Every morning this week we’re counting down the top 100 New Zealand TV shows of the 21st century so far. Today, numbers 60-41.
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Welcome to The Top 100, a week-long celebration of the most significant local television of the last quarter century. Every day, we will count down 20 iconic shows, and explain why they deserve a place in our history books. Our criteria included everything from popularity to polarisation, critical acclaim to cultural impact, innovation to influence, longevity and legacy (more about that here).
While not everything could make this list, and we have undoubtedly forgotten things despite our best efforts (the comments are open for your feedback), we hope this serves as a reminder to champion the unique stories that only we can tell, and celebrate all the people trying to tell them. Feel free to check off the shows you have seen as you read to create a cool custom watchlist to continue your New Zealand education into the future.
Let’s crack into it.
Monday: 100-81 | Tuesday: 80-61 | Today: 60-41 | Thursday: 40-21 | Friday: 20-1
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60. Sticky TV (2002-2017)
Spot On, What Now, The Son of a Gunn Show, Pūkana… we may have taken a while to produce a decent sitcom, but there have been decades of homegrown kids TV destined to become a source of deep nostalgia for generations of young viewers and for parents grateful to have had them occupied until tablets and smartphones were invented. Pickled Possum Productions’ Sticky TV kicked off on TV3 in 2002. Disclaimer: my daughter Mon spent some formative time on the show for a couple of years alongside Kanoa Lloyd. Aotearoa is a small world, and we are all but a few degrees of separation from the late, great Teddy, the Sticky TV farm dog.
Sticky TV started in a studio on Ponsonby Road. As it morphed, there was the Sticky TV house and later the show settled down on the farm. The homey locations gave the show a bit of a Friends ambiance. Along with the cartoons, talent shows and cooking segments, the presenters hung out with the chooks and faced life’s tribulations as Walter loses something in the veggie garden or whatever. The show ran for a whopping 16 years and was a training ground for so much young talent. Good, high velocity fun. / Diana Wichtel
59. Go Girls (2009-2013)
Set on Auckland’s North Shore and running for five seasons, Go Girls was light, upbeat, and incredibly urban. Writer Rachel Lang says the show was born of many musings, including “What would Sex and the City be like if it was set in New Zealand, not New York?” Like Sex and the City, Go Girls didn’t land to critical acclaim initially. Jane Bowron, writing for The Dominion Post, called it “painfully embarrassing to watch”, prompting TVNZ exec Andy Shaw to hit back by calling the Dom “just a waste of good s*** paper“.
By 2011, Bowron had walked her criticism back, calling it “unmissable”.
Go Girls was a “quest” series. Four best friends — Kevin (Jay Ryan), Cody (Bronwyn Turei), Britta (Alix Bushnell) and Amy (Anna Hutchison) — set out to turn their lives around in a year. It wasn’t perfect, but as with so much television of the 21st century, an era defined by another noble quest; that of portraying women as more than one-dimension creatures, it stood on the shoulders of its local and global predecessors and carved out its place in the evolving canon of female characters that have sex, aspirations, jobs and most importantly, flaws. / Anna Rawhiti-Connell
58. Not Even (2022-)
There is one true guide book to being in your 20s in Aotearoa, and it’s Not Even. Focused on a motley crew of Māori and Pasifika living in Wellington, the series follows their never-ending break ups (whether platonic or romantic), hook ups and fuck ups, though the characters don’t always make peace with it all. Sometimes, some people just do stupid shit.
Some viewers find imperfect characters hard to follow on-screen, but they tend to be the most interesting and complex. Not Even’s cast of characters are incredibly alive and genuinely reflective of the realities young New Zealanders are facing, from identity disconnection to working bullshit jobs to forcing yourself through therapy, because this cycle of generational trauma isn’t going to break itself.
The series has only just released its second season, but it’s already filled a massive gap of coming-of-age stories for New Zealanders who are in their 20s, and are wondering why they haven’t come of age yet. Being Māori and Pasifika-led, it’s tonally perfect and refuses to skip a beat, a gag or an opportunity for the characters to learn something. I don’t think I’m overstating by saying that it can only get better from here. / Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
57. Intrepid Journeys (2003-2012)
New Zealand’s most successful homegrown travel show started in 2003 and spanned nine seasons, featuring various New Zealand celebrities travelling to far flung corners of the world. Whether it was Dave Dobbyn holding a lizard in Morocco, Kim Hill undergoing a Hoodoo ceremony in Cuba, or John Banks meeting a lemur in Madagascar, the variety of high profile hosts would always venture off the beaten path, visiting real families and unique places.
