One of the most experienced writers for film and television in Australia and New Zealand, his numerous credits include notable local TV shows Close to Home (1975-83), Mortimer's Patch (1980-84), Governor, the (1977), and Inside Straight (1984). He also did work for films The Last Tattoo and UTU, and Australian television series Medivacand Ocean Girl.

Keith Aberdein: not far from home

by Sue Green, NZ Journalist working in Australia
From the NZ Listener, September 1, 1984

The writer of the new TVNZ series Inside Straight is living in Australia because of his disenchantment with New Zealand television. But out of sight does not mean out of mind.

KEITH ABERDEIN says that in his heart there is no escaping the fact that New Zealand is home and that is where he would like to work.

But although he may not be able to escape that fact, he is certainly trying to turn his back on it. For now at least, he is content to be a member of what is called the New Zealand mafia at Crawford's, one of Australia's big two production houses.

Aberdein, television producer and sometime actor, is best known for his scriptwriting: The Governor, some Close to Home episodes and now the series Inside Straight.

It's entertainment trying to be about something, he says of the new 10-part series, which is based in Wellington's nightworld and tells the story of a young man from the country.

But despite his wish to express something about New Zealand society, Aberdein wrote two of the episodes from Australia, where he has spent the past nine months. I needed to escape New Zealand television for a while - or forever, I don't know which, he says. He went to Crawford's as a staff writer for Carson's Law, a weekly soap which has just been axed. It was rating well in Melbourne but not in Sydney or Adelaide. He later moved up to become the show's story editor (the person who devises the plots) and is producing its last 26 episodes.

They knew months ago it was in trouble but moved too late to save it. With a nine-month lead time between writing and screening, the rewritten episodes with extra sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll do not go to air until too late, Aberdein says.

He says there is no great stigma attached to working on a show which has been axed - it happens to them all eventually. Besides, having been given Crawford's "stamp of approval" with the chance to direct a network show is a valuable credential, even if it is a network show in its death throes. No one is saying it is my fault. Not yet, anyway, he says.

What happens when the 26 episodes are up is not yet certain, although Aberdein's contract with Crawford's will continue. But if he does return to New Zealand, It will be with a realistic, even cynical, view of what to expect

He concedes he is cynical. He could hardly do otherwise, having just said. of the need for New Zealand drama ontent on any third channel: Given that TV is basically crap, it IS better, to have your own than someone else's.

His criticisms of Televislon New Zealand are aimed at what he calls its safe, middle-of-the-road drama, a loss of integrity over the past five years and the attitude of the whole industry.

In New Zealand if you were putting any project together and you had 40 per cent of the people working on it wanting to be there, you were lucky. Here, if you don't have 85 per cent you are surprised. New Zealand people always foundd reasons not to do/things. And of course money - there's so much more available here, Aberdein says.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has just announced plans to commission independent producers to make programmes for it. Aberdein says TVNZ should do the same.

That vast monopoly of money. The country is not big enough to have two distinct groups of talent, one which works for television and one which works independantly. But there is enormous Resistance to it [combing the two]. Many Producers believe the money is theirs to use, not the community's. Aberdein gays

TVNZ and its audience would be a lot better off if there was an input from right across the board. People who work in a system for long enough tend to think the same. They become the same.

He has not been a silent critic of TVNZ. He says he still faces a $1 million libel writ taken out against him by the director-general of TVNZ, Allan Martin, over a column he wrote for the Truth ' lastyear.

Aberdein, a former radio and television journalist in New Zealand and newspaper magazine journalist in Hong Kong, says that writ is another reason why he may be less than welcome back at TVNZ in the near future. But he says the recently tabled report of the broadcasting commission of inquiry vindicates the criticisms he made in that column.

As well as Inside Straight, another of Aberdein's shows is due to be screened on New Zealand television later this year. It is a 90-minute teledrama about the life of local author Robin Hyde, and stars Helen Morse of A Town Like Alice fame. It [Iris] was a co-production with Endeavour Films because TVNZ was not game to go it alone on the most daring thing it has done, Aberdein says.

