Shortland Street is at once a rollicking, fast-paced pot-boiler serving up a mouth-watering platter of suburban life, and an iconic tour de force of this country's neuroses set against the monolith that is its system of health boards.
A political statement no less powerful than New Zealand's brave 1980s stand against nuclear madness, Shortland Street stands and delivers a potent cocktail of the brave and the fearful - vulnerable but passionate acting that calls to mind a drop of grease paint mixed with tears smeared on an actor's smock thrown into a dusty corner after a one-man show that went ahead despite the nauseating loneliness of an empty theatre.
Remedial television review classes at community college have really helped my writing.
The course co-ordinator says I am ''making real progress, considering the talent at your disposal''.
I think that is a good thing.
So here goes.
Shortland Street is a series put together week in, week out, by brave men and women who never flinch in the face of cruel mockery and playground taunts from the so-called media experts.
Shortland Street is Keri Hulme meets Janet Frame meets Maurice Gee meets Frank Sargeson in a haunting yet nuanced serial of love, betrayal, guilt-ridden sex and Toyota Caldinas.
Last Friday left us with the unexpected return of Zlata.
The conniving little minx turned up on the Coopers' doorstep with an 8-month-old baby on her hip she claims is the son of the recently departed Luke.
Luke was a bald man with large lips and the sort of mouth that gave you vertigo, and filled you with the irrational fear you may fall head-first into his larynx.
Luke was a lyrical, haunting, nuanced yet fully realised character - at once a modern-day Macbeth consumed by ambition and needled into action by his wife Bella, and a Mandela-like figure refusing to turn his back on the people who have betrayed him.
Of course, last Friday also left us with Roimata confronting Josh, demanding that he control his feelings.
But then, of course, we see the damaged angel and the calculating cad finally giving into their passions at Josh's place.
The sweeping, poignant and unflinchingly powerful tale with the air of melancholy and mystery tops off what has been a consistently elegant and abrasive storyline.
Shortland Street's brilliant writers pick away at the threads that make up the fabric of New Zealand life, before reweaving them into a powerful, fully realised and potent cocktail of kiwi life, never succumbing to pitfalls of post-colonial cultural cringe or the heckling of New Zealand's leering literary mafia.
Oh yeah - Rachel and Henry share a fag out the back of the hospital. Sweet.
- Charles Loughrey
