Shortland Street - Highlights from the first 15 years

Television (Extras) – 1992 - 2007

Over the course of 26 years many iterations of the theme have been revamped with new technology to accommodate the stylistic advances heard in popular music....

– Wrtier Godfrey de Grut on Graham Bollard's Shortland Street theme, NZ Musician, August 2016

As soon as you juxtapose comedy with something that's hard-edged or tragic, you get something very potent. Comedy gives you a lot of pace and a lot of support for your stories

– Producer Tony Holden on how the show combines comedy and drama, in Shortland Street - Production, Text and Audience, page 51

...soaps succeed because we get personally fond of the characters, or at least grow to love to hate them. Writing characters in and out with the ebb and flow of the plot adds an essential frisson, but unless done with sensitivity and cunning, can disturb the essential balance of the show. To do this in indiscriminate bulk is pretty well unprecedented...
– Dominion writer Jane Clifton, on the news that 14 characters would be leaving the show, 2 December 2000, page 25

In past episodes, a nasty traffic accident has taken care of smaller mass write-outs, but that's a bit overdone now. a mass murder or bombing would be rather distasteful, and most of the other snap disappearance devices have also already been used: freak waves, brain aneurysms, accidental blows to head, election to Parliament, fabulous overseas job offers, even lightning strikes. The pile of unused disappearing tricks is pretty motley: white slave traders, Ebola outbreaks and spider bite are all I can think of.
– Dominion writer Jane Clifton speculates on how the show plans to get rid of 14 characters, 2 December 2000, page 25