COMMENT
Local drama The Insiders Guide to Happiness deserves an epilogue. Happiness is the realisation that a generous proportion of the best things you've seen on screen lately have been made in New Zealand.
After a bewildering start, the Insiders Guide hit its stride a couple of episodes in. To call the drama, made by the Gibson Group and based on the work of young screenwriter Peter Cox, refreshing, is an understatement. After the middle-of-the-road genre shows which seemed to be our local drama lot, it has been as bracing as a southerly blast in windy Wellington, where it is set.
Of the eight main, intersecting characters, bank officer James has stolen the show lately. Being possessed by a Buddhist holy man is a disconcerting experience for a beer and footy-loving lad from Wanganui. It's not every day your basic Kiwi bloke fears he's been left with a "hole in his soul".
Insiders Guide started out looking suspiciously like yet another twentysomething angst and friendship drama. But these characters have more challenging dilemmas on their minds than who's sleeping with whom and how to climb the career ladder.
The show is heavy on philosophy but the real question it poses is: how does a sparsely populated country like New Zealand pack such a colourful mix of psychopaths, ghosts, dipsticks, hideously egotistical television journalists and even a trichotillomaniac into the space of just a square kilometre or two? Or maybe that's Wellington for you.
Perhaps a clue to the high weirdness count in the national character can be found in another Kiwi gem, documentary series The Explorers, hosted by Peter Elliott. The genial Elliott's forays in the footsteps of New Zealand's early European explorers was the best kind of heartland show - history as travelogue, great scenery matched by many a revelation proving that our forebears, Maori and Pakeha, had enough fire and foibles to queer the national psyche for centuries to come.
Monday's final followed missionary William Colenso's circuit from his home in Paihia to the East Cape and back to the Bay of Islands. Colenso thought nothing of tramping for days through rugged, rain-soaked terrain to bewilder the tangata whenua with a sermon or furious argument with his rival soul-collector, a Catholic priest. Then the fiercely righteous man had a child with his Maori housekeeper causing things to get a bit sticky with the wife and church.
The local goodies haven't stopped there: TV One gave us a Sunday treat with movie Whale Rider. And at the International Film Festival last month another top notch Kiwi film, In My Father's Den, took pride of place.
The adaptation of the Maurice Gee novel was sited firmly in what has been dubbed our "cinema of unease", a small-town gothic tale packed with dysfunction. But it boasts an accomplished script, a rare dramatic tension and startling performances from young star Emily Barclay and telly regular Jodie Rimmer (The Strip).
Another festival highlight, in the animation programme, was an uproarious piece of Kiwiana by Jeff and Phil Simmonds called Pearl, Florrie and the Bull. Told in Florrie's own words, this short film was a hilarious tale of two octogenarian sisters' gung ho determination to take the bull by the horns when their afternoon stroll through the paddock is rudely interrupted by a piece of angry bovine masculinity.
The sisters were staring death in the face and sustained some nasty injuries in their adventure, but Florrie narrated the drama with all the pleasure of a rather exciting Sunday outing.
Perhaps a telly drama about the amazing lives of rural Kiwi pensioners could be the next local screen success story; an eightysomething drama about two women whose lives intersect with inconveniences like raging bulls.
<i>Frances Grant:</i> Nowt so queer as folk
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