Aberdem may be in Australia, but the impact of his work and his work and his views seem likely to be felt across the Tasman for quite some tlme, whether or not he decides to return.

His work on New Zealand television includes:

The award-winning children’s writer of over 30 acclaimed novels for young adults, as well as a highly successful television scriptwriter. His books for young adults engage with the historical, the fantastical, and science fiction.

Listener Profile 26th October 1981

Auckland television writer Ken Caton has been very busy since he took up full-time writing nearly six years ago. Before then he had had a variety of Jobs which he used as "meal tickets" so that he could devote his spare time to his "career" of writing.

When TV1 and TV2 were established as separate entities he took the plunge and for two years precarious living as a freelance writer. Gradually he got more and more work until now he has reached a peak.

He has written for Hunter's Gold, Close to Home, Radio Waves, Mortimer's Patch, Castaways and Under the Mountain.

Also, he has scripted a number of documentaries and wrote TV2's first drama Spanish Lady.

Catran says he'd like to try novel writing some time and believes TV writing is excellent training for this as it teaches the process and structure necessary for producing a novel.

Next year he will be working as a series writer for Close to Horne and is hoping that the government will introduce private television which he feels will open new avenues for writers in New Zealand.

He lives with three Cats and a collection of Edwardian and Victorian books. 

His work for KiwiTV screens included:

Alfred Flett was born in Sunderland England, moving to New Zealand with his family when he was eleven. He worked a journalist in New Zealand for The Truth and Sunday News and also wrote for print, radio and TV:

The Emden Story (1963) Reconstructed from material by Captain Taprell Darling. A dramatised production in three parts for the National YA radio network of the epic of the German light cruiser, Emden, in the First World War.

Party Line (1964) In this novel Flett and David Yerex describe much fun in skylarking about at Kakarini, a one-pub town in North Auckland.

All Earth to Love (1963) The first drama to be written for local television.

He later moved to the UK where he worked in Fleet Street and wrote a novel:

Never Shake A Skeleton (1973)

Freeman, an operative for the establishment is led by a beautiful blonde to believe he could win a war. But he found, to his horror, that his own side played rougher than the wartime enemy. He tried again-thirty years later. This was his second error. He shook some skeletons. And 'Freeman' found, once more, that his own side were the toughest antagonists of them all...

One of New Zealand major literary figures, Maurice Gee's work writing for the small screen is often forgotten when his literary history is discussed, as nearly all his work on Close to Home (1975-83) and Mortimer's Patch (1980-84) is tragically confined to the TVNZ archives. Some of his novels have been adapted for TV, including Under the Mountain (1981), Fire-Raiser (1986), and Champion, the (1989).

In an interview with Andrew Johnston he briefly discussed his TV writing:

Children's fiction began partly as a deliberate attempt to widen my writing base, and also because I had young children and wanted to write something for them, but certainly it was an attempt to make more money. That's why I went to TV, too—I simply wrote to the people who produced Close to Home . . . I wrote about 11 episodes of that. When I say I wrote them, I did the dialogue for them.

 I could turn an episode around in about three days and get $200 or $300 for it, which was great money in those days .  . . that's how I lived, writing dialogue for television. Mortimer's Patch followed—I really enjoyed Mortimer's Patch and was very disappointed when they stopped it after two series.

In his book Maurice Gee (New Zealand Writers and Their Work) (1987) Bill Manhire wrote:

Gee has also turned to more lucrative kinds of writing. He is serious and thoroughly professional about the work he does for television. Much of it has been satisfying, but not in the way that writing novels can be...Gee has reservations about working with material that is 'precut'. It means writing dialogue for characters originated by someone else. Plots have to be paced to accommodate commercial breaks; budgetary constraints determine locations and shooting schedules. There is also the audience to think of: 'Because I'm writing for prime-time viewing I've got to be only half a writer.