“We started everyday with no interviews booked, or even a run sheet of what we would aim to film,” Jane Andrews, one of the show’s founders, told NZ Onscreen. “Our brave travellers had to face cameras without the comforts of home, the filters of minders, and the time to prepare and present their best self…. Jenny Shipley summed up this gift in the simplest of terms — ‘here, I am just Jenny’,” said Andrews.
Over the decade there were some jaw-dropping scenes, like Pio Terei spotting a dead body in the Ganges River or Ewen Gilmour visiting an Incan cemetery where ancient mummies are on display in open pits. While Survivor and The Amazing Race had just arrived on television, putting people through overproduced storylines and gruelling challenges, Intrepid Journeys was truly reality television in its purest essence, and it was ours. / Liam Rātana
56. Super City (2011-2013)
I still marvel at the ambition: a satirical skit show about big city life featuring nine entirely made-up characters created, written and played all at once by Madeleine Sami. How did she pull Super City off? Has the glue for Azeem’s beard ever come off her face? Is she OK? Not really. “I was exhausted,” she told The Spinoff recently. “I was so involved at every point in the process which really wears you down quite a bit … [it’s] a whole different level of intensity.”
Super City lasted two seasons on Three, the first directed by Taika Waititi, the second by Oscar Kightley. Of the host of characters, the biggest laughs came from her parodies of rich white women: snooty Parnell art critic Linda and Les Mills personal trainer Jo. Ofa, an unsympathetic Winz staffer introduced in season two, proved to be the most controversial (in 2016, The Spinoff ranked her as Super City’s best character).
But it’s Pasha who stands out the most in my mind, an aggressive, little-too-old-to-be-doing-this cheerleader who predicates the rise of influencers, and offers a perfect prelude for Demi Moore’s recent body-horror The Substance. “I can’t remember if I had a threesome or a foursome,” Pasha boasts to her much younger cheerleading colleagues in the show’s opening scene, setting the tone perfectly. / Chris Schulz
55. Kōrero Mai (2004-2012)
I can vaguely remember arriving home from school early enough some days and watching Ākina, the overly cheesy, yet highly educational soap opera that taught viewers conversational te reo Māori within Kōrero Mai. It sort of felt like a cheap New Zealand version of Days of Our Lives, broken up with reo Māori lessons from the booming voice of Piripi Taylor (“‘Āhahā’ equals blimmin heck!”) between car crashes, proposals and many tears.
“People build a rapport with the characters and they get so hooked into the drama that they don’t realise they are learning,” said Matai Smith, who would take over hosting in 2010. Even if it was corny, Kōrero Mai was groundbreaking in its specific intent to help people learn te reo Māori at home, while also fostering talent on-camera talent such as Matai Smith, Calvin Tutaeo, and Ben Mitchell, as well as directors Rawiri Paratene and Rachel House.
The fact it would pause and review the phrases used, while still providing the dramatic highs and lows in the daily lives of the soap characters, made it stand out from other programmes at the time. While I can’t recall any specific episodes, I know that watching this series would have undoubtedly planted a few precious reo Māori gems deep in my memory banks. / Liam Rātana
54. Friends Like Her (2024)
After a long run of local crime dramas (The Gulf, The Gone, One Lane Bridge, Far North), the arrival of psychological thriller Friends Like Her this year was a welcome breath of TV air. Set in Kaikoura after the devastating 2015 earthquake, this compelling, unpredictable drama tells the story of two best friends and a broken surrogacy agreement that divides an already traumatised community. “The aftershocks keep coming,” we said in our review, calling it a “confident local drama full of dynamic characters, smart writing and clever twists”.
I hoovered up every delicious episode of Friends Like Her. It was a treat to see a New Zealand series that centred the complicated relationship between two dynamic women: Nicole (the always brilliant Morgana O’Reilly) and Tessa (Tess Haubrich). There’s shades of a New Zealand Big Little Lies here, of women who dedicate their lives to their families only for their families to then destroy them, and whose secrets from lives lived long ago still rumble below the surface. Chuck in a stellar cast (Vinnie Bennett, Jarod Rawiri, Vanessa Rare and Elizabeth Hawthorne, to name a few), a rich sense of time and place and a vibrant script from series creator Sarah Kate Lynch, and Friends Like Her reminds us that there’s big drama to be found in small town Aotearoa. Season two (and more), please. / Tara Ward
53. The Almighty Johnsons (2011-2013)
It was still dark out. I rose early, yawned, then went out to the lounge and lifted the blinds. Sitting in our driveway, in a chair under our carport, was a familiar face, a famous face: a whale rider. Yep, as I cooked the kids’ porridge up that day, Keisha Castle-Hughes sat there watching us watching her as her make-up was applied for her guest role on The Almighty Johnsons. Shot in and around West Auckland, the cast and crew of this God-fearing show were regular sights on the streets of Te Atatū. For an entire week, our carport was used as a kitchen, office, coffee break and touch-up space as the show was filmed in the house in front.
