Far North's far-fetched drug caper is all too real
A star-studded local drama turns a Northland drug bust into a Guy Ritchie-style misadventure. Mostly, it works - for two very good reasons. Plus, Asteroid City and Gran Turismo hit theatres.
I asked my wife a quick question on our commute recently. “When did you last discover a local drama show that you desperately wanted to see?” Her response? “Harry.” She’s referencing the excellently gritty Oscar Kightley cop show that came out in 2013 (only episode one is available for streaming). Ten years is a long time for someone not to connect with a local drama series, but it’s hard to argue with her answer. For many reasons, mostly financial, we don’t really make shows like Harry anymore. On Monday night, that changes, with something rare floating onto our screens. Finally, we have a local drama series worth getting excited about. Here’s why…
-Chris Schulz, Rec Room editor
Meet the cosy Kiwi couple at the centre of a $500 million drug bust
They’re in track pants and worn shirts. He’s wearing a dusty cap, she’s got pictures of poached eggs on her winter socks. The pair hunch over their dog, looking concerned. “You like that?” asks Heather, gently cuddling his mane. Her husband Ed holds a heat lamp over the legs of their ageing, arthritic golden retriever. “Good boy, Toby,” he says. Ed’s voice is instantly recognisable, a muscular presence that’s powered him through high-octane franchises like Speed, Aquaman and, more recently, Star Wars.
In Far North, Temuera Morrison has a far gentler role to play. Alongside Cheryl West herself, Robyn Malcolm, the pair play a small town Kiwi couple. They’re instantly familiar. It’s like you already know and love them. Heather and Ed have lived a life, they’re a little rough around the edges, but their hearts are in the right place, and they’re enjoying the quiet life. They look after their neighbours, swap gossip with friends on the beach and spend their evenings massaging the dog.
Morrison and Malcolm are very good at this. Of course they are: they’re veterans, local screen legends. It’s taken three decades to reunite the Shortland Street alums. Why that’s happened is almost certainly an indictment on our struggling local TV industry, yet all is forgiven the instant you see the two of them paired up in Far North. It’s an unmissable performance. If Far North was only about Heather and Ed living the good life, I’d happily tune in. You would too. Together, they’re dynamite.
Spoiler alert: Far North is not just about them. Set in the small Northland settlement of Ahipara, this six-part thriller is about far dodgier things. There’s a boat full of meth sitting off Ninety Mile Beach with a group of slowly starving Chinese sailors on board. There’s a Tongan-Australian gang trying to land those drugs on the beach to turn them into $500 million. And there’s a group of Chinese gangsters coordinating it all from overseas. Heather and Ed are the cosy couple caught up in the middle of this shitshow, and the rest of Far North’s chaos rotates around them.
I could tell you what happens next but it sounds so far-fetched you might accuse me of making it up. It’s the kind of thing Guy Ritchie might dream up on vacation. Much of the gang’s antics are so stupidly inept you have to wonder if it really happened. Yeah, it did. Go Google it (or don’t, if you want to avoid spoilers). Go read Jared Savage’s book Underbelly: Inside NZ's Biggest Meth Bust. This is serious. People are in jail. Patrick Gower spoke to one of them in the middle of a 27-year sentence.
So come for the crooks, if you like. How a bunch of wayward drug lords tried to land a boatload of meth on a Northland beach is a hell of a story. Far North’s creator David White certainly thinks so. He drove to Ahipara and knocked on the door of the real-life Heather and Ed as soon as he heard about it back in 2016. “I bought their life rights on the spot,” he says in the show notes. “It was like my Tiger King mixed with Narcos.” He fills Far North with prestige TV hallmarks: drone shots, text overlays, regular global city jumps, and dialogue drawn straight from court documents.
Not all of it works. Far North’s early moments vibe too comical for something so serious (Wellington Paranormal’s Karen O’Leary and Maaka Pohatu are in the cast). At first, the Tongan-Australians trying to land the drugs on the beach seem too flippant, and their stupidity is played for laughs. Likewise, the show’s Chinese gangsters come off like clichés, complete with their own soundtrack of Chinatown horns announcing their arrival. One has a particular attachment to blowtorches.
