South Pacific Pictures marked its 30th anniversary in 2018. With drama production at its core, this collection highlights the production company’s prodigious output. The collection spans everything from Marlin Bay to Westside — including hit movies Sione's Wedding and Whale Rider  — plus the long-running and beloved Shortland Street. In the backgrounder, longtime SPP boss John Barnett reminisces, and charts the company’s history.

In July 1998 Shortland Street added a tragically memorable entry to its catalogue of births, deaths and marriages. Pregnant nurse and fan favourite Tiffany (Alison James) is out shopping, when she sees suicidal patient Tim (Kelson Henderson) heading for the roof of a high rise. She races up the stairs and successfully talks him down, but then she falls. Knowing she is badly injured and brain-dead, her husband Johnny Marinovich (Stelios Yiakmis) has to make the difficult choice between letting her go, or keeping her on life support until their baby is born. 

Since a spectacular truck crash just before the Christmas 1995 episode, the Shortland Street team have often pulled out the stops at Christmas time, and other special anniversaries. The 90 minute 20th anniversary special — which won acclaim in May 2012 — was no exception. Aside from Chris Warner being arrested for murder in his hospital bed, a dramatic helicopter crash injures Nurse Nicole Miller, a P addict is loose in the building, a heart has gone missing, and at least six former Shortlanders return. A fashion parade of old costumes from the clinic provides some light relief.

Shortland Street is a fast-paced serial drama set in an eponymous inner city Auckland hospital. A South Pacific Pictures production, the iconic show is based around the births, deaths and marriages of the staff, family and patients. Screening five days a week on TV2 it is New Zealand’s longest running drama. Characters and lines from the show have entered the culture, most famously, "you're not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata!". This 2007 promo, set to the theme song, collects together highlights from the first 15 years of the show.

Emily Chu (award-winner Michelle Ang) is a young ‘banana’ (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) hoping to conceal a cross-cultural romance from her prudish Chinese parents in this romantic dramedy. Director Roseanne Liang’s feature debut draws on her autobiographical ‘video diary’ Banana in a Nutshell, which screened at the 2005 NZ International Film Festival. In the audience was producer John Barnett, who immediately offered to fund an adaptation. On its March 2010 release My Wedding gained several five star reviews, and strong box office.

Produced by John Laing and featuring a star-studded cast (Sara Wiseman, Tim Balme, et al), South Pacific Pictures' award-winning 'seachange' series Mercy Peak hit just the right note with its down-home sincerity and quirky-but-complex characters. In this excerpt from the first episode, Doctor Nicky Somerville (Sara Wiseman) discovers the cheating ways of her partner (a deliciously oily Simon Prast) and decides it's time to get out. On her way to finding her bliss in the tiny town of Bassett she has an inauspicious beginning: a minor collision with the town's iconic pig. 

Nothing Trivial followed the lives and loves of five friends in their 30s and 40s, who compete in a weekly pub quiz. In this first 10 minutes of the debut episode, the Sex on a Stick team — played by Shane Cortese, Tandi Wright, Nicole Whippy, Debbie Newby-Ward and Blair Strang — gather at The Beagle to wrestle with John Wayne Bobbit trivia, and the trials of nearing middle age. The show was created by Rachel Lang and Gavin Stawhan (Go Girls). In the background piece, Lang explains how the show came to be, and argues Kiwis could give its professional actors more credit.

This first episode of NZ's most popular and critically acclaimed drama series revolves around Wolf West being sentenced to four years in prison — and his wife, Cheryl, deciding it's time for her and her children to get out of the "family business". Wolf and the local police are dubious. But even this early in proceedings, it would be foolish to underestimate Cheryl. Whether she can take her daughters (ditzy wannabe-model Pascalle and the cunning Loretta) and sons (yin and yang twins Van and Jethro) with her is another matter altogether. And so begins a dynasty.  

This Shortland Street episode ended the 1995 season with a missing baby, a Christmas turkey and a bizarre accident. After being set up by conniving nurse Carla Leach (Elisabeth Easther), a drunken driver aims his Mac truck directly for the hospital's reception. Amongst the injured, Kirsty wakes up with a case of memory loss, while Carmen suffers unexpected after-effects, soon after swearing everlasting devotion to Guy Warner. Meanwhile Nick potentially faces prosecution, after accidentally leaving his girlfriend's one-year-old child at the supermarket. 

Actors Tane Williams-Accra and Ngahuia Piripi joined Shortland Street in 2015, as ambulance driver Ali Karim and Nurse Esther Samuels. Here they introduce their favourite Shortie storyline: the one involving Ferndale Strangler Joey Henderson (Johnny Barker). Cut from a longer clip which is viewable on NZ On Screen, the finale has the formerly sympathetic nurse and recently discovered serial killer escaping to the rooftop, where he is tackled by flatmate Kieran Mitchell (Adam Rickitt). When the police show up and make Kieran let go, Joey takes fate into his own hands.