James Griffin and Rachel Lang’s follow-up to Outrageous Fortune contained an outrageous premise, focusing on a family of Norse gods trying to keep their identities under wraps while regaining their full powers. It had a fantastic lead in Emmett Skilton and solid ratings, and reviews were good, with one NZ Herald critic calling it “the strangest local show to sustain more than one season on prime time”. Yet it never quite recreated the magic of Outrageous and was axed after three seasons. What sticks most in my mind was what happened next: outraged fans protested, launching petitions and posting sticks to TV3 – a reference to the “tree of life” referenced in the show. Griffin attempted to pitch a shortened fourth season or a tele-movie to wrap things up, but it wasn’t to be. The gods truly had their say with this one. / Chris Schulz
52. Wayne Anderson: Singer of Songs (2006-2009)
In show business, they say you should “fake it until you make it.” That’s bad advice for Wayne Anderson, a man who is incapable of being anything but himself. Wayne is a real-life singer who really lives in Manurewa, and he really shoots for the stars. His musical style and dress sense are decades out of place, but he wears both with a pure conviction, an artist’s mana. Wayne sings Tom Jones like he is Tom Jones, an embodiment rather than an imitation, a character to the full.
Singer of Songs isn’t quite so real as its subject. It’s a fly-on-the-wall mockumentary series massaged into life by Orlando Stewart, playing a fictional version of himself as Wayne’s manager. The first season introduces Wayne and his career touring rest homes and sleepy lounges, with Orlando offering a shot at the big time. The big time turns out to be the lobby area of Auckland’s only casino, but it oddly feels like a real win.
The second season has a warped and self-reflective edge. Singer of Songs had won an actual amount of recognition for Wayne in everyday life: people recognised him from the telly and his bookings genuinely increased, a heartening triumph. Faced with this, the mockumentary needed to transplant to Japan to maintain its underdog feel, so away they went to meet the 5,6,7,8s and perform obscure gigs in Tokyo.
This faux-documentary eventually reveals something everybody in showbiz knows: that reality and performance are exactly the same. The process of arranging gigs for a fake show is exactly the same for a real show, and the fame won from fiction directly equals fame in real life. For his own part, Wayne Anderson has lived his entire life as a performer, and continues to do so. Beyond all the business, he lives the real show. / Daniel Taipua
51. Flat3 (2013–2014)
In 2013 my children gave me a shiny new iPad, the better to watch another relatively novel thing: a local web series. Flat3: I didn’t move for six episodes. Each was only seven minutes long but still. Bingeable is bingeable. Three good, keen 20-something Kiwi-Asian girls go flatting. Weapons grade awkwardness ensues, with excruciating trawls through what passed for modern manners in the 2010s. It felt like Girls meets Flight of the Conchords in Eden Terrace.
Ally Xue, JJ Fong and Perlina Lau, with esteemed filmmaker Roseanne Liang directing, self-funded the first season, crowd sourced the second and, for the third, got NZ On Air funding. That hard scrabble progress is reflected in the lives of Lee, Jessica and Perlina, as they navigate everything from texting culture – ‘Duck! Auto cucumber!’ – to dodgy auditions: “Top off, vulnerability, Lars von Trier”. The stereotyping and aggressions, micro and macro, they navigate are lightly touched upon but forensically targeted.
Flat3 Productions went on to the darker, more surreal comedy of Friday Night Bites. See “The Uber Driver”, a mashup of Taxi Driver and Carrie, with Lee in Travis Bickle mode, intoning, “I have a heavy flow”. Then came the disturbingly bucolic black comedy Creamerie, which played to considerable critical approval here, in Australia on SBS and in the US on Hulu [but more about that later]. Flat3 ladies, you are legends. / Diana Wichtel
50. The Gulf (2019–2021)
A psychological thriller set on a desolate and isolated version of Waiheke Island, The Gulf was part of a new era in New Zealand TV drama, one in which financing started to impact what we saw on screen. That sounds bad, but in fact the co-production era has created a more mature and crafted quality in our drama, thanks to funding from Canada, or Ireland or Australia, or in The Gulf’s case Germany, which supplements our own and brings different forces to bear on our work.