But by episode three, Far North finds calmer waters. That’s thanks largely to Robyn and Tem as Heather and Ed. They’re that rare thing, a couple of Kiwi characters you can instantly connect with. They feel like they could be from your own family, friend circle or workplace. They’re great company. “I’ll drop him off some smoked marlin to say thank you,” says Heather after watching her neighbour take a baseball bat to a group of gangsters loitering outside. No doubt that marlin will pair well with a jar of her homemade chow chow too.
Far North airs on Three on Monday at 8.30pm and is available for streaming on ThreeNow.
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Should you see Asteroid City?
I need to say this right at the top: this could be the Wes-iest Wes Anderson film yet. If you're already a fan, buckle in. And if you're a hater, stay well clear – because Asteroid City brings more of what we love (or hate) about Anderson. This time, the acclaimed Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel director turns his attention to sci-fi. Sort of. It's more an homage to the idea of science fiction films that plays on America's historic obsession with UFOs. There is no one else who could have made a film look or sound like this. It has the same youthful wonder as Anderson's best work, coupled with some of his zaniest cinematography yet. I worry that the ‘bit’ is running thin, and I don't know how many more films like this Anderson can pump out, but I was engrossed in Asteroid City from start to finish. / Stewart Sowman-Lund
Should you see Gran Turismo?
He was once a bow-drawing conqueror of Middle Earth and a heart-fluttering Huffer fit model. Now? In possibly the saddest cinematic sight of the year, 46-year-old Orlando Bloom is playing a marketing executive for Nissan. In Gran Turismo, a 140-minute advertisement for PlayStation’s car racing game and little more, Bloom’s not the only one slumming it. Neill Blomkamp, the former sci-fi wunderkind, is behind the camera for this overworked boardroom-approved film that lands with so many corporate tie-ins there’s little time left for things like fun, adventure, story or tension. Permanent grouch David Harbour manages to emerge unscathed, but this will please gamers, racing diehards, 13-year-old teens and almost no one else. / Chris Schulz
All the new stuff you can watch this weekend…
TV is mainlining drugs at the moment. On Monday night, Three’s local drug caper Far North launches off Ninety Mile Beach with Temuera Morrison, Robyn Malcolm and a real-life meth caper on board. It’s opening episode is wayward, but the boat soon steadies and Far North becomes something rare: a local drama worth getting excited about. First, though, is Painkiller, Netflix’s attempt to make sense of America’s opioid epidemic with Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler, the OxyContin kingpin. “It will absolutely make your skin crawl,” says one early review.
Elsewhere, Meryl Streep pops in to help out the DIY detectives in the third season of Only Murders in the Building, and while you’re on Apple TV+, you might want to try Strange Planet, the “wholesome” new animated show from the creators of Rick & Morty. Neon’s big new get is the CIA series Ghosts of Beirut (“A great thriller but a poor documentation of history,” said Collider).
Meanwhile, New Zealand viewers can finally watch From, a horribly-named but apparently very watchable sci-fi mystery box show about a nightmarish American town whose inhabitants can’t leave. Many critics have compared this to Lost, and shares a link with lead Harold Perrineau. “A smart, extremely watchable horror,” declared a critic for RogerEbert.com. Two seasons are available on TVNZ+ from midday today, so watch the trailer and decide if this is worthy of a weekend binge.
In theatres, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter and corporate cash-in Gran Turismo join the Barbieheimer fray, which still seems to be going strong judging by the sold out Oppenheimer screening I attended recently. Good luck to all who dare to hit the big screen up against the nuclear neon pink dominators. On streaming, Netflix has Gal Gadot’s spy story Heart of Stone and Prime Video has the royal rom-com Red, White and Royal Blue.
For more try our weekly New to Streaming guide.
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We have a date. Finally, the writer’s guild is going to sit down again with the streamers and studios it’s been striking against on August 11. The Hollywood Reporter has more.
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The Spinoff has a new podcast to shout about. Every Thursday, Remember When dives into the beautiful and bizarre pop culture moments that captured our nation. The first episode looks back on the time X Factor judges Natalia Kills and Willy Moon shocked the nation.
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That’s it for Rec Room for this week. If you liked what you read, why not share Rec Room with your friends and whānau.
