TVNZ is proud to announce the launch of its newest online-only series, Auckland Daze.

With over 25,000 impressions on the Auckland Daze Facebook page and over 5,000 video views on Facebook and TVNZ Ondemand to date, the series is already cementing its popularity.

Airing from 5pm tonight, Auckland Daze follows the success of TVNZ’s Emmy-Award winning digital-only series Reservoir Hill.

This time, the series is a spoof comedy that follows four hapless wannabes – a model, a stuntman, a dwarf entertainer and a stand-up comedian who are all chasing fame in Auckland’s ridiculously small entertainment industry.

Starring a number of local talents including Millen Baird (The Millen Baird Show), Jennifer Ward-Lealand (Xena: Warrior Princess), Fasi Amosa (Sione’s Wedding), Jimmy James Fletcher (Jono’s New Show), Natalie Medlock (Shortland Street) and Glen Levy, the stuntman described by National Geographic as “the 20th deadliest man on the planet”, plus an abundance of guest appearances by New Zealand celebrities including Craig Parker, Anna Hutchinson, Johnny Barker, Brendhan Lovegrove and Anna Julienne.

Auckland Daze takes the interactive experience that made Reservoir Hill a success to the next level.

Screening on TVNZ Ondemand, which has almost four hundred thousand unique viewers per month, Auckland Daze is also embedded into Facebook where viewers will be able to watch, “like” and share the episodes with their friends without having to leave their Facebook profile. After the episode, the audience will be prompted to say what they think. Filmed weekly, suggestions from viewers will influence the plot of the next episode.

“Auckland Daze is another demonstration of TVNZ’s leadership in online video. This hilarious new show combines high profile writers and actors with an innovative platform that allows the audience to ‘like’, watch, share and influence the show without having to leave their Facebook page” says Tom Cotter, TVNZ’s GM – Digital Media.

Co-created, produced and directed by kiwi actor Kiel McNaughton (Shortland Street), and with funding from NZ On-Air, the show promises to be hilarious, clever and full of twists the creators don’t even know about yet.

“Auckland Daze is a ground-breaking digital-only show where the audience can have their say. It is a great opportunity for New Zealanders to get involved with their favourite characters while having a laugh along the way.”

The first episode of Auckland Daze will be available to view at TVNZ Ondemand from 5pm this afternoon. ‘Like’ Auckland Daze on Facebook and catch up on some of the guys’ antics to date at http://www.facebook.com/aucklanddaze.

The line between television and real life is going to become pretty blurry with the arrival of new digital seriesAuckland Daze on October 27.

TVNZ’s latest digital initiative is an online-only show which will be presented every Thursday in six 20 minute episodes, screening on TVNZ’s OnDemand website, and on the Auckland Daze Facebook page. At a basic level it’s a similar concept to Reservoir Hill, TVNZ’s award-winning digital show which allowed viewers to text in and suggest what the main character should do. However, Auckland Daze is aimed at a different audience (18-35 year olds) and rooted in the Auckland entertainment industry.

Co-created, produced and directed by actor Kiel McNaughton (Shortland Street), his wife (also a producer) Kerry Warkia, and writer/actor/director Millen Baird (The Millen Baird Show), it stemmed from an idea Baird had after watching American faux-reality show The Hills.

“I couldn’t figure out why I was so riveted to the material, and I thought, what would that show be like in Auckland. I started throwing some ideas around with [entertainer Jimmy James], and then I took the idea to Kiel, and we decided to flesh it out, so we shot a 12-minute pilot.”

They eventually received funding through the NZ On Air digital media partnership, and got TVNZ on board.

Rather than follow four females a la The Hills, they’ve opted to feature four males working in Auckland showbiz, with the guys effectively playing exaggerated versions of themselves.

Though he’s never actually done any modelling, Baird plays a 35-year-old male model.

“He’s a bit of a useless mummy’s boy, and the relationship between him and his mum (played by Jennifer Ward-Lealand) is a bit weird. We live in a mansion in Parnell, and she’s a celebrity real estate agent.

And then we’ve got little Jimmy James, who’s a dwarf entertainer, who can’t get a job on The Hobbit because of his drinking. Then there’s Fasitua Amosa, who’s an unfunny comedian, always trying out his material on the guys.”

