Inspired by true events, first-hand accounts and employing actual newsreel

footage, this drama follows the aftermath of the Earthquakes that befell New

Zealand’s Christchurch between 2010 and 2011, telling a universal story of

family, hope and triumph against the odds.

It’s the aftershocks that run the deepest, bringing to the surface all the lies we

tell ourselves and our loved ones, the things that truly matter to us, the

compassion of the many and the selfishness of the few. Covering a cross-

section of modern families, from the homeless pulling together to create a

community, to the middle-class suburbanites whose world has been shaken to

its foundations, Hope & Wire shows us at our most desperate and our most

hopeful. Echoing true events with a candid and unflinching eye, see what

emerges from the rubble.

Written and Directed by: Gaylene Preston

Produced by: Chris Hampson & Gaylene Preston

6 x 1 hour series

Gaylene Preston Productions

ABOUT THE SHOW - series description and synopsis

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HOPE & WIRE is a gripping, emotional, character-based drama set in

Christchurch after the devastating earthquakes of 2010-2011. Six one-hour

episodes follow characters who continue to live amid the ruins, despite

frequent disturbing aftershocks. Reflecting their fractured experiences, HOPE

& WIRE circles around overlapping worlds and viewpoints. Fate and destiny

collide in unpredictable ways as they all grapple with the “new normal”.

Inspired by true stories, HOPE & WIRE is named for the song by Adam

McGrath of much-loved Lyttelton band The Eastern, who also feature in the

series. This sometimes funny, often heart-wrenching drama is the brainchild

of filmmaker Gaylene Preston (Home By Christmas). Preston wrote the scripts

with Dave Armstrong (Billy) and directed the series. She produced it with

Chris Hampson (White Lies), and the executive producer is Sue Rogers

(Home By Christmas). The series is supported by the NZ On Air Platinum

Fund and will air on TV3 (tv3 to fill in the timing)

HOPE & WIRE stars an impressive cast, headed by Bernard Hill, best known

to younger viewers as King Theoden in Lord of the Rings, and to those with

long memories as Yosser Hughes in Boys From the Blackstuff. Rachel House

(White Lies), Jarod Rawiri (Fantail), Miriama McDowell (This Is Not My Life),

Luanne Gordon (Insider’s Guide to Happiness), Stephen Lovatt (Harry, Top of

the Lake), Joel Tobeck (Seige, Sons of Anarchy), Logie award-winner Chelsie

Preston Crayford (Underbelly: Razor), Anton Tennet (Romeo and Juliet: A

Love Story) and Kip Chapman (Top of the Lake) form the core of the large

ensemble cast.

As a result of open auditions held in Christchurch, Preston and her team

discovered two exciting new young actors: Christchurch schoolgirl Lucy

Wyma plays Hayley, Ginny and Jonty’s wayward daughter, and David

Sutherland plays Tim, her head-injured brother.

Several Christchurch actors contributed colourful performances including

Eilish Moran, who plays Deidre, Monee’s estranged mother, and many first-

time performers joined the cast, including Simo Abbari, a Christchurch falafel

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bar owner who plays Youssef, a Christchurch falafel bar owner.

Loren Taylor (Eagle vs Shark) and Dame Kate Harcourt (Apron Strings) play

cameo roles as Emma, Jonty’s devoted legal assistant and Dorothy, his 90-

year-old aunt – who, like many elderly people, coped well during the

emergencies but had difficulty once the quakes settled.

THE STORYJoycie (Rachel House) and Len (Bernard Hill), live in a downstairs flat in a

large mouldering wooden house just inside the Red Zone owned by local

small-time property developer Greggo (Joel Tobeck). When their kitchen is

munted (wrecked) and their telly falls over, Joycie and Len, self-confessed

couch potatoes, move into the backyard where they begin to feed stray

animals left abandoned by their ‘quake-runner’ owners. This generosity also

extends to people. Among them Dwayne (Anton Tennet), a homeless boy,

and Monee (Chelsie Preston Crayford), a feral girl with her dog on the run

from her abusive boyfriend King (Kip Chapman). When their landlord Greggo

tries to use new emergency powers to evict them, Len brings his somewhat

rusty union-organiser skills to the fore, raises a Canterbury rugby jersey as a

flag, and declares the “Free State Of Muntville”.

A world away, amid the white middle-class homes of Merivale, Ginny (Luanne

Gordon), a housewife and mother, discovers that none of her family were

where they said they would be on that dreadful day of the devastating

February 22 earthquake. Her husband Jonty (Stephen Lovatt), holds secrets

of his own that force Ginny to become the family’s breadwinner, causing her

to realise strengths she never knew she had.