Comments:

A J Rush Saturday, 25 May 2019
Wow just reading Maurice Gee's latest book Memory Pieces - which I brought at the Auckland Writers Festival and after seeing it nominated for the major prize at the Ockham NZ Book awards... I can't put it down, it is brilliant! He is quite something this writer of ours   

Daza Saturday, 01 June 2019
Agreed, one of New Zealand's greats.  I saw he was going to be at the festival but sadly didn't manage to get along, but did see him many years ago about the time Going West was published and it was a real treat.

It's a national disgrace that more of the shows he worked on work for the screen aren't currently publicly available to watch, especially as shows like Mortimer's Patch were made by TVNZ and paid for by taxpayer dollars. It's a huge failure of successive governments and the public agencies involved that the technical and rights issues haven't been dealt by now.

Novels

The Big Season (1962)
A Special Flower (1965)
In My Father's Den (1972)
A Glorious Morning Comrade (1975)
Games of Choice (1976)
Under the Mountain (1979)
The World Around the Corner (1980)
Plumb (1978)
Meg (1981)
The Halfmen of O (1982)
Sole Survivor (1983)
The Priests of Ferris (1984)
Motherstone (1985)
Fire-Raiser (1986)
Collected Stories (1986)
Prowlers (1987)
Champion, the (1989)
The Burning Boy (1990)
Going West (1992)
Crime Story (1994)
The Fat Man (1995)
Plumb Trilogy, the (1995)
Loving Ways (1996)
Live Bodies (1998)
Orchard Street (1998)
Hostel Girl (1999)
Ellie and the Shadow Man (2001)
The Scornful Moon (2003)
Blindsight (2005)
Salt (2007)
Gool (2008)
Access Road (2009)
The Limping Man (2010)

Non-fiction

Memory Pieces (2018)

Cover Gallery

{gallery}people/book_covers/maurice_gee{/gallery}

TV Shows

Writer, historian, critic and humorist.

Roger Hall was born in England in 1939 and emigrated to New Zealand in 1958. He worked first for State Fire Insurance, later working as a teacher and editor with the Education Department before winning the Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1977. Hall was based in Dunedin as teaching fellow in the English Department where he taught the playwriting course, until he moved to Auckland in 1995.

Hall's early scripts were for television, and he went on to write many successful play productions followed, together with musicals, pantomimes, radio dramas, books and plays for children and comedy series for television, including Conjugal Rites which was produced as a sitcom in the UK.

Craig Harrison was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1942 and came to New Zealand in 1966 to join the English Department at Massey University where he specialized in literature and art history. 

Books

How to be a Pom (Dunmore Press, 1975),

Broken October (Reed, 1976),

The Quiet Earth (Hodder and Stoughton, 1981),

Ground Level (Dunmore Press, 1981),

Days of Starlight (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988),

Grievous Bodily (Penguin, 1991),

The Dumpster Saga (Scholastic 2007).

Plays

Tomorrow will be a lovely day (Reed, 1975), which won the Elmwood Jubilee Prize in 1974,

Ground Level (Radio NZ production,1974) which won the J.C. Reid Award in 1974,

The Whites of Their Eyes (Radio NZ production, 1974) which won the NZ Theatre Federation Prize 1974.

He has also written for television:

Author, screenwriter, national treasure.

Sad to hear of her passing as I've been reading A Summery Saturday Morning  to my young daughter a lot recently. I used to own her VHS copy of Akirawhich she sold at a charity auction during a SciFi Convention in Christchurch, New Zealand. She heartily recommended the film and was very enthusiastic about talking to folks there about storytelling of all kinds which I thought was rather cool.

Mahy’s books have sold all over the world, beginning with her first international success, The Lion in the Meadow, in 1969.

She followed this book with The Haunting, which won The Carnegie medal in Britain, and since 1980 she has been a full time writer.

Mahy worked as children’s librarian at Canterbury Library until then, writing in her spare time.

She has written more than 100 books, and says sitting in her bottom drawer is an 800-page novel that will probably never be published.

Margaret Mahy began writing at the age of seven, when she thought that the longer the story was the better it would be.

