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.

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. 

Asked to pick her favourite Shortland Street storylines, Shortie longtimer Sally Martin starts with one of the show's most dramatic episodes — the 20th anniversary special from 2012. On board a helicopter when it crashed in the hospital grounds, Martin's character Nicole Miller was trapped in the wreckage. Martin has good memories of shooting the chopper scenes, which required overnight shoots. She also mentions a sickbed scene surrounded by admirers, and her struggles not to laugh while trying to teach first aid to an uncomprehending Bella (Amelia Reid-Meredith). 

Arguably one of the most heartbreaking deaths in Shortland Street history was that of Doctor Sarah Potts (Amanda Billing) in August 2014; it spawned online tribute pages and widespread grief from fans. Potts’ struggles with multiple sclerosis on the show had helped spread awareness of the condition, but it was research on a superbug cure that spelt the end of her decade on the show (she had contracted the bug from a contaminated syringe). These excerpts include her tearful farewell to partner TK Samuels (Ben Mitchell) and their daughter Tillie (Leila Eketone).

Created by Gavin Strawhan and Rachel Lang, popular one hour drama series Jackson's Wharf was set in a fictional coastal town and revolved around a sibling rivalry between brothers Frank and Ben. Frank is the town policeman with a big secret; and golden boy Ben is a big city lawyer who has returned to town after their father's death. In this excerpt from the first episode of the South Pacific Pictures production, returning son Ben faces gossiping locals, simmering family tensions over the will (who will get the pub?) and an impending fishing tournament.

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.

After her husband is jailed, matriarch Cheryl West (Robyn Malcolm) decides the time has come to set her family on the straight and narrow. But can the Wests change old habits? So begins the six-series long saga of the Westie dynasty. Hugely popular at home (beloved by public, critics and awards-nights alike), and imitated overseas, Outrageous Fortune has been a flag-bearer for TV3 and contemporary NZ telly drama; the series proved — in all its grow-your-own glory — that genre TV in NZ could be so much more than overseas stories pasted to a local setting.

With each chilling tale "of the unexplained and unexpected" introduced by Temuera Morrison Rod Serling-style, Mataku was described as a Māori Twilight Zone. The award-winning bilingual series explored dramatic tales steeped in the supernatural world of Māori. Mataku was produced by Māori writers, directors and actors; and was a strong international and domestic success. Tension mounts in the excerpt from episode nine from the second series: when a group of old mates reunite to go fishing one of them has a long-kept secret, and terror lurks in the deep. 

For much of the 90s, hospital cafe manager Lionel Skeggins (John Leigh) was Shortland Street’s beloved nice guy. He fell in and out of love with Kirsty (their true soap romance included amnesia and a plane crash) before making this exit in March 1999. Lionel had been married to Mackenzie Choat (Ingrid Park) for just a week before learning of her dodgy past; he was fleeing her at the beach when he encountered a wave. His demise made 2016 NZ Herald and Stuff lists of the show’s memorable deaths, but the body was never recovered. Is Lionel the Street’s ultimate missing person?

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.