November 2014 marks 25 years since New Zealand TV’s third channel began broadcasting. This 25th birthday sampler pack looks back at iconic drama (Outrageous Fortune), upstart news shows (Nightline), fresh youth programming (Ice TV, Being Eve) and comedy high watermarks (bro’Town, Jaquie Brown, 7 Days). As the launch slogan said "come home to the feeling!"

This documentary series was presented by the legendary Selwyn Toogood. These New Zealanders was one of Toogood's first appearances for television, having previously become a household name as a radio host. The National Film Unit production was part-documentary, part-magazine, and part-travelogue, and took Toogood to six towns to capture their character and people. The towns visited were Gore, Benmore, Motueka, Huntly, Gisborne and Taupō. It provides a fascinating perspective of New Zealand life in the 1960s.

With its video filmed in a cramped Auckland flat, 'Pedestrian Support League' was the lead single off Street Chant’s long-awaited second album, Hauora. As the band play on, a psychedelic array of everyday kitchenware flies by in the background. The claustrophobic flat is appropriate — lead singer Emily Littler describes the lyrics as about “just your typical Kiwi shithole flat life filled with paranoia, depression and anxiety.” The album received critical praise upon its release, and the single was was one of five finalists for the 2016 APRA Silver Scroll Songwriting award.

In his typical one-man band style, Chris Knox’s music video for 'The Joy of Sex' keeps things simple for maximum effect. A strobing array of colours flickers as an animated image of Knox lists a series of contrasting word pairs — love/lust, yes/no etc — like some kind of health teacher gone mad. Manic animation matches his quick riffs, shifting and becoming more complex as the song reaches its conclusion. 'The Joy of Sex' was the opening track on Knox's sixth solo album Yes!!

Mikey Havoc and Newsboy (Jeremy Wells) take a typically sideways glance at the 2002 general election in this one-off special, broadcast live from inside "a giant stainless steel question mark on the neutral electorate of Rangitoto Island." In case you hadn't noticed (Havoc presents in Paul Frank pyjamas), the analysis is more satirical than factual, and along the way they find time to put the boot into Auckland's then-mayor John Banks, learn parliamentary etiquette from Jonathan Hunt and compliment Don Brash on his six-cylinder Ford.

Economist and philanthropist Gareth Morgan is typically forthright as he explains his atheism in this episode from the TV One series about spirituality. Morgan walked away from a Reserve Bank job to live in a bus (from where he eventually founded his company Infometrics). He talks candidly about childhood operations for a cleft lip and his decision to give away the millions earned from his investment in Trade Me (founded by his son Sam) but is less than charitable in his views on accountants. Note: Morgan does not worship Bastet (the Egyptian goddess of cats).

This brooding collaboration with Ladi6 from Shihad frontman Jon Toogood's other project The Adults, is yet another departure from his hard rocking day job (although guitarist Shayne Carter briefly raises the temperature). Director Sam Peacocke's split screen video was shot at legendary Auckland studio The Lab (where The Adults recorded their debut album). Ladi6 anchors one side with a typically soulful performance while Toogood (uncharacteristically playing bass), Carter, drummer Gary Sullivan and engineer Nick Roughan are all serious intent beside her.

Though gifted with a typically driving chorus, this Naked and Famous track evokes a state of limbo and dissatisfaction. Winner of a New Zealand Music Award for Best Music Video of 2014, Campbell Hooper's clip is permeated by mist and mysterious, possibly violent events. Is that a murder playing out on screen, or merely someone getting the firewood ready? Are those men doing exercise, or punishing themselves? And is that Michelle Ang getting out of the pool? Longtime collaborator Hooper directed the video in New Zealand and the band's base in Los Angeles.

This edition of TVNZ’s Beginner’s Guide series aims to background New Zealand’s 1986 census. The population survey will be filled in by everyone (including street kids, possum trappers and jailed French secret service agents), generate 5,500 pages of information and influence national planning. Reporter Philip Alpers is the guide and strives to find flaws in the exercise's much vaunted confidentiality as he interviews politicians and statisticians and visits his mother. Leading naysayer The Wizard of Christchurch is a typically colourful dissenting voice.

This 65 minute long documentary looks at the treatment of New Zealand children born with cerebral palsy (a set of conditions which affect motor control, caused by brain defects that typically occur around pregnancy and birth). Made for the Department of Health, the National Film Unit production visits a specialist unit in Rotorua, to praise the understanding and care applied to help the ‘cerebral palsied’ live full lives. Director Frank Chilton was made an OBE for services to handicapped children. This film won a Diploma of Merit at the 1957 Edinburgh Film Festival.