Winners & Losers: The Woman at the Store
This acclaimed drama from 1975 adapts a Katherine Mansfield story about three travellers who encounter a strange woman and child, at a remote country store. Co-directed by Roger Donaldson and Ian Mune, it won Feltex Awards for Best Script (Mune and Peter Hansard) and Actress (Ilona Rodgers). Mune and Donaldson used the drama's success and innovative financing model as a 'proof of concept', to secure funding for their 1976 series Winners & Losers. The Woman at the Store debuted on Kiwi TV screens in March 1975; it was sold as part of the Winners series overseas.
Winners & Losers Collection
Launched on 5 April 1976, Winners & Losers heralded a new age in Kiwi screen drama. Indie talents Roger Donaldson and Ian Mune based their tales of success and failure on New Zealand short stories, after managing to negotiate funding from various government sources. Then the pair took the series to Europe, proving there was strong overseas demand for Kiwi stories. In the backgrounders, Mune recalls the show's origins. There are also pieces on its place in local screen history, and its 2018 restoration. Plus watch two video interviews on the series.
50 Years of New Zealand Television: 5 - Telling Stories
From early teleplay The Evening Paper to the edgy Outrageous Fortune, this episode of 50 Years of New Zealand Television talks drama and comedy. Key players, from actors to executives, recall a host of signposts in the development of storytelling on Kiwi TV screens. John Clarke recalls 1970s sitcom Buck's House; Paul Maunder remembers the drama that likely helped introduce the DPB; and TV executive John McRae recalls worries about the projected cost of global hit Hunter's Gold, and mentioning the word 'placenta' on the first episode of Shortland Street.
Winners & Losers
Launched on 5 April 1976, this television series heralded a new age in Kiwi screen drama. Indie talents Roger Donaldson and Ian Mune based their tales of success and failure on New Zealand short stories, after managing to negotiate funding from various government sources. Then the pair took the series to Europe, proving there was strong overseas demand for Kiwi stories. Winners & Losers became a perennial in local classrooms. In the backgrounders, Mune recalls the show's origins. There are also pieces on its place in local screen history, and its restoration in 2018.
Futile Attraction
Satire Futile Attraction follows a dysfunctional reality television crew as they make a show about dating. The unfortunate 'couple' being manipulated for the cameras are a phone-obsessed nerd, and a woman consumed with being ecologically sound. In real life, director Mark Prebble became the first New Zealander to get funding for his movie via an online crowdfunding campaign (as detailed in the making of video). Alongside lead actors Danielle Mason (Black Sheep) and Peter Rutherford (Event 16), the late Alistair Browning shines as a smarmy television host.
Vicki Walker - Funny As Interview
In the early 90s Vicki Walker acted in TV sketch show Away Laughing, and helped set up women's stand-up group A Girl's Gotta Eat. She talks about being a woman in comedy during the 80s/90s, and other subjects, including: Creating and playing her Away Laughing character Felicity, at a time when women rarely got to play their own characters on screen Growing up in Sydney with a "very serious father", before moving to New Zealand to study creative writing at Auckland University Giving stand-up a go in London during the mid 80s, performing in character as a waitress Helping create all women stand-up stage show A Girl's Gotta Eat, and recalling hundreds of people lining Ponsonby Road in Auckland eager to watch the group perform Feeling that she had to work harder and be funnier than her male TV colleagues —"I couldn't afford to be weak once because there might not be a second time" Walker talks in more depth about A Girl's Gotta Eat in this Funny As interview, along with Brenda Kendall and Fiona Edgar.
Ian Mune
Quite aside from being a talented and prolific actor, Ian Mune has made behind the scenes contributions to many New Zealand screen landmarks. Mune's writing career ranges from some of New Zealand's earliest television series to Goodbye Pork Pie. His work as director includes classics Came a Hot Friday and The End of the Golden Weather, and the hit sequel to Once Were Warriors.
Roger Donaldson
Roger Donaldson is notable for spearheading the New Zealand film renaissance with Sleeping Dogs (1977). He has been busy directing in Hollywood for much of the period since. Donaldson's first Kiwi story since acclaimed drama Smash Palace (1981) was Burt Munro biopic The World’s Fastest Indian (2005) — the most successful New Zealand film on home soil until the arrival of Taika Waititi's Boy in 2010.
Jeremy Stephens
Jeremy Stephens was a regular presence on New Zealand television screens through the 1970s and 80s. Coming from a theatre and radio background, he starred as a man going through a midlife crisis in 1971 teleplay The City of No, played historical figures (The Killing of Kane, The Governor) and one of the trio of travellers in acclaimed Katherine Mansfield drama The Woman at the Store. His longer form credits include telefilm It’s Lizzie To Those Close and movie Pallet On The Floor. Stephens' distinctive voice was heard on a great many commercials — plus documentaries on everything from poetry to the All Blacks.
Anne Flannery
Anne Flannery's screen roles often saw her playing wife and mother — from the partner of missionary Henry Williams in television epic The Governor, to the wheelchair-bound and mute Mary Jackson in movie Heart of the Stag. In 1976 she was nominated for a Feltex Award after playing the title role in one-off drama The Woman at the Store. The actor and theatre director then won acclaim in Vincent Ward's adaptation of A State of Siege, which offered her a rare chance to take centre frame. Flannery played a repressed ex-teacher whose demons unravel in an isolated house. Flannery died in Sydney in July 2001.