TV review: 50 Years Of Television

The Wahine sinking was big news for early TV coverage. Photo / NZ Herald

Two thoughts kept repeating through my head while watching tonight's Prime documentary series, 50 Years of Television in New Zealand. One: this is so well done. Two: why on earth didn't TVNZ do it? Who knows, but I doubt if TVNZ had made this programme in-house it would be quite so clear-sighted about the influences on its own work over the decades. For example, here is Natural History New Zealand's managing director Michael Stedman talking about TVNZ's decision to sell the unit because it was considered unprofitable: "It's interesting that in 2008 NHNZ had a bigger profit than TVNZ. That says something about commerciality and the ability to achieve profit in producing excellence."

Yah, boo sucks TVNZ. I couldn't imagine a TVNZ-made programme leaving in TV3 founder Tom Parkinson's comments about TVNZ's dirty tricks to try to stop its competitor getting off the ground. Or ex-TVNZ chief executive Ian Fraser saying: "You can't have proper public broadcasting without proper public funding and we never came anywhere close to it."

This thoroughly researched documentary series quite restores one's faith in the medium. Best of all, you actually learn new stuff. I knew Robert Muldoon was a bully but I had never realised what a sinister and destructive influence on the media he had been during his time as Prime Minister from 1975 to 1984. The role he played in shaping the culture of television is well told here. The even-handed treatment of the subject means this is not so much just a history of television but a valuable history of our culture and our country.

It covers everything from the sinking of the Wahine to fledgling current affairs' treatment of Vietnam, growth of local drama Close to Home, Blerta, Telethon, Avalon, Hey Hey it's Andy, Nice One Stu, It's in the Bag, The Governor right through to the establishment of New Zealand on Air and then the 100 channel digital television market today.

50 Years Of Television is a lot more thoroughly and fastidiously made than most of the programmes it celebrates. In my jottings I counted 68 separate interviews which must have been done by the programme's makers, Cream TV. They included everyone from "early TV viewers" Ella Henry and the Rev George Armstrong to film-makers Geoff Murphy, Gaylene Preston, Robyn Scholes and Merata Mita. The key figures in our television history got to have their say: Brian Edwards, Ian Fraser, Marcia Russell, Dougal Stevenson, Hamish Keith and many many others.

But this isn't indulgent nostalgia. It also probes the changing role television has played in our national psyche. Satirist Tom Scott explains how in the early days of television the family had to sit down and watch a doco on whales and on the pharoahs and a current affairs show.

"You had no choice. These days TV has lost its evangelical power because there's so much choice."

Even so, the programmes that everyone loves are locally made and this programme presents a compelling case to keep making them.

"New Zealand content attracts audiences. Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune are the biggest shows on TV2 and TV3," John Barnett of South Pacific Pictures says.

You can't argue with that. Good on us.