This NFU documentary gets in the saddle to follow the professional riders in the world’s southernmost road cycling race. Held in October 1981, the Tour of Southland went from lowland towns like Lumsden to the spectacular trans-Southern Alps road to Milford. Chopper shots and pre-GoPro camera mounts follow riders through Fiordland National Park rainforest. As cyclists rest aching muscles, an unusually philosophical narrator wonders “but is it worth it?”. Date stamps include cigarette sponsorship and a Cortina support fleet. The film screened in cinemas alongside Smash Palace.

New Zealand's unique accent is often derided across the dutch for its vowel-mangling pronunciation ("sex fush'n'chups", anyone?) and being too fast-paced for tourists and Elton John to understand. In this documentary Jim Mora follows the evolution of New Zealand English, from the "colonial twang" to Billy T James. Linguist Elizabeth Gordon explains the infamous HRT (High Rising Terminal) at the end of sentences, and Mora interprets such phrases as "air gun" ("how are you going?"). Lynn of Tawa also features, in an accent face-off with Sam Neill and Judy Bailey.

This pre-Rugby World Cup 2007 interview follows All Black fullback Mils Muliaina as he revisits the grounds of his alma mater, Southland Boys High in Invercargill (Mils is one of 21 All Blacks from Southland Boys). He talks about his family’s migration from Samoa to Invercargill, and heads south to Bluff to score some oysters with the film crew. Muliaina also talks about finding out via the six o’clock news that he was in the All Blacks, recalls the game he remembers most fondly, and discusses his fondness for rolling his rrrs.

Occasional Heartland host Kerre Woodham visits the annual Easter races at Riverton in Southland. Riverton is New Zealand's second oldest town, and the close knit locals have a big passion for horse-racing. Woodham talks to owners, trainers (one of them at his freezing works job), jockeys and punters, as well as the judges of 'Best Dressed Lady at the Races', who are looking for a nice line in matching hats, bags, shoes and gloves. The documentary contains some good examples of the Southland rolled 'r' from some of the locals who are interviewed.

Former presenter Derek Payne returns to front the finale of this first (NZBC) run of the Otago-Southland local news show. A report on strippers aside, the emphasis in this ‘best of’ series cull is on (often Pythonesque) humour. Highlights include Kevin Ramshaw’s Sam Spade-style private eye hunting Noddy, Payne walking a famous imaginary dog, a search for news in Invercargill and a reporters’ bloopers reel. An era when newsroom staff were learning their medium in the public eye is evoked, and the opening weather report is a glorious look back at TV’s lo-tech past.

The final episode in Series One of The Big Art Trip starts in Dunedin. Hosts Douglas Lloyd-Jenkins and Nick Ward explore found art and ceramic sculptures with artist Jim Cooper and visit jewellery artists Ann Culy and Rainer Beneke, before heading to the Kaka Point home of poet Hone Tuwhare (where he lived until his death in 2008). They head to Invercargill to meet classical singer Deborah Wai Kapohe, who takes them op-shopping and performs her original folk songs. Last stop is Cosy Nook in Southland where they meet painter Nigel Brown.

Te Waipounamu (the South Island) provides the picturesque backdrop for this Ngāi Tahu web series about mahinga kai (food gathering). Tangata whenua are interviewed about all aspects of mahinga kai, from transport (mōkihi) and storage (pōhā), to what they put on their plates — pāua, kōura (crayfish), and pātiki (flounder). Episode one showcases the elusive "vampire of the sea" kanakana (lamprey) in Murihiku (Southland). The last episode of the 12-part web series features Kaikōura local Butch McDonald catching and eating the town's seafood specialty, crayfish. 

Directed by David Sims, A Train For Christmas follows the Kingston Flyer as it chugs through the farmland of Southland from Lumsden to Kingston, where on the shores of Lake Wakatipu it meets with the steamer TSS Earnslaw. With the driver as narrator, this poetic, and sometimes fantastical (the train talks at one point) celebration of steam transportation evokes a bygone era when the train “would stop at every crossing, hedge and house.” The steam train is cast as an integral part of a vast landscape and the communities that it travels through.

This excerpt from a post-war NFU newsreel begins at Eden Park for a match between Auckland and the ‘Kiwis’ (the army’s NZEF team), then goes on a jaunty ride through all-things rugby in NZ: from 1st XV (Wellington College), club and provincial (Ranfurly Shield in the Southland rain) clashes, to boot-making and badge selling on match day, with rugby’s centrality to the Kiwi psyche underlined throughout. “Rugby’s never over, though the crowds stream home from Eden Park or any place we play, to fans and players alike it will always be a part of our national life!”

This four-part series explores New Zealand social history through rugby, from the first rugby club in 1870 to the 1995 World Cup. In this episode commentators muse on the roots of rugby in a settler society, in "a man's country". Rugby's unique connection with Māori, from Tom Ellison and the Natives’ tour to a Te Aute College haka, is explored; as well as the national identity-defining 1905 Originals’ tour, and the relationship between footy and the battlefield. As the Finlay Macdonald-penned narration reflects: “Maybe it's just a game, but it's the game of our lives”.