Mahy admits that she finds writing for television more difficult than writing a book. Television is primarily a visual medium and I find I need to relate to language rather than images. I’ve learnt to modify my style to make it more appropriate to television.

She says she never runs out of fresh ideas and finds them, in the most unusual places. I was walking past the Fendalton fish shop and I saw a sign advertising ‘Pot Boiling owls’ but the F had fallen off the Fowls and this crystallised into a sort of narrative.

Press, 8 December 1989 Puppet series co-scripted by Margaret Mahy

Overseas Productions

Aliens in the Family (1987)
Dramarama [The Horrible Story] (1987)
Playbus (The Princess and the Clown & Thunderstorms and Rainbows)

New Zealand Shows

Bruce Mason was born in Wellington in 1921 and educated at Takapuna Grammar School, Wellington Boys College and Victoria University - graduating with a BA in 1945.

From 1941-45 he was on active service, gaining a commission in the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1944. During this period he served on the Murmansk convoys and was also involved with the invasion of Europe. In 1945 he married Diana Manby Shaw (2d, 1s).

He was research assistant for the War History Branch 1946-48 and assistant curator of manuscripts at the Alexander Turnbull Library 1948-49. Following travel to Europe, he became Public Relations Officer for the New Zealand Forest Service, 1951-57. He served as radio, record and music critic for the NZ Listener and was drama critic for the Dominion 1958-60 and again in 1973-80. From 1980 he transferred to the Evening Post.

In 1960-61 Bruce was Editor of Te Ao Hou for the Department of Māori Affairs and from 1967-70 edited the theatre magazine Act. Actively involved in all aspects of New Zealand literature Bruce was a founder and president of the NZ branch of PEN and from 1948-60 was variously president, secretary and committee member of Wellington's Unity Theatre. In 1963 he toured Eastern Europe, was New Zealand Delegate to the International Drama Conference in Edinburgh and performed The End of the Golden Weather at that years Edinburgh Festival. His play The Pohutukawa Tree was produced by BBC Television in 1959.

Sunday-Night Theatre presents: The Pohutukawa Tree
Sun 18th Oct 1959, 20:45 on BBC Television (UK)

In New Zealand the Pohutukawa Tree is well known to have a legendary significance in the life of the Māori people. The play is set in Te Parenga, a beach settlement on the Hauraki Gulf, about forty miles from Auckland. The time is the present.

Contributors
Writer: Bruce Mason
Designer: Richard Wilmot
Producer: John Jacobs
Queenie Mataira: Hermione Gregory
Roy McDowell: Noel Trevarthen
The Rev. Athol Sedgwick: Philip Latham
Aroha Mataira: Hira Tauwhare
Johnny Mataira: Norman Florence
Mrs. Atkinson: Madge Ryan
Sylvia Atkinson: Bridget Armstrong
Mr. Atkinson: Redmond Phillips
George Rawlings: Terence Bayler
Dr. Lomas: Newton Blick
Claude Johnson: Lloyd Lamble
Mrs. Johnson: Lesley Jackson
John Dexter, Sergeant of Police: Jerold Wills

A full time writer, actor and director, Bruce gave over 1,000 solo performances of The End of the Golden Weather. In 1977 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Literature by Victoria University, a QE II Arts Council Fellowship and, in 1980, the CBE.

He died at the end of 1982 shortly after completing three plays for television.

His work for the small screen in New Zealand included:

Greg McGee was born in Oamaru in 1950 and educated at Waitaki Boys' High School and Otago University, graduating with an LLB in 1973. His first play, Foreskin's Lament, was workshopped at Playmarket's first New Zealand Playwrights' Conference in Wellington in 1980 and subsequently presented by every major New Zealand theatre company. Foreskin's Lament was described as "a quantum leap forward in New Zealand drama" (NZ Listener).

He writes not only for stage, but also film and television.