Ryan (Jarod Rawiri), a construction worker, is living in his ute parked outside

his dream home in Atlantis in the eastern suburbs since his wife Donna

(Miriama McDowell), fled with their two little girls after falling into deep

liquefaction at their back door in the wake of the 7.1 jolt that started it all in

September 2010. As Donna thrives in Auckland, too terrified to return, Ryan

becomes the unofficial caretaker of Sunset Close as all their neighbours

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gradually move out. Self-medicating, lonely, and at risk from the criminal

elements roaming through the residential red zone, Ryan tries to fix what can’t

be fixed and loses what he loves the most.

As the city rises again, resilience, tolerance and human kindness are pitted

against greed and duplicity. Fate will always play a strong hand when in less

than a minute everyone’s lives are changed forever.

The creator of HOPE & WIRE, Gaylene Preston says “The lethal earthquake

of 2011 exposed stories of human resilience and courage in the face of

dreadful loss. HOPE & WIRE is set amid the ruins, illuminating common

experiences of living in the quake zone during the aftermath, surviving

aftershocks, some of which shook the city to bits. I am grateful to the people

of Christchurch who contributed in so many ways. HOPE & WIRE pays tribute

to everyone near and far whose lives will never be the same.”

EDISODES – short summary

Episode 1When Len and Joycie are jolted off their couch and into their backyard by a massive earthquake, they find their young neighbours unexpectedly helpful.

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But unsavoury elements are on the prowl and continuing aftershocks are shredding everyone’s nerves to breaking point.

Episode 2Tuesday February 22, 2011 dawns peacefully enough but little does Ginny know that at 12.51pm a lethal earthquake will reveal fractures in her family that she cannot ignore. Joycie fears for Len in Lyttelton, but to Monee the earthquake means freedom.

Episode 3In the post-earthquake ‘new normal’, Ryan is living in his ute outside his liquefied dream home. Joycie shines as camp mother to inner-city waifs and strays, while Jonty becomes ever more desperate to get to his office through the closed red zone cordon.

Episode 4Quake runner Donna is frustrated when Ryan visits the family in Auckland and can’t get the shaky city out of his mind. Ginny confronts Jonty over his guilty secrets. Monee, on the run and squatting in the deserted suburb Atlantis, puts Ryan in danger.

Episode 5Len and Joycie break the abuse cycle that has Monee in its grip, while dealing with the consequences of a TV interview in which Len has said too much. Dwayne shows he’s not so hopeless after all and Ryan realises the hard truth about his mate Greggo.

Episode 6Joycie’s honesty costs her her job caring for Aunt Dorothy and Len tries to make amends by organising a party with The Eastern playing. Ginny does a vital deal with Monee and makes a bid for her own freedom, while Ryan’s isolation takes him to the brink.

EPISODE ONE SYNOPSIS

Friday September 3, 2010 is a normal weekend night in Christchurch. The Eastern are playing and the pub is pumping. There is a disturbance at the falafel bar and the police are called, while the usual Friday night student party rages.

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Len and Joycie, prisoners in their downstairs flat, turn up the volume on the TV and ignore the police arresting the skinheads upstairs, while gang girlfriend Monee escapes with their dog.

Ryan and Donna, who were out earlier with Ryan’s boss Greggo, check on their sleeping daughters and settle in for a loving night in their suburban dream home.

4.35am September 4, 2010. Earthquake!

The earthquake strikes like a jet plane on the roof. Joycie scrambles for Len’s heart medication but can’t find the fridge. Donna screams for Ryan to grab their girls but he can’t even stand up. A naked Greggo leaves his bed and his terrified wife to drive through devastated streets checking on his rental properties.

In the privileged suburbs, Ginny, a loving mother and devoted wife, is hardly disturbed when her husband Jonty receives a phone call from his colleague, Emma. Ginny, Jonty and their teenage children Hayley and Tim toast Christchurch and feel secure in their unscathed house. They have survived a 7.1 and so has their city.

When Donna steps out the back door in the early morning light and falls up to her neck into a hole filled with putrid muddy water, she is shaken to the core. Every aftershock that brings liquefaction muck bubbling through her house shreds her nerves. Although their neighbours are leaving town, Ryan is adamant that the shaking is temporary and pleased that the earthquakes have delivered him steady work.

