Two of my all time favourite tv shows were made in New Zealand. It’s not that we get a lot of Kiwi television in Australia, but what we do get to see shines. There’s something fresh about it, and the stories they tell are unashamedly Kiwi stories.
Outrageous Fortune (2005-2011) introduced me to the work of Rachel Lang from South Pacific Pictures. Despite its last few disappointing episodes, this is a brilliantly conceived show with strong storylines and a great ensemble cast. The language is raw (which I quite like) and there’s nothing sanitised about the characters. I first started watching it in season 2, went back and caught up with season 1, expecting to find the acting a little flatter while the actors were settling into their roles, but it’s one of those shows where the entire cast hit the ground running. The energy, the believability and the complexity of a decidedly off the wall family was there from the start. One of the things I most love about it is that three minutes before any given episode ends, there’s no way to intelligently guess bow it’s going to end. Internal logic (apart from, as I said, the last few eps) is maintained throughout. Characters change and grow (or don’t) in response to their lives and each other.
Another Lang show (that she co-produced with James Griffin) is even better. The Almighty Johnsons is a comedy-drama with a strong underpinning of fantasy. Norse gods in New Zealand. How could you beat that? Again with strong writing and a strong cast (including appearances by several members of the Outrageous Fortune cast), it’s a show that keeps the audience guessing. It has an organic feel, with some storylines fizzling out (and taking characters with them), and others adapted (some a little more adroitly than others) as the story moves along. I watched season 1 on tv, was too impatient to wait for season 2, so watched all 13 episodes online in three mammoth sessions and am now waiting, as eagerly as anyone, for season 3.
So, strong cast, good scripts, high production values… But lots of tv shows have all that. These two are something else again and it took me some time to work it out. I thought about some of the world’s more popular shows that have left me underwhelmed. Stuff like House and the Law & Order franchise. They also have strong casts, good scripts and high production values. I know I should like them, but I don’t. Or not very much. That was when the answer came: neither Outrageous Fortune nor The Almighty Johnsons could be said to be written to any kind of formula. (And some shows that do, I quite enjoy. Boston Legal comes to mind here.) In the two Kiwi shows, there’s nothing that even remotely resembles a formula. Episodes end abruptly, problems aren’t resolved in the last act, the sick don’t miraculously recover (well, ok, once) and the guilty don’t get their comeuppance. (Considering Outrageous Fortune is populated entirely by the guilty, this is a good thing.) Characters do things that the viewer thinks (at the time) they understand. A slippery Norse goddess, villain at the start, who might just be on the side of the heroes’ by season two, clocks one of the gods (initially their bitter enemies) across the head with a branch of a tree (an important tree, The Important Tree) and we think “Oh, she’s wicked! Just when we thought we could trust her!” and her reason, given two lines later, isn’t at all what we expect. There’s an iconic use of the flashback – we see the story from one character’s pov, then in delightfully surprising flashbacks, from another’s. Red herrings are strewn about the place and what we think we know isn’t always right. The ‘guess how this episode ends’ game is even more engaging with The Almighty Johnsons.
The other great thing about both shows (about New Zealand in general) is the high profile of Maori characters and actors. The love of Axl Johnson’s life, Gaia, is played by the beautiful and talented Keisha Castle-Hughes, who turns out to be a goddess of some sort, but is she a member of the Norse or Maori pantheon? That question sets up a wonderful friendship/rivalry between Axl and his Maori counterpart. Kirk Torrance gets a gig in both shows, much to the delight of those members of the viewing public who appreciate a gorgeous man.
Lang has worked on other tv shows in New Zealand, not all of which have made it across the Tasman. If you can catch any of them, particularly Outrageous Fortune and particularly, particularly The Almighty Johnsons, do yourself a favour, shelve all plans for the day and just watch!
Staring at the Fence - KL Clark blogs about writing 