Nigel Latta is a weird fish. A diminutive and thin fellow, he's a psychologist by training, but has evolved into an author and presenter and latterly seems to present as a kind of conscience of the nation. His shows, always with his name boldface in the title, have him wandering into areas of immense complexity and trying to boil them down into an hour's telly. It's essentially an impossible task, one you might set up for a naive enemy, before sitting back, popcorn in hand, ready to watch them fail.
Only, he doesn't. In fact, he and Razor Films, the production company behind most of his work, including new series The Hard Stuff with Nigel Latta, are becoming a bit of a powerhouse - making beautifully crafted work which aspires to provoke thought about some of the most critical conversations we need to have as a nation.
(And some of those we don't: the whole series is available at TVNZ OnDemand, and I watched some of Screenagers about parental anxieties around phones and teens. An amiable academic named Luke Goode appears to basically tell Nige and his mates to calm down - suggesting a level of willingness to adapt a thesis on the fly that the didactic likes of Bryan Bruce would never contemplate).
Latta and his team are clearly aware of both how good they've got, and how difficult the task. Otherwise, how do you explain opening the second series of this show with suicide as your subject? It's brutally difficult to discuss, both in the concrete and the abstract. There are so many layers of discourse, ways of conceptualising the act, and competing understandings of what does and doesn't cause it.
And yet there goes Nigel, wandering in to this area, knowing full well that the results will be controversial to some and inevitably imperfect. I found myself in awe of everyone involved in this production, and each deserves applauding. It's exactly the kind of public service broadcasting which everyone says TVNZ has abandoned. The direction, production and editing is world class. And the combination of regular people processing grief and gratitude with Latta alongside was incredibly affecting. NZ On Air money has rarely been so wisely spent - this is of immense consequence, and you can see the way it might change hearts and minds and - I really believe this - save lives.
