Orange Roughies dead in the water

The $8.9 million taxpayer-funded drama, Orange Roughies, has been axed after just eight episodes but NZ On Air still claims it was money well spent.

The homegrown TV One series about an elite group of Kiwi police and Customs officers has been a ratings' casualty. It will be pulled after the last episode screens on Thursday.

The 9.30pm show had 333,000 viewers when it first launched, but numbers have steadily fallen to 165,000 in its penultimate week.

NZ On Air's acting chief executive Bernard Duncan defended the decision to pump millions of taxpayer dollars into the drama, which features two Australians in lead roles.

"Obviously we would have liked more people to like it and yes, it is a lot of money, but drama is an expensive business and I don't know whether we would necessarily regard it as a failure," he said.

A TVNZ spokeswoman could not confirm that the show would return this year. Unusually, the series had a second season commissioned before the first even made it to air. Twenty episodes of the drama have been filmed in total, mostly on location in Auckland.

Mr Duncan said that research showed that New Zealanders still "loved" New Zealand content.

"Most recently they've told us that they think New Zealand drama is getting up to a point where it's up to [the standards of] anything in the world. But maybe it does take a bit of time for them to want to make an appointment to view those sorts of things."

He did not consider that casting Australian leads in a New Zealand production had affected audiences.

John Laing, who directed three of the eight episodes in Orange Roughies first season, said he thought a Thursday-night placement made it difficult for a new show to endear itself to audiences, who tended to drift away as the weekend approached.

He had no doubts about the show's quality.

Critics gave the much-vaunted ScreenWorks series a tepid reception on its debut on May 25. TVNZ's public affairs manager Megan Richards said the network was disappointed at the show's reception.

"Some things work, some things don't," she said.

Tight delivery times from maker ScreenWorks had also contributed to TVNZ's decision to "pause it now".

The soap Shortland Street is now its only long-running local drama on air.

ScreenWorks executive Chris Hanson could not be reached for comment.