Aroha Bridge - Series One

All we need is a heartbreaking story that the nation will love!

– Kōwhai (Jessica Hansell) decides to enter the band in a talent show, in episode six

Aroha Bridge manages to walk the delicate tightrope that only brilliantly pitched satire can. Taking actual painful ugly realities and mining them for laughs.

– Writer Alex Behan in The NZ Herald, 25 July 2019

We need to be on the scene. The only time we meet people is in this dairy.

– Kōwhai (Jessica Hansell), in episode 10

Obviously, there are shards of my family in there, but I think everybody kind of has some of these people in their family — the staunch separatist uncle, or a really sports-obsessed aunty, the assimilation-friendly relative, and then there's the try-hard cousin ... I think we often get sold a commodified version of the New Zealand family that actually does us a bit of a disservice, because the typical New Zealand family is a hot mess.

– Aroha Bridge creator Jessica Hansell in The NZ Herald, 2 July 2016