2021 New Zealand Television Awards Winners

Aotearoa’s broadcasting industry celebrated the best of the nation’s television achievements on March 1, 2022 with the announcement of the 2021 New Zealand Television Awards winners, with actor-writer-comedian Thomas Sainsbury hosting the online presentation due to Covid precautions making a public event impractical.

Finalists Announcement

(Auckland - November 25, 2021) The New Zealand Television Awards are delighted to announce the 2021 finalists, with a total of 117 nominations from more than 530 entries across 37 judged categories.

Of this year's finalists, content screened on TVNZ 1 received a total of 28 nods, followed by content on Three with 26 nominations, TVNZ 2 with 18, Māori Television with nine, Prime with four, Sky with three, and Choice TV with one. Nominations for programmes whose primary platform is a digital or streaming service increased in 2021. Digital platforms represented among this year's finalists include Neon, TVNZ OnDemand, RNZ, Netflix, Stuff, YouTube, The Coconet TV and The Spinoff.

In the news and current affairs categories, 2020 Best News Coverage winner Newshub is up for five nominations this year, including two nods for Best Presenter: News & Current Affairs (Tova O'Brien and Patrick Gower), Reporter of the Year (Michael Morrah, winner of the category last year) and dual nominations in the Best News Coverage category. The Hui, produced by Great Southern Television for Three, is a finalist in four categories including Best Current Affairs Programme, Te Māngai Pāho Best Māori Programme and host Mihingarangi Forbes is nominated for both Reporter of the Year and Best Presenter: News & Current Affairs, the category she won last year. TVNZ has three nominations in the news and current affairs categories including Best Current Affairs Programme (Seven Sharp) and two nods in Best Presenter: News & Current Affairs (Jack Tame and Simon Dallow). Stuff Circuit also has three nominations including Reporter of the Year (Paula Penfold), Best Editing: Documentary/Factual (Toby Longbottom) and Best Camerawork: Documentary/Factual (Phil Johnson). Māori Television's Te Ao with Moana received two nominations including Best Current Affairs Programme and Te Māngai Pāho Best Māori Programme.

Also nominated for Te Māngai Paho Best Māori programme are Great Southern Television's RNZ documentary NZ Wars: Stories of Tainui, as well as the fourth series of 2019 category winner The Casketeers.

In the drama categories, Warner Bros NZ's Black Hands, the TVNZ primetime series chronicling the Bain family murders and adapted from the Stuff podcast of the same name, leads the nominations with a total of 10 nods including NZ On Air Best Drama Series, Screen Auckland Best Director Drama (David Stubbs), Best Actor (Joel Tobeck), Best Editing: Drama (Allanah Bazzard), Best Contribution to a Soundtrack (Ben Sinclair, Matt Stutter, Ray Beentjes, Steve Finnigan), Images & Sound Best Original Score (Karl Steven), Best Postproduction Design (Alana Cotton), Best Production Design (Nick Williams), Best Make-Up Design (Gabrielle Jones) and Best Script: Drama (Gavin Strawhan).

The Gulf, produced by Lippy Pictures and Screentime New Zealand along with Letterbox Filmproduktion (Germany), receives six nominations. The crime drama series aired on Three in New Zealand and is a finalist in: NZ On Air Best Drama Series, Best Supporting Actress (Alison Bruce), Best Production Design (Miro Harré), and double nods in both Best Editing: Drama (Eric de Beus and Gretchen Peterson) as well as in Best Cinematography: Drama (Dave Cameron NZCS, ACS and Rewa Harré).

Rounding out the NZ On Air Best Drama Series category are Creamerie and Rūrangi which are each up for four awards in total, while Vegas, Westside, The New Legends of Monkey and Mystic received multiple nominations in the performance and craft areas.

Winner of the 2020 NZ On Air Best Pasifika category Tikilounge Productions is nominated again in 2021 with two finalists in the category: Teine Sa: The Ancient Ones which screened on Prime and The Coconet TV, and the RNZ documentary Untold Pacific History. Also nominated in the category is Kingston Productions' Brutal Lives - Mo'ui Faingata'a for The Coconet TV, and Loimata: The Sweetest Tears, a feature documentary commissioned by Māori Television, which is also a finalist in NZ On Air Best Documentary and Best Director: Documentary (Anna Marbrook).

More than 20 years after the original Popstars series aired in Aotearoa, the series returned to TVNZ 2 in 2021 and is nominated for Best Original Reality Series alongside Workparty's Taranaki Hard and series 2 of Warner Bros NZ's David Lomas Investigates, both for Three. Pango Productions has two finalists in the Best Format Reality Series: National Treasures for TVNZ 1 and Match Fit for Three. Great Southern Television's The Apprentice Aotearoa (TVNZ 1) is also nominated in the category.

New Zealand Television Awards owners and producers Justine McKay and Andy Dowding of janda Productions say: This year's finalists are not just representative of the excellence within Aotearoa's television industry but also reflect the diversity of content and voices available to New Zealand viewers. We'd like to thank our event partners for their support of the Awards and look forward to coming together in the new year to celebrate the sector's achievements.

Finalists in the publicly voted Television Personality of the Year category and the 2021 Television Legend will be announced in the new year.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 New Zealand Television Awards gala has been postponed and winners will be announced on Tuesday 1 March, 2022 at a red carpet gala event held at Auckland's Shed 10. The ceremony will once again be hosted by actor-writer-comedian Thomas Sainsbury.

The 2021 New Zealand Television Awards finalists were: