Don McGlashan has won the prestigious APRA Silver Scroll award twice. In 2006 Miracle Sun gained him another nomination. McGlashan's lyrics evoke a mythical summer and directly reference Opo, the 'friendly' dolphin whose visits to Opononi in the mid 1950s became the stuff of Kiwi legend. The song's sweeping chorus is bittersweet, and a lap steel guitar adds a slightly mournful tone. The black and white video mixes National Film Unit footage of Opo charming holidaymakers, with shots of McGlashan and his band heading to the Hokianga and playing a gig for locals.

Directed by dancer turned choreographer Shona McCullagh, this music video features sun-kissed close-ups of singer Don McGlashan, and evocative images of a lone dancer (Rachel Atkinson) floating above an empty road. The ballad marks a rare solo single for McGlashan that was composed by somebody else: Sean James Donnelly (aka SJD). The song featured on McGlashan's first solo album Warm Hand (2006). It was later included on the soundtracks of Kiwi feature films Out of the Blue and The Tattooist, and an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 remake 90210.

After time in post-punk trio Blam Blam Blam, the unclassifiable The Front Lawn and percussion group From Scratch, Don McGlashan released four studio albums during a decade long run with The Mutton Birds. In the early 2000s he  launched his solo career. New songs were performed during Auckland festival AKO3, and McGlashan's first solo album Warm Hand finally emerged in 2006. Follow-up Marvellous Year (2009) — credited to Don McGlashan and the Seven Sisters — featured McGlashan's version of his hit 'Bathe in the River'. For Lucky Stars (2015), he largely abandoned his habit of portraying other characters.

In this episode of her series for pre-schoolers, Suzy Cato goes where few television programmes have gone before and devotes an episode to toilet training. Food and its digestion, what happens in the bathroom and the importance of hand washing are all covered — with the more practical aspects demonstrated using Terence Teddy. Suzy mixes her customary warmth and friendliness with a no-nonsense approach and it's all done in the best possible taste. Light relief is provided by a film insert about a family making the traditional Tongan fruit drink 'otai.   

In director Geoff Murphy's cult sci fi feature, a global energy project has malfunctioned and scientist Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) awakes to find himself the only living being left on earth. At first he lives out his fantasies, helping himself to cars and clothes, before the implications of being 'man alone' sink in. As this awareness sends him to the brink of madness — see the excerpt above — he discovers two other survivors. One of them is a woman. The Los Angeles Daily News called the movie “quite simply the best science-fiction film of the 80s”. Read more about it here.

Georgina Beyer was the first transgendered person in the world to be elected to national office. Co-directed by Annie Goldson and Peter Wells, this internationally lauded documentary, tells the story of Beyer's extraordinary, inspiring journey from sex worker to member of Parliament for rural Wairarapa, and handshakes with the Queen. Born George Bertrand, Beyer grew up on a Taranaki farm, before spreading her wings on Auckland's cabaret circuit. Subsequent events led her to the town of Carterton, where she became involved in local body, and then national politics.

Marcus Lush goes "right up the guts" of the North Island from Wairarapa to Gisborne, in this episode of his award-winning romance with New Zealand's railways. He meets railcar restorers and recounts the murders by rail porter Rowland Edwards in 1884. Particular praise is reserved for the "spectacular and beautiful" Napier to Gisborne line (now mothballed) with its viaducts at Mohaka and Kopuawhara. The latter is on the site of a flash flood that killed 21 workers in 1938; it inspires an idiosyncratic Lush demonstration of Aotearoa's then 10 worst disasters.