Len hoists a Canterbury rugby jersey as a flag and declares their flat’s backyard “The Free State of Muntville”. He uses his rusty trade union negotiating skills to strike a collective rent deal with a reluctant Greggo, their landlord.

Ginny enjoys singing in the church choir with her friend Deirdre ,who helps her watch over Jonty’s aunt Dorothy, who is 90 and insistent on still riding her bike. As Ryan’s promise to Donna to take the family on holiday is broken and Ginny’s shaken-up daughter Hayley becomes rebellious, Len heads off to Lyttelton, leaving homeless boy Dwayne in charge of Muntville. Little do they know that life will never be the same.

ENDS

EPISODE TWO SYNOPSIS

February 22, 2011: Ginny sees her family off after breakfast. Jonty tells her he will be in court all day, Tim maintains he’s off to Uni, but Ginny is disturbed when her rebellious daughter Hayley (15) insists on wearing her best boots to school and when asked not to, angrily tells her mother to “Drop dead.”

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At 12.51pm Joycie is in the Post Shop when the devastating shaking begins. This earthquake hits with the force of double gravity and shakes the city to its core. As buildings fall and dust rises, Joycie, in shock, walks to work across a devastated city.

Unaware that Hayley is not at school but at the Family Planning clinic, at 12.51pm Ginny is in her car on the phone to Tim and experiences the earthquake while hearing the screams of her son on her speakerphone. Then, deafening silence.

When Hayley and her two girlfriends scramble from under the desk of the wrecked clinic, Hayley refuses to go back to school with the others, but runs into the city looking for her brother Tim, who she last saw outside a travel centre.

Donna is heading north for a holiday, when she hears dreadful news. This earthquake has been lethal. She manages to contact Ryan, who is helping in the chaos. His reflex reaction to pretend everything is OK shakes her confidence. As his wife drives north desperately trying to keep their daughters happy, Ryan and Greggo rescue Tim from rubble that was minutes ago the travel centre. Distraught Hayley arrives in time to go with them to the medical centre where people are being treated in the carpark. Her family earthquake plan has not worked. No-one is at home when Ginny gets there. She finds herself under their dining room table, clutching their shivering dog as another aftershock strikes. She feels helpless and lonely. Jonty tries to locate Emma but can’t. Having been turned back from entering his office in the CBD, he vents his frustration inside his car, stuck in a hole in the road.

Joycie fears for her beloved Len, as she and her client Dorothy drink whisky from a vase, listening to radio reports. The epicentre is understood to be Lyttelton.

Monee arrives at Muntville, elated that the earthquakes have freed the dog she loves, but her high is ruined when her skinhead boyfriend King turns up and punches her.

Ginny finds her sobbing daughter at the bedside of her unconscious son. When Jonty joins them, their happiness at Tim’s survival gradually dissipates as unanswered questions swirl in the air around them.

As the Muntville family take cover in the backyard for the night, Joycie asks Dwayne to say a prayer for Len.

ENDS

EPISODE THREE SYNOPSIS

Len is sure the epicentre of the earthquake was “under my pink bum”. Despite having forgotten his heart medication, he leaves Lyttelton to walk home over the Port Hills. He plods on, struggling for breath, as people stagger down, going the other way. When he arrives back at Muntville, Joycie is overwhelmed with joyful relief.

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Touching street memorials grow on the cordon fences. Life goes on.

But Ginny is worried. Jonty is evasive about where he was when the quake struck. Her friend Deidre knows her runaway daughter Monica is not dead because there are no more unidentified people now. While they clean the chutney off the kitchen ceiling, Ginny confronts Hayley about her whereabouts on that dreadful day. Hayley has a tantrum, which Jonty identifies as a 4.1 on the Richter Scale.

Dwayne directs traffic and is given an official hi-vis vest. King returns to Muntville to get Monee who confronts him with her bruises. His apologies melt her heart, but Joycie watches sadly: evidence of the abuse cycle is not lost on her.

The toll of his demolition work is starting to tell on Ryan as he sees the distress of tenants forced to watch their buildings come down. Meanwhile, in Auckland, Donna can’t bring herself to go back.

Ginny discovers their house insurance has not been paid and finds many implicating calls on Jonty’s cellphone. She confronts him.

Hayley, out partying again, is threatened by King but is rescued by Josh in his boy racer car. Jonty, out searching for Hayley, sees Monee working as a prostitute and recognises her as Deirdre’s daughter, Monica. When Jonty arrives home and tells Ginny, she replies: “that’ll be your daughter the way she’s going.”

Hayley is impressed by Josh’s Samoan family. His kindly Mum feeds them in the middle of the night and calls Ginny to reassure her that Hayley is safe.