The Gulf’s bigger budget showed, and helped it end up by Acorn TV, rightly sitting alongside the kind of chilling rural mysteries the UK has mastered. It centred on car crash-induced amnesia, with weird outsiders and children victim to maddening kidnappings. In previous eras that might have been played cartoonishly, but The Gulf retained a hard-boiled quality over two seasons, with an unnerving plot and strong script. This allowed for exceptional performances from leads Kate Elliott and Ido Drent, with Waiheke visually transformed into a wild, sinister island, riddled with mystery and danger. / Duncan Greive
49. Sportscafe (1996–2011)
Before Crowd Goes Wild and the Alternative Commentary Collective there was SportsCafe, Sky’s weekly live show that took the concept of covering sports in an unserious way into uncharted territory. It was the brainchild of Ric Salizzo, the former All Blacks media liaison who produced a couple of freewheeling tour documentaries following the team in the early 90s. He was joined in the studio by an unlikely assortment of individuals – the larrikin Marc Ellis, the erudite Graeme Hill, the long-suffering Lana Coc-Kroft and the just-happy-to-be-there Eric Rush – ostensibly to present an irreverent overview of the week in sport.
At its peak, SportsCafe was essential, appointment viewing, at least for its target audience of young men, serving up some of the most wildly unpredictable live television ever broadcast in this country – some of which would probably get it cancelled in an instant today. Where were you the night Marc Ellis turned up so drunk he could hardly talk, or the time a glue sniffer in a tracksuit came on holding a Tupperware container full of what he claimed to be “racing snails”.
That guy was Leigh Hart, known to New Zealanders solely as “That Guy” for several years. His bizarre snail racing cameo turned into a regular role, and before long he was the show’s breakout star, memorably crashing All Blacks press conferences, introducing the nation to the new sport of Speed Cooking and ultimately paving the way for his Moon TV empire. That whole weird world only exists because of SportsCafe, one of those rare chaotic shows where it really felt like anything could happen. / Calum Henderson
48. Kiri and Lou (2019–present)
Kiri and Lou, a show about little plasticine dinosaurs, is one of the most profound and moving TV experiences you’re likely to have at any age. Made in Christchurch and watched all over the world, even scooping a BAFTA nomination, the show follows a little yellow dinosaur and a slightly bigger purple dinosaur who live in a lush, pre-human version of Aotearoa that is alive with fantastic creatures. Episodes are five minutes long, always include at least one brilliant song, and the stories explore the drama of daily life through the lens of big-feelings Kiri and gentle Lou and how they navigate friendships, furies, fates and feasting.
The show is made for preschoolers but, like all the best art for children, the layers are many and deep and so can be enjoyed by all ages. The music is glorious and star studded, the voice work by Olivia Tennent (Kiri) and Jemaine Clement (Lou) is exceptional. Kiri and Lou is pure class: the comedy is note perfect, the emotional truth rings out in every five-minute increment, and the world is both believable and magical. And at 101 episodes and counting, Kiri & Lou show no signs of slowing down… in fact, there’s a film in the works and we are here for it. / Claire Mabey
47. Late Night Big Breakfast (2014-2020)
Late Night Big Breakfast took the breakfast TV blueprint and ran a bulldozer through it. Running for four stop-start seasons, it was peak Leigh Hart: strange monologues, made-up advertorials, musical interludes, mock cooking segments, an assortment of major and minor players, including Jason Hoyte, Jeremy Wells, Mike Minogue, Josh Thomson, Kimberley Crossman, a Mongolian throat singer, and a small horse, as well as plenty of awkward interviews with guests, some of whom may not have been in on the jokes.
Despite the small budget, Big Breakfast attracted big guests, from political leaders Judith Collins and Jacinda Ardern to Neil Finn and Nadia Lim. It changed sets, from Hart’s home lounge to a penthouse apartment to Target, as often as it changed platforms: first airing on TVNZ+, it then moved to the short-lived NZME streaming platform WatchMe, then, after a five-year break, to Duke (random episodes are also available for viewing on Hart’s streaming service Moonflix).