The fourth member of their gang is Glen Levy, who’s an aggro stuntman/ninja.

“He actually is a ninja - National Geographic profiled him as being one of the 20 deadliest men in the world. But he’s got intimacy problems, and he actually loves older women, i.e. my mum. Which creates a bit of tension between the two of us down the line.”

If that’s all sounding a little male-dominated, don’t fret, there are a selection of girlfriends, female admirers and co-workers who flesh out the awkward reality of the world these guys inhabit.

“I guess the thing is that they’re all trying to find fame in Auckland,” McNaughton laughs.

They’re writing from what they know, Baird acknowledging that much of the material is an extension of his own experience.

“I’ve got a lot of horror stories about the industry.”

Much of the show will be heavily improvised, the aim being to feel unrehearsed, with an emphasis on comedy and parody, and there will be an absolute truckload of cameo performances. Think something like a cross between Wanna Ben, The Jono Project, SuperCity and The Jaquie Brown Diaries for the tone it will take.

Shot during each weekend, the episodes will be edited between Monday and Wednesday before going “live” on Thursdays. This quick turnaround gives viewers a chance to participate in the direction the show takes via the Facebook page.

“We do have an arc for the characters, but we really want to encourage viewer interactivity, because we think there’s a lot of fun to be had with that” McNaughton explains. “If the viewers really get into it, then they could feed directly into what the characters do. I think we’ll start off trying to get viewers involved by chucking in particular lines [that they suggest] here and there, but if we find that viewers really want to say, ‘oh Millen should do this, and he shouldn’t be seeing that girl’ and so on, then who knows?”

LOWDOWN

TVNZ and NZ On Air are delighted to announce that TV ONE’s record breaking series, Nothing Trivial will return for asecond season.

The series started with a bang – it was the highest rating debut of a local drama for this millennium.

516,300 New Zealanders tuned in for the first episode and the show has since held a loyal following of fans. As well as this week being the most viewed programme on TVNZ OnDemand, Nothing Trivial has sustained its television ratings success.

The decision from NZ On Air to fund another season of the hit drama is welcomed by Jeff Latch, Head of TV ONE and TV2. “Nothing Trivial has great writers, a fantastic cast and it allows New Zealanders to see their stories on screen. This has been a winning combination with viewers returning week after week. New Zealanders can’t get enough of Nothing Trivial.”

NZ On Air Chief Executive, Jane Wrightson, says the funding agency is delighted to support a second series. “TV ONE has provided a great home for local drama this year with the first series of Nothing Trivial launching well and more recently the local Sunday Theatre season being received so positively. We look forward to the second seasonof Nothing Trivial continuing this strong performance next year” she says.

Head of Commissioning, Andrew Shaw, is also pleased with the decision. “The talented team at South Pacific Pictures has successfully brought endearing home-grown characters to life. TVNZ is proud to be associated with Nothing Trivial.”

- Nielsen TAM

Airing on 27th October 2011, Auckland Daze follows the success of TVNZ’s Emmy-Award winning digital-only series Reservoir Hill. This time, the series is a spoof comedy that follows four hapless wannabes – a model, a stuntman, a dwarf entertainer and a stand-up comedian who are all chasing fame in Auckland’s ridiculously small entertainment industry.

Starring a number of local talents including Millen Baird (The Millen Baird Show), Jennifer Ward-Lealand (Xena: Warrior Princess), Natalie Medlock (Shortland Street) and Glen Levy, the stuntman described by National Geographic as “the 20th deadliest man on the planet”.

Auckland Daze takes the interactive experience that made Reservoir Hill a success to the next level. Screening on TVNZ Ondemand, which has almost four hundred thousand unique viewers per month, Auckland Daze will also be embedded into Facebook where viewers will be able to watch, “like” and share the episodes with their friends without having to leave their Facebook profile. After the episode, the audience will be prompted to say what they think. Filmed weekly, suggestions from viewers will influence the plot of the next episode.

“Auckland Daze is another demonstration of TVNZ’s leadership in online video. This hilarious new show combines high profile writers and actors with an innovative platform that allows the audience to ‘like’, watch, share and influence the show without having to leave their Facebook page” says Tom Cotter, TVNZ’s GM – Digital Media.