Meanwhile, Donna finds that sympathy for Christchurch refugees in Auckland gets her a job, albeit night shift in a call centre. When she tells Ryan, they agree they’re lucky and it could be worse. Donna and the girls get excited when Ryan agrees to visit Auckland.

Greggo gives Len notice of eviction from Muntville under the emergency regulations. Len will write a letter to the paper. “Very practical”, comments Joycie.

While Jonty is desperate to get a folder from his off-limits office he says “money must go around”, and Ginny is humiliated when her eftpos card is declined at the supermarket. And she gets another shock when she calls him.

ENDS

EPISODE FOUR SYNOPSIS

His Sunshine Close neighbours have gone, leaving Ryan with their keys. He’s living in his ute outside his wrecked home, bone-tired, but not really sleeping.

Len is instructing the students on the correct use of a handsaw when a TV reporter arrives at Muntville, looking for the story behind Len’s anti-eviction letter

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to the newspaper. Len gives full vent to his theories on “crisis capitalism” but the reporter is more interested in how Joycie feels.

Jonty denies having an affair with Emma but admits to Ginny that his money problems are serious. They argue.

Donna tells Ryan the Muntville TV story looked “Third World” and asks about money. Greggo offers Ryan shares in a digger in place of some of his pay. Ryan agrees and they shake on the deal. Greggo tries to get Muntville red-stickered by the authorities so he can demolish it.

Hayley brings Josh home and is challenged by Ginny over her lies, which erupts into a major family argument, overheard by Josh.

At night, Ryan, doped up in his ute, spies a light on in the neighbour’s house and finds Monee on the run from her boyfriend, King. He lets her stay. When an unwashed Ryan arrives in Auckland, he and Donna are uneasy with each other, despite a happy reunion with the kids. He can’t stop talking about Christchurch but she’s over it, telling him that, like most Aucklanders, she has “Christchurch fatigue”.

Back home, Ryan argues with Smasher for refusing to let falafel bar owner Youssef go into his flat to get the urn containing his wife’s ashes. When Smasher reveals how much he’s paying Greggo for Ryan’s work, this is the final straw for Ryan. He walks off the job to confront Greggo, who writes him a cheque but fires him on the spot.

A shadowy figure breaking into the red zone is revealed to be Emma on a daring mission. She is getting Jonty’s implicating folder from the out-of-bounds office.

Donna tells Ryan she’s found a rental house and asks him to come up to Auckland. He refuses and later, while he’s out of it in the ute, Monee is in serious danger in the house.

ENDS

EPISODE FIVE SYNOPSIS

Despite unsettling aftershocks, Youssef retrieves his wife’s ashes from under the falling bricks of the fireplace in his wrecked home above his shop in the red zone. On his way out, he is caught by the Army, but they use their discretion and let him go.

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After seizing Monee and the dog, King’s gang haul a sleeping Ryan out of his ute and beat him severely - just to hurt Monee.

Len and Joycie are summoned to the WINZ office to find their benefit entitlements are reduced because of Len’s revelations about their relationship in the TV interview.

Ginny is surprised to get a job with a private social welfare agency. Jonty is shredding documents when the Army arrives with evacuation orders: their chimney is threatening their neighbour’s property and must come down. Jonty argues with Ginny over selling a painting, then decides to sell their Wanaka holiday home - but he’ll have to answer to Aunt Dorothy over that.

Ryan, badly injured and spiralling downwards, discovers Greggo's cheque is invalid. He calls Donna while drunk, upsetting the girls and making Donna furious.

When a beaten-up Monee limps into Muntvillle, Len decides to intervene in her constant battle with King over the dog. He faces off against the much younger man and unexpectedly reveals a dangerously tough side. Joycie backs Len but Dwayne doesn’t, so Joycie makes him leave. But Dwayne uses his knowledge of the red zone to lead King’s gang into a trap and redeems himself at Muntville.

Ginny feels great sympathy for the letter writers seeking emergency grants. She manages to sort out her own insurance, but learns their house is zoned TC3, needs a geological survey and deeper foundations. She realises their neighbourhood is vanishing and no-one will buy their house. She finds a morose Jonty, in Wanaka, no help at all.

Ryan looks for a job, but finds he’s blacklisted by Greggo and there’s drug testing for all red zone jobs now, which gives him a problem. When he eventually clears the letterbox, he finds the Government buy-out offer for their house. But he and Donna disagree over it.

