colour TV, to slo-mo replays and CGI graphics. Sports coverage is framed as a national campfire where Kiwis have been able to share in test match, Olympic, Commonwealth and World Cup triumphs and disasters — from emotional national anthems and inspirational Paralympians, to underarm deliveries, snapped masts and face-plants.
Attitude - Special Olympics Unity Cup
Attitude is a weekly series looking at the issues and interests of people living with a disability. This episode features the Special Olympics Unity Cup at the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa. The team is made up of intellectually disabled players from around the world, and celebrities such as South African president Jacob Zuma, Special Olympics boss Tim Shriver (of the Kennedy family), and Chinese movie star Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Mark Liggins is the Kiwi representative on the team, and he travels to the cup with former All Whites captain Steve Sumner.
The Game of Our Lives - Tries and Penalties
This episode of rugby series The Game Of Our Lives looks at the impact the sport has had on race relations in New Zealand. The country's history of rugby forging bonds between Māori and Pākehā is a stark contrast to South Africa's apartheid policy. Tries and Penalties focuses on the troubles between Aotearoa and South Africa — from coloured players George Nepia and Ranji Wilson being excluded from All Blacks tours to South Africa, to the infamous 1981 Springboks tour, and Nelson Mandela opening the 1995 Rugby World Cup final between the two teams.
Before the Operations Begin
Feeling burnt out, director Tony Williams takes his seachange literally and sets off with three mates in his recently restored 66-foot motorboat, with a grown-up son as cameraman. The plan: journey from Sydney to the Coral Sea. They witness an eclipse, find paradise in Vanuatu, and island-hop their way through New Caledonian reefs, soon after witnessing French victory in the 1998 (soccer) World Cup. Near journey’s end, a reflective Williams realises that he has experienced not just a holiday, but also “an opportunity to look at your own world from a distance”.
Bad Taste
After concocting all manner of outlandish images on 8mm film, Bad Taste was Peter Jackson’s breakthrough; years in the making, it was the first feature to make it from his Pukerua Bay backyard to cinema screens, where it quickly began to rack up sales. An all-male cast of public service Alien Investigation and Detection Service operatives run amok with guns, food, vomit, rockets and misguided enthusiasm, to rid the earth of alien Lord Crumb and his fast-food gang — who want to turn earthlings into hamburgers. Jackson took two acting roles in this ‘splatstick’ sensation.
Geoff Bryan
After starting in television as a continuity announcer in the early 80s, Geoff Bryan moved into sports presenting. Since then the veteran sportscaster has presented coverage of tennis, cricket, World Cup rugby, the Commonwealth Games and for every Olympics since Atlanta 1996.
Denis Harvey
Denis Harvey's career encompasses a range of leadership positions – but he is best known for his contributions to sports coverage, especially his work across multiple years of America's Cup and Olympic sailing. Harvey spent three decades working for state TV, including seven years commanding sport, and four as TVNZ's overall head of production. These days he balances work in broadcasting and production.
Rodney Bryant
Rodney Bryant was one of the stars of the heyday of regional television news. In the early 70s he became a Canterbury institution fronting The South Tonight with Bryan Allpress, and returned to host The Mainland Touch in the early 80s. He moved on to TV talkback, then children’s current affairs with The Video Dispatch, before leaving TV for a twenty year run in communications for the Dunedin City Council.
Dean Parker
2013 Arts Foundation Laureate Dean Parker has written extensively for stage, television, radio and print. Alongside his own projects, he has shown himself as a skilled adaptor of everyone from Nicky Hager (The Hollow Men) to Ronald Hugh Morrieson (movie classic Came a Hot Friday).
Jim Booth
An upbeat and hugely positive character, Jim Booth is best known as the Film Commission boss who gave Peter Jackson his big break. He later became Jackson’s producer, completing three films before succumbing to cancer in 1994.