The store is gone now, and Hart seems more concerned with his Snackachangi chip and beer range and courting online controversy than making TV these days. You couldn’t imagine Chris Luxon fronting for an interview with Hart and Hoyte, but Late Night Big Breakfast remains a beautifully chaotic parody of staid TV traditions. I hope the tiny horse is OK. / Chris Schulz
46. Rūrangi (2020-2023)
Some of the most interesting and authentic contemporary stories have sidestepped conventional distribution, challenging the definition of film or television entirely. The first season of the queer drama Rūrangi, directed by Max Currie, was designed as a web series but edited together as a feature film and presented at international festivals. It had its TV broadcast rights picked up by Hulu – something unusual for a New Zealand work – and can be watched episodically here via streaming.
Rūrangi is notable in other ways, too: it’s a work in which all the trans characters are played by trans actors. It’s also a very rare example of a story focused on a queer Māori experience – let alone one that foregrounds transmasc representation. Newcomer Elz Carrad, who later appeared in After the Party, gives an electric performance as Caz, a trans man who left his home in the remote small town of Rūrangi for Auckland, where he transitioned and became involved in queer activism.
Rūrangi is a homecoming story, but also a very specifically queer account of reconciliation and forgiveness. Caz abandoned his best friend Anahera, who is trying to connect to her whakapapa, and his then-boyfriend Jem, who now doesn’t know what to do with his feelings of attraction. At the centre sits Caz’s relationship to his father, Gerald, played with empathy and depth by Kirk Torrance, who is trying to process Caz’s transition, and his absence from his mother’s funeral.
The dairy-focused town itself is divided; Gerald also finds himself ostracised. Season two pulls out a little to explore a brewing culture war between queer activists, the town’s farmers, and local Māori. Everything is richly shot, properly cinematic, expressing a tangible, detailed sense of place. Rūrangi won an International Emmy for Best Short Form Series in 2022, and is something truly special – a fine example of what can happen when people actually get to tell their own stories. / Erin Harrington
45. The Unauthorised History of New Zealand (2005–2009)
I am proud to be part of the generation of wide-eyed telly-loving teenagers who stayed up way too late to watch things that were beyond their level of media literacy. It is why, to this day, I am still untangling real things that actually happened in our history from parody segments presented in the mid-2000s by Jeremy Wells (for example, the mass delusion about Thingee’s eye pop can largely be attributed to its inclusion in the Eating Media Lunch opening credits – but more about EML later.)
Just as Forgotten Silver trolled the television public in the 90s with its blend of documentary tropes, real archival footage and complete and utter fabrication, The Unauthorised History of New Zealand proudly presented an “alternative” version of our past. Each episode explored a different topic from crime to entertainment, money to marijuana, fronted by Jeremy Wells and bolstered by commentators including David Slack, Ian Fraser and a weird amount of Bob Jones.
It goes without saying that a lot of the content could never happen now. A cruise through the BSA complaints will give you an idea of the audacity of some of the jokes, as will this clip of Wells vox-popping women in Russell. And yet… I’m still laughing! All the episodes are on YouTube, as are iconic clips such as Cookie Bear’s role in Star Wars and the time the Milky Bar Kid did a Joker on Holmes. Still couldn’t tell you if they are real or not, sorry. / Alex Casey
44. Beyond the Veil (2022)
Six-part anthology Beyond the Veil bills itself as six supernatural tales inspired by the Māori, Pasifika, Filipino, and Chinese people of Aotearoa, but really it is a testament to the flexibility and power of genre to tell meaningful, engaging, culturally authentic stories.
The series was created in part to offer opportunities to mid-career practitioners, with funding from NZ On Air to support new voices, and Te Mangai Pāho to encourage more use of te reo Māori in primetime. What better way than ghost stories? The well-produced episodes vary tonally, and range in form from crack up splatstick comedy to unsettling gothic drama. Actor Jayden Daniels introduces each episode in a wink-wink manner, like a modern day Rod Serling (and in clear homage to Temuera Morrison’s role in the supernatural anthology drama Mataku), walking a playful line between deadpan humour and a thoughtful sense of respect.
Anthologies are particularly special as they create significant opportunities for creators whose voices and perspectives have been underrepresented or excluded. ‘Albularyo’, in which a Kiwi-Filipino doctor discovers her dead granny is a monstrous manananggal, is notable as possibly the first sustained use of the Tagalog language in primetime television in New Zealand. Found footage horror ’26:29′ carefully balances crack up goofball humour with a story about intergenerational abuse in Sāmoan communities.
