Trisha Dunleavy,
Ourselves in Primetime: A History of New Zealand Television Drama.
Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2005.
ISBN: 1 86940 339 8
300pp
NZ$49.99 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Auckland University Press)

The knowing is in the telling.

At the heart of this study is a belief that a nation, any nation, to call itself that needs to see itself reflected in its own stories. Further, at the turn of the millennium the mediums of film and television are primary in providing this function. The book’s aim is encapsulated in its title Ourselves in Primetime: A History of New Zealand Television Drama, putting its New Zealand focus to the forefront and defining the most important readership as New Zealanders. Ourselves in Primetime is a comprehensive historical analysis of locally produced television drama from its beginnings at the birth of the television broadcast in New Zealand in the early 1960s up until the present. ‘Localness’ in New Zealand means ‘national,’ as Dunleavy argues, revealing the smallness of the country and population and highlighting the specificity of her project.

As a case study New Zealand drama provides a singular opportunity to observe the interplay between global and international influences, institutional contexts and productions. Dunleavy’s analysis is based on the premise that the policy environment and the resulting television programs are interactive, that one forms the other. That the programs in turn reflect the cultural milieu that surrounds them is implicit.
The structure of this book mirrors the complexities involved in undertaking such research. Dunleavy chronicles television drama production – the programs, producers, writers, directors and actors – that together are part of a larger picture, the shaping of a national identity. The policy and institutional contexts are used to define ‘eras’- each distinguished by major political changes or government interventions that circumscribed, intentionally or not, the kind of drama that resulted. An example is the chapter, ‘Deregulation – the New Environment,’ (212-229) detailing government deregulation of broadcasting in the late 1980s which had contradictory consequences: local drama became an ‘endangered species’ yet allowed access to government funding for independents who had been ‘shut out’ for twenty years. Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table(UK/Australia/New Zealand, 1990), the adaptation of Janet Frame’s autobiography, is an example of the freedom the new regulations allowed.

As the first complete history of this aspect of television production and broadcast the book has its own archival value in the stories it tells. The range of photographs included records the distinctiveness of ‘local’ drama in New Zealand and of the study. Series, serials, soaps, children’s series, telefeatures and stand-alone dramas – the gamut of television fiction – are described in detail and annotated forming a unique historical catalogue. This is a recovery project in that many of these cultural treasures are no longer available for broadcast or even private viewing.

Each program is considered as a reflection of prevalent social and cultural tensions and contextualised within the larger framework of government, institutional and policy changes. Each is also classified within the international genre it mimics and Dunleavy uses this framework to analyse the ebb and flow between genre constraints and cultural specificity. Shortland Street, the longest running daily soap serial, (1992 to the present) is cited as significant in bringing the realities of ‘local’ life to the screen. By incorporating economic changes and cultural shifts, such as the deregulation of the health sector and developments in bicultural relations respectively, Dunleavy argues that:

Shortland Street’s recombination of characteristics renders it distinctive in the world of soaps, particularly because within its conceptual and aesthetic blend, universal conventions and foreign influences are so much inflected by “localness”. (241)

The density of Dunleavy’s analysis is evident in her discussion of Shortland street’s social influence and in its contribution to the industry as a continual training ground for drama production. She gives further weight by citing the program’s effect on New Zealand’s global presence through overseas sales.

Dunleavy uses the historical structure to describe a larger arc for New Zealand broadcasting from defining itself within the influences of British Public Service broadcast and Reithian philosophies, to a later domination by US and Australian product within a free market and wholly commercial environment. The forty years of drama show the often tumultuous nature of these changes and the creativity and flexibility with which the practitioners have negotiated such parameters. She ends by arguing for stability, with a plea for continued government support of this form of local expression.

Hester Joyce
La Trobe University, Australia.

Created on: Tuesday, 7 March 2006 | Last Updated: 7-Mar-06