The Ars Tits

"The Artists" was a really nice 5-minute segment screened just before the evening news, featuring the work of a prominent New Zealand artist. As the days of TVNZ 7 drew to a close, these were repeated more and more often - we probably saw the profile of organist Gillian Weir, presented by Peter Averi, a dozen times (familiarity didn't make it any less enjoyable). The title sequence for The Artists featured the letters drifting around the screen, temporarily forming the quote of our catchphrase.

So what on earth is going on?

The climax of a promo for TVNZ 7 news. The trailer celebrated "the news with more ... in-depth interviews and extended analysis."This was immediately illustrated by a clip of Greg Boyed subjecting an (unseen) interviewee to the probing interrogation that has become one of our favourite catchphrases.

Hindsight - it's a wonderful thing

Hindsight was one of our favourites (partly nostalgia for Kiwi childhoods). Each episode followed a theme of social change over the past 50 years, illustrating it with archive clips from NZ television, and followed up with an in-depth interview with a modern commentator or policy maker.

The show with more volts than Dr Frankenstein's laboratory

Not really a favourite (there are few opportunities to repeat this in day-to-day life), but another one that stuck in our brains. This was final sentence of the trailer for How Do They Do It.

The escalator was in fact invented as a novelty fairground ride

One of several engineering-themed shows on TVNZ 7, a genre that is seldom seen back on the BBC :-(

Although the most memorable catchphrase from this category, the show itself wasn't one of our favourites. Presented by Robert Llewellyn, who was far better suited to his ringmaster role on Scrapheap Challenge, How Do They Do It seemed to have borrowed a presentational style style that was a low-budget mashup of Mythbusters and Brainiac: Science Abuse (neither shown on TVNZ 7).

Yeh, but so do the old boys though, Eh?

Response to the interviewer (Wallace Chapman) saying "Some of the old boys say you like the short skirts". From the trailer for The New Old, a local show that investigates young people taking up traditional pursuits. The trailed episode featured a young man playing lawn bowls (no footage of the skirts was included in the trailer, and we didn't see the episode ... were there also young women playing, or do the traditional players wear short skirts too?)

I like you both tremendously, but I think you're totally wrong

Trailer for The Good Word, a literary magazine show presented by perky New Zealand novelist Emily Perkins. Segments typically included a profile of a local writer in the place they work, a group discussion of a recent publication (the source of the trailer clip), and a guest author/celebrity discussing a book of their choice. The theme tune was weirdly spooky - not sure what that was supposed to imply!

Even the undies are recycled round here!

Trailer for local programme Hearts In Crafts, which included an endearing how-to demonstration as continuity (memory suggests, probably inaccurately, that a typical episode showed "how to cover a box in sequins"), interspersed by interview segments with prominent Kiwi crafters.

... turn gay for which member of parliament?

... followed by "Oh come on, is that even a question?"

(It's not clear whether the two quotes come from the same episode, or were just edited together).

This was the trailer for "Back Benches", a programme that many of our Kiwi friends considered the best thing on TVNZ 7 - and perhaps one of the reasons it was closed down, given the political context of the debate.

Back Benches was pretty cool though - set in a pub, the Backbencher, located near the Parliament buildings in Wellington - anybody who happened to be drinking in the bar that night formed the audience for a panel show of parliamentarians and political commentators. Host Wallace Chapman was also the source of one of our other catchphrases ...

Holy Moly, would you look at that!

One of our favourites among the locally produced TVNZ 7 programmes - The Sitting. Each episode ends with a "reveal", where portraitist Stephen Martyn Welch shows his subject, a local personality, what he has painted. The trailer repeats the reaction by Dick Frizell, when he saw this image (image from an exhibition at the Pah homestead, the setting for the series).

That's ya news

Cheery sign-off from Greg Boyed at the close of the evening news. Often followed ("over to Renee for the weather forecast") by "that's ya weather"!

Turn on things Green Lantern-style

Another project from Make: - we couldn't wait to see the episode itself, but it turned out rather different to the impression given in the trailer. (Magnets were involved).

Today, I'm gonna show you how to make a burrito blaster

Trailer for Make:, the hobby construction series in which we see presenters constructing and demonstrating eccentric inventions such as this air cannon for wrapped food delivery, as built by host John Park.

Oh my gahd, you can actually see like the wings are raisin' up

From the trailer for Concrete Canvas, in which we see a lady comment on the realistic appearance of Julian Beever's animorphic rendering of a bald eagle, chalked on an American pavement.