Co-created, produced and directed by Kiwi actor Kiel McNaughton (Shortland Street), the show promises to be funny, clever and full of twists the creators don’t even know about yet. “Auckland Daze is a ground-breaking digital-only show where the audience can have their say. It is a great opportunity for New Zealanders to get involved with their favourite characters while having a laugh along the way.”

Chris Albrecht, president and CEO of the American television and video service Starz LLC, confirmed on Tuesday that the American live-action adaptation of Noir is scheduled to air next summer of 2012. The project was approved in June and is currently in the pre-production phase of its development cycle.

The original 2001 anime featured two female assassins working together on missions while they uncover their past and their connection with each other. ADV Films released the anime in North America before the distributor shut down in 2009. FUNimation Entertainment confirmed last year that it acquired the North American rights to the anime.

The actors resource website Showfax Inc. has posted a character sheet for Starz’s live-action Noir television adaptation. The descriptions in the sheet offer insight into changes made for the television production as well as new character introductions.

The character sheet describes the show taking place in 1960s Paris, with lead assassin Mireille Dubois (changed from the original Mireille Bouquet) as a 26- to 28-year-old blonde, controlling, female assassin. Kirika is listed as an 18- to 20-year-old Japanese girl who develops amnesia after a fight with Mireille, no longer remembering her training with handler Lance or The Soldats.

The sheet lists The Soldats organization as a “regime [that] is based on the Assassins cult of Islam.”

New characters include Smith, an American CIA agent working to gain trust with the KGB as a connection to Mireille. Mireille is also given a fiancé, John Lancaster, an American and a Korean War veteran. The sheet also lists the character of Alice, a model who is John’s drug-using ex-girlfriend. The sheet also fleshes out the minor character Yann from the original series.

Paul Weber is casting the series, which begins filming in New Zealand this month.

There are many fine things about this show, but perhaps the most unexpected, and useful, is its value as an antidote to the fervent view of the under-30s that 1970s fashion and decor is deeply cool and gorgeous.

Not if you were there at the time. The costumiers and set dressers on this project have spared us none of the horror. Here was New Zealand in the early 70s, its moustaches, trouser bottoms and lapels as wide as doorways, its hair big and straggly, and all located in an unnatural habitat of orange and turquoise decor, accented with plenty of Karitane yellow – all flare and no flair.

Most authentically retro of all, and so deeply, nostalgically glamorous, was the smarmy treatment of women, as faithfully portrayed here: still regarded as property, and the grateful recipients of men’s sexual appetites, not as meaningful participants, not even in crime.

The woman detective here is treated as though she’s lucky to be taken seriously.

The era is as much a part of the story as the drugs and the monstrous ambition and violence. The rise of our most successful and infamous drugs cartel was possible mostly because New Zealand was a naive, slow-moving target. It was remarkably easy to get the business off the ground, and as it grew more sophisticated, remarkably difficult to stop it.

This is the story of Marty Johnstone, who originated the Mr Asia syndicate and ended up grotesquely rich and gruesomely dead. Necessarily, he’s presented as a glamorous, appealing figure. This grates, but realistically only people with a degree of charisma can accrue the power to locate themselves at the centre of such dangerous operations. He’s attractive, amoral and with a sense of entitlement not common among the young of his day.

Dealing cannabis with his psychopathic Scots henchman Andy Maher, he quickly builds a cannabis-dealing operation up to megabuck level, amping up the stakes with the advent of Chinese Jack, the Asian ship’s steward who brings more potent Thai green over on his employers’ vessels.

You almost begin to admire their industry and ingenuity, except that the whole empire is policed at fist-point. So far these are innocent days – no guns, no murders – but already brutal beatings are common currency among Johnstone’s henchmen.

No-one entirely trusts anyone else, nor should they. Chinese Jack is two-timing Johnstone’s operation, and the palely lurking Terry Clark is already bringing in the harder merchandise across his colleagues’ turf.

Clever and bold, Marty – “rhymes with party!” – figures out that if he locates and “reasons with” Jack’s rival customer, the pair of them can force Jack into line. This is the happy conclusion of episode one, but with a depth- charger. We, the viewers, know, but Johnstone does not, that Clark has already made a move to get Johnstone out of the picture, and doubtless has more planned.