The episode ‘Tappy’ is a particularly remarkable bit of storytelling. A disaffected young Māori man is sent off to “rescue” his dead aunty’s remains from the South Island (in a busted up old ice cream truck no less), and he’s hassled by her disgruntled, foul-mouthed ghost all the way home. It does more in 22 minutes than many films do in two hours, exploring mental illness, sexual assault, queerness, identity, whānau, social hierarchy, shame and reciprocity, all with an incredibly light touch. It’s highly recommended. / Erin Harrington
43. Havoc (1997–2004)
In the late 90s, television was chasing a younger audience by rummaging through personalities from the Auckland student radio station 95bFM, then BfM. Havoc launched on the short-lived MTV New Zealand channel, five nights a week because why not. The first episode kicked off with vintage footage of Selwyn Toogood. The air, and the opening titles, were thick with TV nostalgia. Jeremy “Newsboy” Wells, his peroxided hair gelled into exclamatory spikes, declared himself “the Barry Holland of youth television” and made SodaStream for an erratic array of guests: Angela Bloomfield, Bill Ralston and the late, great Darcy Clay.
In those days “yoof” TV was mainly lad TV. There was an item on Hustler magazine. The student pub style, like the sports bar vibes of SportsCafe, proved to be a bit of a fun evolutionary cul de sac. But the show opened the door – one that should sometimes have remained shut – for a string of Havoc iterations such as 2000, Luxury Suites and Conference Facility, and Havoc and Newsboy’s Sell-out Tour. As Havoc himself said after a news item about some tech invention: “Other people agree it’s a remarkable breakthrough, so it probably is.”
Here was television that could speak television. These guys grew up with it. They had been paying attention. Still a classic. / Diana Wichtel
42. Good Grief (2021-2022)
Set in a funeral home inherited by two sisters, the show’s setup is a riot: one sister’s a stickler for detail, the other’s a laid-back party-starter who says things like, “I don’t want to be around dead people all day. It’s just depressing.” Landing during the pandemic and shot on the lowest of low budgets, Good Grief grabbed the reins from The Casketeers and turned it into comedy gold. Quick aside: can someone count how many of these 100 shows Josh Thomson appears in? Is the answer most of them? Pound-for-pound, he must be the hardest-working actor in Aotearoa: he’s here, too, playing a deadpan, stoney-faced mortician to perfection, just one of many guest stars that help turn this the blackest of local black comedies.
For a while there, it very much looked like Good Grief would only last one brilliantly funny season. That it got a second was thanks to pure graft by the show’s stars, real-life sister Grace and Eve Palmer. “We never thought anyone in America would want to make another fucking season of it,” they told The Spinoff, but that’s exactly what happened when AMC (home of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead) came on board. Season two was even glummer, and funnier than the first, but a third seems unlikely: Grace Palmer now has a lead role in a true American sitcom, Fox’s Animal Control, where she plays a very similar character to her role here. / Chris Schulz
41. Being Eve (2001-2002)
Teen comedy Being Eve burned bright for just two seasons, but made an indelible mark on all those who encountered her. Constantly breaking the fourth-wall in the style of Malcolm in the Middle, Being Eve contained everything that anxious adolescents needed as they paced around waiting for the horrors of high school. It had the confessional nerdiness of Adrian Mole, the social issues of Jacqueline Wilson, and the bumbling humour of Bridget Jones.
Being Eve’s endless fantasy sequences were also stuffed with ambitious pop culture homages and historical references (pretty sure this episode is where I learned the phrase “iambic pentameter”). Another episode attempts to tackle race relations through a parody of… The Piano? “How come you speak English?” a bonnet-wearing Eve asks her Māori boyfriend Sam. “The nice lady at the missionary school,” he replies. “She taught me the love of Jesus… and hit me with a stick every time I spoke the language of my ancestors.”
Pretty bold writing for a show pitched to 9-14 year olds, no? Although Being Eve didn’t always have the most subtle approach – Katie Parker summed it up well as “full of outrageously outmoded good intentions” – it gauged the pulse of the 2000s teen with vox pops covering everything from divorce to beauty standards, to pregnancy. Bold, funny and packed with Y2K fashion that Gen Z would die for now… is it high time we met Eve Baxter again in her late 30s? / Alex Casey
Monday: 100-81 | Tuesday: 80-61 | Today: 60-41 | Thursday: 40-21 | Friday: 20-1