At the beginning of 2007 McGee left his production company, ScreenWorks, to concentrate on writing - fiction and non-fiction

Tall Tales (some True)

isbn: 9780143009139

Greg McGee's haphazard journey as unlikely writer, rebellious rugby player, ambivalent protestor, lawyer and defendant, mutineer tourist, dilettante coach and incompetent kangaroo culler has taken him from Ponsonby to Paraburdoo, Tapanui to Harlem, Dunedin to Venice and various other T-shirt destinations. During this time he has crossed paths with a diverse cast of characters, from Peter Mahon to Keith Murdoch, Peggy Guggenheim to Duncan Laing, Ken Gray to Billy T. James, Raymond Hawthorne to Bert Potter, not to mention Grizz Wylie, Janet Frame's brother, Sicilian witches, Vincent van Gogh and writers, actors, producers and other denizens of stage and screen. Tall Tales (Some True) is an unabashedly subjective account of that journey, and of the backstage mechanics of a particular writer's life. It is a seriously entertaining attempt to answer the question writers get asked most often - 'Where do you get your ideas from?'

Christchurch born writer.

Meet Joe Musaphia - The Serious side of comedy on TV

by Hannah Templeton, (13 October 1969) New Zealand TV Weekly.

A TV comic, to most people, is a gay extrovert throwing oil gags. telling rib-cracking stories, and tossing in a few hand-stands for good measure.

The more discerning viewer of course. looking at, say, the credits for a David Frost Show with his 14 or so scriptwriters, knows it is not all as spontaneous as it appears.

Meet a TV comic in person and you discover just how hard he has to work to raise those belly-laughs.

Joe Musaphia is the first genuine comic talent to be "discovered" by New Zealand Television. And the thing that surprises you about him is his seriousness. He has a big, slightly leonine and rather sad face. In the street he looks just another New Zealander. It's only in close-up you get.the measure of his mobile, wonderfully expressive features.

Unlike The David Frost Show, the NZBC's In View of Circumstances had only two scriptwriters - Joe Musaphia and Roger Hall. They wrote the material for the sixty-odd sketches that went into the six-part series and many more that producer Terry Bryan turned down. Joe, in addition, appears in many of them

Though viewer reaction has been uneven, In View of the Circumstances, as a pioneer effort, has broken new ground - and it is to be hoped the NZBC will be encouraged to press on with the development of the Musaphia talent.

The Starting Point

In View of the Circumstances had its genesis last November when a short audition programme was started. And then in February and March, the writers, with the producer, got to work on the scripts, and by April taping of the programme began. Four months later the series was completed - and the cast exhausted. It has been a marathon effort behind the scenes.

Joe Musaphia, as one would expect, is an interesting character. He was born in London in 1935 and left there with his family in 1938 to settle in Australia. We lived there until we came to Christchurch in 1946. After eight years there I moved on to Wellington where apart from a couple of years in London I have been ever since.

He began work as an apprentice motor mechanic, then became a truck driver, and did all sorts of labouring jobs. He worked in shops and then turned his hand to commercial art. During this period he draw cartoons which were published in The Listener. He wrote a play Called Free which Richard Campion produced for the New Zealand Theatre Workshop. After that I threw up everything and took up writing.

Without any training? So far, yes - and the eyebrows twitch whimsically.

He has written about 30-odd plays for radio - the only paying market open to him.

I asked him how he and Roger Hall co-operated on In View of the A Circumstances. Actually, each of us submitted our own sketches. The producer selected the ones he thought were best. We might discuss them together, change a few lines, and then let the actors loose on them. I prefer to work on my own.

The Ideas Book

Where does he get his ideas from? I have a bookful of ideas. I keep filling it up. I read a lot, listen a lot, look a lot. And from this collection of ideas I try to, switch one into a radio play or a TV idea, whatever I can.

What are the problems, the difficulties, in writing a Television revue?

Well, the real problem is that there is no precedent at all for this yet. We are in a completely new field. We have got subjects that no one else has touched because no Kiwi has written about New Zealand in this way.

It is going to be interesting to see, once we get our faces and our style accepted, what we can do. If we become a little breeding ground for this kind of show it will be really first class.