He made an anonymous tipoff to the police the night Johnstone decided to make a drug pickup in person, to enforce a bit of discipline on the street by showing his face.

Although Johnstone dodged that metaphorical bullet, after some wonderful Keystone Cops carry-on involving the drugs being dumped in the harbour, history tells us there were other bullets already having “Marty, rhymes with party” inscribed on them.

The casting here is terrific, with Dan Musgrove cherubic and casually evil as Johnstone, and Thijs Morris hair-trigger dangerous as Andy. Errol Shand smoulders convincingly behind a bland exterior as Clark.

As the police leads, Holly Shanahan and Jamie Irvine are the right balance of sharp and, necessarily, flat-footed – because a disquieting thread of the story is the slowness of the New Zealand police to even conceive of a seriously organised drugs syndicate being possible here.

Short-handing the official view for the sake of narrative, a former undercover agent patronises his keen junior colleagues in their pursuit of Johnstone, saying: “I’ve been undercover. I know this scene. New Zealanders are just pot-heads.”

Even while we were, there was no “just” about it. The strong stuff from Asia was the perfect appetite- whetter for Clark’s even stronger medicine.

As with the rest of the Underbelly franchise, this comes with a ton of gratuitous sex scenes, alarmingly realistic violence scenes, and if it was censored for language, there are times when the dialogue would be one long beep. But it has striven for authenticity, and this is too serious a subject to stand any nicening up.

The only faint niggle is the snappiness of the dialogue. It’s doubtful that, however undeniably intelligent many of these people were, they were capable of so much witty banter. But it helps whip the plot along at a cracking pace.

Most impressively, given that the task here involves a large cast of real-life figures, the storytelling is not at all confusing, introducing us to lots of people quickly, but memorably.

There’s only one big problem with Underbelly NZ – Land of the Long Green Cloud: it’s all true.
- The Dominion Post

Blenheim man Dan Musgrove will portray a controversial drug lord in New Zealand’s own Underbelly television series.

Musgrove plays Mr Asia, Marty Johnstone, in Underbelly: Land of the Long Green Cloud, which starts on TV3 on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old actor left Marlborough Boys’ College in 2000, and graduated from national drama school Toi Whaakari in 2007.

He has worked in an impressive list of theatre productions including Henry VI, The Changling, Holding the Man, and Life is a Dream, as well as television series including Legend of the Seeker, Piece of My Heart and The Tribe. He also had a speaking part in the international film, The Tracker.

But the Mr Asia role is his biggest yet.

He was in disbelief, but ecstatic when he heard he had the part.

“Initially, it was a very daunting thought; I was so excited about playing the lead role, but with a few beats realised, oops, I don’t exactly know this story.”

The moment he was offered the role, Dan Musgrove learnt Johnstone’s story “back to front”.

Living in Johnstone’s home town, Auckland, has made it easy to get inside knowledge about the sordid tale, he said.

“It seems everyone here knows someone who knows someone else directly affected by the Mr Asia syndicate, so being able to get info on it is definitely an advantage.”

Playing the lead role in a fast-paced filming schedule was hard work for Musgrove, but he said he enjoyed every second of it.

“It’s been a whirlwind experience. This is definitely 100 times, if not 1000 times, bigger than any other assignment I have done before, so you can’t just learn your lines on the day.

“So much preparation needs to be done to be ready to shoot. It’s epic fun.”

Musgrove predicts viewers will be hooked from the start when the show premieres on Wednesday,

“It’s a New Zealand story; it’s our story and I think that’s what makes it such a riveting watch.

“Being set in the 70s, you can expect some pretty dapper costumes; they [the characters] seemed to have lived the high life while they could … and plenty of drama, expect plenty of that.”

Musgrove said he had to be careful not to reveal exact scenes, but agreed the series would closely follow the real story of Marty and his supposed best friend, Andy Maher, played by Thijs Morrison.

Underbelly NZ; The Land of the Long Green Cloud screens every week on TV3 from Wednesday, August 17, 9.30pm.
- The Marlborough Express

Around this time last year I wrote a piece called The joke that is NZ on Air funding. It looked at how inferior bands like Autozamm were milking the available funds to make rubbish music. We were paying for music we were not consuming.

There were quite a few comments on that post – and several musicians wrote to me privately, thanking me for putting it out there. It seems that musicians in New Zealand have a hard time speaking out about the funding hypocrisies because, well, they do still all want to be considered. Well, most of them do. And so they can’t be seen to speak out about the funding bodies. Not publicly.

Just before the end of last year I served up The joke that is NZ on Air funding: II and, you guessed it, loads of comments again. Funding is an issue we all feel strongly about. And rightly so. We’re the ones paying. Our money is going off in the direction of music we do not support, never heard of, or wish we had never heard.

The target, if you like, for the second blog-post about NZ on Air’s fumbled funding was Annabel Fay. She received a bunch of money to make a video for an awful song (click here if you need a reminder of how dire the song and video are). People were heated about the fact that Fay came from a well-off family. But the real issue, to me, was that Annabel Fay’s music is terrible. Just ghastly. People started writing soft-ish reviews suggesting that for pop music it wasn’t that bad. A strange approach. These same reviewers never seem so keen to defend it when someone from another country has a go at it.

The only reason Fay’s family wealth deserved to come in to the story was because it had been reported that Sir Michael Fay had flown 10 radio programming executives over to the family’s Great Mercury Island holiday hideaway. This was before the album had been released. And there was talk that Brendan Smyth, NZ on Air music manager, went for the (proverbial) ride.

So that was poor form all round – Brendan should not have got on the plane. Something a NZ on Air employee agreed with me about. And Michael Fay had to figure that people would latch on to this story and hold his daughter’s music up to tough scrutiny.

I stand by my comments that her vacuous pop music was insulting regardless of the perceived manipulation of flying the radio programmers away to be wined and dined. But add that information and it’s horrifying to think that she was able to get funding - and willing to try. Never mind being entitled to – it just looks bad.

So, here we are – and you’ve seen the title of this post. And most of you will have sensed a connection. This being a part three to the story.

Well, this one is a little different. This time around I kinda like the music in question. But I’m not sure that what we’re seeing is all that fair – or all that wise.

First, it’s worth reminding that NZ on Air had an “independent review” – aka The Caddick Report. It’s not for us to complain that Chris Caddick is an industry insider and far from independent. The report that he was paid handsomely for has been tabled. It’s in effect. NZ on Air stopped funding albums – a few years too late. Though again, I’m personally not sure that funding albums was ever so wrong. But funding the wrong albums was not right.

Anyway, we’re into the new rules now: albums are out and NZ on Air is running a programme called Making Tracks where it’s about funding singles and videos – sometimes you get the combined money for both (up to a whopping $10,000) and sometimes it’s just the money for the video (up to $6000). The artist has to put in $2000 of their own money.

And Caddick, former managing director for EMI and, according to the story I’m about to link to, “prominent cheerleader for local artists”, is now the head of the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ). So that’s his new post this year.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is Ruban Neilson’s new project. You may remember him from The Mint Chicks.

Neilson’s UMO released a song called Ffunny Ffriends over a year ago. It was uploaded to Bandcamp, the online music delivery service; a chance for people to preview then pay for a track if they like it. He wanted to see how it would do. People liked it, and he made an album.

I think the album’s all right, actually. I don’t quite get the buzz from it that some do. But it’s not bad. It’s certainly far more to my taste that Autozamm or Annabel Fay – or for that matter Opshop, Midnight Youth or Fat Freddy’s Drop. And there are some tracks I really like (Little Blu House) and sometimes when I play the album through I think it’s pretty neat. Other times I end up thinking it’s only half of an album. And that maybe it’s being hyped for the fact that Neilson has decided to stay in Portland, America – he had been over there toward the end of The Mint Chicks’ career.

And so this has arrived in New Zealand via some hype from Pitchfork and with the announcement that The Unknown Mortal Orchestra has signed to a cool American indie label. In fact a few of them were gathered around to bid for the group. In the end Neilson went with Fat Possum.

I seem to be hearing more in the album each time I listen to it – as of course is the way (or at least you hope so). So I’m confident that it will continue to grow for me. I still don’t see it as any kind of five-star classic but it’s interesting and yet still accessible. That in itself is no mean feat.

So I was excited when I received a copy of NZ Musician in the post yesterday. I saw that there was an article about The Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

I was a baffled to read the whining attitude of how it’s harder touring America than New Zealand (“I love playing but it’s not like I enjoy sitting in a van for eight hours a day”). Presumably he chose to live in America – it’s a bigger pool to fish in and from. And he’s managed to be paid for his album from a label. He even boasts that Fat Possum “were competing against all the other big indies, so they wouldn’t get anything if they weren’t aggressive”.

And then to contradict the touring whinge, the article concludes with Neilson announcing, “I don’t want to be living in New Zealand at the moment because I want to be busy. I was getting bored in New Zealand. I am too restless for it, so it’s good to be here.”

So he’s too restless for New Zealand but also too restless for the eight-hour van trips that allow him to play far more frequently and (potentially) to far more people. Well, you can’t have it both ways, can you?

Ah, but with NZ on Air you can. This artist, bored of New Zealand, living abroad, whose latest project arrived via the hype of the blogosphere and particularly the American websites (such as Pitchfork), managed to receive a $6000 video grant in July of this year for the song he wrote and released in America last year; a song that appears on an album paid for by an American label.

But what happens when the band wants to go and make a video? Well, that’s where you and I, Joe and Jill Kiwi, come in. You know, the people from the place that Ruban Neilson is bored of. We come in with our taxpayer dough and the NZ on Air people decide it will look good if we channel some in the direction of The Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

It’s not just Ruban Neilson who’s having it both ways though. His success will be claimed, retrospectively, as being assisted by NZ on Air. Who’s more at fault, do you think? Neilson for milking the funding because it’s (still) there? Or NZ on Air for seeking to capitalise on an artist who’s done the legwork, made the breaks, and could be seen as some flag-bearer for NZ on Air and New Zealand in general? (Don’t worry about how bored you are, Ruban, just wave the flag will ya. That’s a boy!)

The whole system is still a joke. Well that’s what I think.

Incidentally you can read the whole NZ Musician article right here (to check the quotes I’ve used). And see here for the latest list of NZ on Air funding decisions from the July 2011 round.

So is it just me who thinks this is deplorable? See, I reckon that guy should have to put up with how boring it is here if he wants our money. What do you think? And why are NZ on Air still looking to pat themselves on the back for the hard work done by anyone else?

Speaking only of new shows on TV, Nothing Trivial seems to be the biggest hit of these long winter months. It’s an entertaining show with a loaded cast (fronted by familiar faces Blair Strang, Shane Cortese, Tandi Wright, andNicole Whippy), created and written by some incredible and proven talent (Gavin Strawhan and Rachel Lang), and has quickly become appointment viewing at OTB headquarters.

It also appeals to my love of pub quizzes. While team Sex On A Stick go to war with the likes of Quiz Team Rankin and the Blondeshells in the uber-competitive battleground of The Beagle, I’ve been known to join a few friends at the odd pub quiz here in my hometown of Whangarei, for a less than serious evening of trivia and laughs – though we did win a $20 bar tab for coming second-to-last one time.

There is one major difference at the pub quizzes I’ve been to: the questions and answers don’t mysteriously intertwine with my life, in the way they do with the lives of the characters on Nothing Trivial. It could be that I’ve just never noticed the coincidence, but I’m not convinced this is something that would occur in real life.

So, I devised a test – and by “test”, I mean “get together with friends for a few beers and a quiz”.

In an effort to figure out if the questions at a local pub quiz would intertwine with our lives, I joined four mates* at theParua Bay Tavern, a wonderful place just out of Whangarei, to take on their pub quiz (provided by Believe It or Not Quiz Events). Here’s what happened:

Whose logo is this? One of the first rounds was called Branded and consisted of pictures of famous logos with the wording cut out. The sixth logo was for Google Chrome – my browser of choice! … okay, that’s a weak link, but whatever. I’m counting it.

Ponderous Puzzle. Believe It Or Not quizzes feature a cryptic puzzle at the end of each round – as the night moves on, the clues get easier but the points for a correct answer get lower. The first clue indicated a man who died at 73 years old, studied as an Anglican parson, and appears on the back of an English £10 note. Luckily one of our extended team members had an English £10 note in his wallet from a recent trip to the UK. We’ll have the maximum 10 points, thank you!

TV, Stage and Cinema. In the second round, consisting of a swag of entertainment questions, we scored 9/10 and claimed double points. Naturally I nailed the TV-related questions: The family on My Wife and Kids share a name with which character on South Park? (Kyle); Which show features the wife from Everybody Loves Raymond and the janitor from Scrubs? (The Middle); Which famous Kiwi actor is this? (accompanied by a photo of Joel Tobeck); and Which classic TV show is this? (accompanied by a clip from The Brady Bunch).

Which famous tourist town is this? This one was accompanied by photos of a cemetery and a two-story house, both of which I recognised from a trip to the little town of Russell, in the Bay of Islands, last summer.

Six Flags Magic Mountain is in the township of Valencia, in which US State: California, Georgia or Florida. It turned out one of my team-mates had been to Six Flags, and she quickly yelled out the correct answer (California). As for me, I’ve only been to Rainbow’s End a couple of times.

How many films are there in the Harry Potter film franchise? My teammates and I were talking about Harry Potter right before we headed out the door – my buddy James has never read the books or seen any of the films, while I’ve only seen the first movie in the franchise.

Just captured mob-boss James Bulger provided inspiration for a character in which Oscar-winning film? I was catching up on Bill Simmons’ work over at Grantland.com earlier this week – as a Boston native, he mentioned the capture of James “Whitey” Bulger in a column a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know who Bulger was, so I searched him on Google and found that he was the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed.

Was the recent test match at Lords between England and India the 500th, 1000th or 2000th test ever played?So there I am one night a couple of weeks ago, flicking between the sports channels on MySky, and I see the start of play on one of the days of that exact Lords test. The commentators’ discussion: whether Sachin Tendulkar (maybe the best cricketer of my lifetime) could get his 100th test century in this, the 2000th test ever played.

So there you have it: a few coincidences sprouting from 80-odd questions over the course of the entire evening. As you can see, it certainly seems as thouh the questions intertwined with real life at least a couple of times – enough to say that the premise of Nothing Trivial, in which only one or two questions correlate to the characters’ lives, is entirely possible. I’m calling it a success!

So are you watching Nothing Trivial? What do you make of the new Kiwi show so far? And do you enjoy pub quizzes as much as I do?

(*) A quick side story: we ended up with 16 people on our team after the five of us (in the Nothing Trivial style 3 women/2 men configuration) met three more friends at the bar. Soon after the quiz started, a couple at the next table joined our team when it appeared that their team-mates weren’t coming. However, a few minutes later, the other six members of their team showed up. Have you ever tried to do a table quiz with 16 people in your team? Madness!

Pub quizzes are a Tuesday night staple. All over Auckland, hotch-potch teams assemble, bevies in hand, to “name that celebrity/vegetable/musical score” and recall “who has won the most medals in this obscure sport: A, B, C or D”.

It’s a bit of fun, and an excuse to drink with purpose, but it’s also a mighty tough competition.

As Blair Strang, who plays a pub quiz regular on TV One’s new seriesNothing Trivial says, “social competition in New Zealand man, there’s no such thing, we are a competitive lot.”

The idea for a show about a group of characters in their mid-thirties and early forties, whose lives intersect at a pub quiz comes from Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan, who recently masterminded Go Girlsand This Is Not My Life.

“We had some characters in mind but we couldn’t quite find the right place for them to come together. And then Rachel went to a quiz night with her brother and thought ‘ah’,” says Strawhan.

“We thought an underlying theme could be that these people are busying themselves answering all the small questions and hoping the big ones will take care of themselves.”

And so emerged the stories of Catherine (Tandi Wright), Mac (Shane Cortese), Brian (Strang), Michelle (Nicole Whippy) and Emma (Debbie Newbie-Ward), who are all in something psychologists call “transition phases” – ie they’ve either hit crossroads or a dead end and something must change.

They meet in a pub called, The Beagle which Strawhan says almost becomes a character in itself. It takes its name from Charles Darwin’s ship and is adorned with Victorian collectables.