Joe says that TV is without a doubt the most satisfying thing he has done. Before In View of the Circumstances he did a children's show. That was really a two-year apprenticeship. It taught me all the technical side of TV that I feel a writer should know. I enjoyed it immensely. It was a crash programme in Television for me.

He says he likes many different kinds of: humour - the Goons when they started, the Tony Hancock show, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Charlie Chaplin, Thurber - as long as they give me a good laugh, that's all I am after.

As for Joe, he writes just what he thinks he would laugh at. This is the only judge in the end. Does this strike me as funny? I am very lucky if someone else laughs at it.

What motivates him? The driving force is that old bank balance. That is the dictator. It is as simple as that.

Writing for stage

Although he has found TV satisfying, his main ambition is to write stage plays. This is what I want to do more than anything else. But I feel I have to get on to a decent plot. I feel I will come down on it soon, but I am still working on it.

New Zealand of course offers little scope for. a writer. Joe himself is heading into his tenth year as a freelance. During that decade he worked for a couple of years delivering groceries every morning. He also did a national tour, with the New Zealand Theatre Centre with Oh, What a Lovely War. There was a bit of money from that, he says.

He gave up the world of advertising after he wrote the play Free.

I wanted to write and I decided this would suit me fine. I felt I really could express myself, for what it was worth, as a writer. Once I had given up the job, I applied for a State Literary Fund grant. They gave me £250 and I felt that was enough to. keep me going for six months. I was single then. I tried my hand as an actor because I figured that if I was going to write I should have some idea about acting. I joined Stagecraft Theatre in Wellington. They were very good to me. That- was the start for me as far as acting was concerned. I never looked back.

Later profile from Playmarket

Remembered for the Judy Anne and the Fang Family programme, one of the most popular children’s features the channel had produced. American-born, Nash wrote the scripts which made Ferguson Fang so famous; his inclusion in it of jokes and asides aimed at older people had the parents watching with their children.

Source: Press, 1 June 1971

Noonan grew up in the southern South Island, in Dunedin and Oamaru. After leaving school he began writing, notably drama such as The Rattle, whilst supplementing his income through work in radio and stage acting and as a regional television newsreader. He moved to Auckland in 1965, where he began writing for television. In 1969, he became the first script editor for the newly created television drama department of the NZBC. In this capacity he worked alongside and helped mentor a group of new writing talent including the likes of Roger Hall and Fiona Kidman. He left his editing position in the early 1970s, and in the proceeding years scripted several series

Actor also writer

The Press 30 Oct 1984

Simon O'Connor appears in tonight's episode (#10) of "Inside Straight (1984)' as a guest actor. but he is now busy' working on the new TVNZ drama series "Roche (1985)" - as a writer.

Produced by the "Inside Straight" producer, Peter Muxlow, "Roche" is about the stresses and strains on a modem-day city family. There are three writers involved, each responsible for three episodes.

Before be began work on "Roche" at the beginning of the year, O'Connor had written one full-length stage play - "The Song of Johnny Muscle" - a few shorter pieces in collaboration with others, and also spent eight months writing for the Television New Zealand serial, "Close to Home (1975-83)."

He now has an idea for another full-length play and: with the aid of the $2000 Bruce Mason Award for Playwrights that he recently collected, he plans to work on this next year when he has finished his work for "Roche. "

O'Connor, aged 35, has worked in theatre since the age of 18, initially as an actor, but later moving into writing and directing as well. He says he drifted into acting, more by default than anything else, because nothing else "grabbed" him His portrayal of a former Japanese prisoner of war in an episode. of "Country GP (1984-85)" was highly praised.

He says that writing is likely to be the dominant thing in his life from now on, but this does not mean be will not be doing any more acting or directing. '

O'Connor has lived in the Wairarapa country town of Featherston for the last two years. He says he likes to spend his spare time going. for long walks. on country roads.

"Inside Straight" will be replaced next week by a new British series called "Give Us A Break."