“The Victorian idea was going out in the world and trying to collect the examples of God’s work so hopefully if you put it together you might come up with the big answers, so we called the pub the Beagle after Darwin’s ship, and thought we could tie in the whole idea of second chances, and that stage in life when you want answers,” Strawhan says.

Tandi Wright’s character, Catherine, the solo mother and general practitioner who has given up her job and home in France to look after her supposedly ill mother, seems to be asking herself, ‘is this it?’

Dressed in classic, inoffensive tones, Catherine is the kind of uncompromising woman who likes the idea of sitting alone in a bar with a good book and a glass of wine.

“What I love about Catherine is that she has self-esteem, so she doesn’t feel like she needs to please people, she is prepared to sit and let people rabbit on, she’s not going to mop up the conversation and make them feel comfortable. It’s not that she’s arrogant but I think some people might perceive her as that because she doesn’t want anything from them,” Wright says.

The first episode will see her appease her meddling mother by going on a date with a wealthy man named Richard, who does not tick all her boxes of passion and romance.

“I think one of Catherine’s biggest things is passion. I think she realises she is missing passion. She is a real romantic and would love to be swept off her feet by someone she is going to have a really great time with. She’s not going to settle for anything less than that,” Wright explains.

“It’s an interesting conundrum and she’s in the process of working it out. Is she lonely, or is she fine?”

Meanwhile Cortese’s character Mac is wilting after his wife left him for a younger, more muscular model, and is dragged along to the local watering hole by his womanising friend Brian.

Cortese says he loves that the show is filled with real-life stories about good people, and expects it will strike a nerve with many New Zealanders who have been through exactly the same thing.

“It happens every day in this country. When people in their 40s or whatever decide that their relationships aren’t right or things have changed in their lives and are going through crises or whatever. Mac’s left to pick up the pieces and hold the fort with the kids. And it’s quite nice to see that from a male perspective, because quite a lot of the time it’s the male that walks out.”

Despite the pain of what has just happened to him, Cortese says it has been refreshing to play a character that is not driven by the dark side, “a bright, normal happy, man”.

“He doesn’t die, he’s not a god of fire, he’s not naughty, so it was fun,” he says.

“I have been lucky enough to play some fantastic characters, but this one here, to me, is one that I would love to be. I would love to have the ethics and morals and life of Mac.”

Strang won’t reveal which aspects of his character Brian are like his true self but says there were definitely traits that he recognised in himself.

He describes his character as a hard worker, and good bloke who knows what he wants. Certain events in Brian’s past mean he finds it difficult to commit, and audiences will get a better understanding of why that is as the series progresses. While Catherine specialises in the French and medical trivia, Mac excels at general knowledge and brands, Michelle aces the celebrity and entertainment questions and Emma the school teacher knows all about cooking and animals, Brian shines in the sports and retro music sections of the quiz. “He is a product of the 80s,” Strang says.

As none of the actors were pub quiz afficionados, they attended one prior to filming, where Strang says he won points for a question about the early 90s film Father of the Bride. Wright admits her trivia retention needs a little work, and Cortese hopes next time he attends a quiz there are a few questions about airline codes, so he can draw on his previous career as a travel agent.

The team didn’t win, but looking around the room, the actors sawNothing Trivial had created characters that one could find in any pub quiz in Auckland.

“You will recognise these characters because they are you, they are your friends, it’s a show people can relate to because they will go out and they will meet these people,” says Cortese.

He thinks people are ready for a show that is heartfelt, honest, and not full of swearing, and Wright agrees.

“I’m pretty sure my mum will love it, I’m pretty sure my mother-in-law will and competitive men, too. It’s about the things we all go through on a daily basis, it’s about family life, the complications of having children and balancing that with a private life, it’s about the yearnings that haven’t gone away, and that time of your life when you go, hang on, is this all it is,” Wright says.

LOWDOWN

Who: Tandi Wright, Blair Strang and Shane Cortese star with Debbie Newbie-Ward and Nicole Whippy in Nothing Trivial, a new series written by Gavin Strawhan and Rachel Lang.

When and where: Wednesday July 20, 8.30pm on TV One

- TimeOut

By Jacqueline Smith