Though Jonty’s bid to sell their Wanaka house is unsuccessful, he and Tim do some father-son bonding involving “Wild Thing”, a ukulele and a tennis racquet. Joycie finds Dorothy after a fall and gets her to hospital. Dorothy tells Ginny in no uncertain terms that she wants Joycie, not her family, to look after her.

ENDS

EPISODE SIX SYNOPSIS

Len persuades Monee to take some meat down to Mr Patel’s freezer by suggesting that good karma could follow, but is dismissive when she calls finding her dog under Mr Patel’s caravan, “good karma.” Len tries to talk Monee out of her political beliefs, and when Greggo arrives with a demolition order, Monee almost agrees that White Power could have its downside.

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Joycie becomes Dorothy’s caregiver at Ginny’s house. When Ginny drops Joycie off at Muntville, she recognises Monee as her friend Deirdre’s daughter, Monica, and strikes a deal with Monee that will ultimately pay off.

An angry Ryan steals Greggo's digger and drives through red zone streets to an upmarket suburban home, where he spectacularly takes his revenge on his former boss.

Unfairly accused of stealing from Dorothy, Joycie is dismissed from her care-giving job. In support, Len lurches into a diatribe about the thievery of the vested interests of the Banks and, in a rare moment of anger, Joycie tells Len to shut up because she needs to think about how to pay the money back.

Ginny discovers Dorothy in the garden, dead of a heart attack from delayed shock. As Jonty and Tim drive back from Wanaka, Tim makes an astonishing revelation.

Even though Donna knows Ryan needs her, and her mother tells her to go down and sort him out, she just can’t do it, convinced she will die.

Dwayne takes up a collection “for Joycie’s animals” but gives it to Len who decides to double it on the hounds. Unwise. But Mr Patel intervenes and Joycie gets her $100.

Jonty reads Dorothy's will and celebrates but is a little taken aback when Ginny announces she’s going to be a psychotherapist. Joycie and Len arrive at Ginny’s to pay back Dorothy’s money, but Ginny won’t take it. Len and Jonty bond over shared literary tastes, which results in Jonty talking law to Greggo about the Muntville eviction.

Ryan becomes convinced that having a plan and sticking to it will solve all his family’s problems. He goes to the public facilities, showers, throws away his smelly clothes. He sits by Shag Rock (now known as “Shag Pile”) under the wrecked cliffs at Sumner and calls Donna to tell her that everything he does is for her and the kids. At a noisy Auckland bus stop, running late for work, she brushes him off. He makes a tragically wrong decision. These earthquakes have driven him to the brink.

The Eastern play at a party for Joycie at the Free State of Muntville, while Ginny drives Monee to meet her mother at choir practice. As the ancient song of peace, Dona Nobis Pacem, rises above the city, everyone learns to seize the day.

ENDSFACT SHEET

Created by Gaylene Preston

Production Company: Gaylene Preston ProductionsFunded by: NZ On Air Platinum FundBroadcaster: TV3

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Director: Gaylene PrestonScreenplay: Gaylene Preston, Dave ArmstrongProducers: Chris Hampson, Gaylene PrestonNetwork Executive: Rachel JeanAssociate Producer: Sue Rogers

Director of Photography: Thomas Burstyn Editor: Paul SutoriusProduction Designer: John HardingOriginal Score: Emile de la ReyCasting Director: Christina AsherCostume: Lesley Burkes-Harding2nd unit director/DOP: Alun Bollinger

CAST:Bernard Hill LenRachel House JoycieJarod Rawiri Ryan Miriama McDowell DonnaLuanne Gordon GinnyStephen Lovatt JontyJoel Tobeck GreggoChelsie Preston Crayford MoneeAnton Tennet DwayneKip Chapman KingLucy Wyma Hayley David Sutherland Tim

Featuring music by The Eastern Family

Duration: series of 6 x one-hour episodes

THE MAKERS

Gaylene Preston - director, writer (with Dave Armstrong), producer (with Chris Hampson).

Gaylene Preston is a writer, producer, director. Her work reveals her commitment to telling New Zealand stories and includes feature films - Home by Christmas, Perfect Strangers, War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, Ruby and Rata and television series Bread and Roses, and Earthquake, a

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documentary for TV3 on the devastating 1931 Hawkes Bay earthquakes. The New Zealand Arts Foundation made her the first Filmmaker Laureate in 2001 and she is also a member of the NZ Order of Merit. She was born in Greymouth and spent time in Christchurch throughout her childhood. She lived there while attending Ilam Art School, before moving to England, where her interest in filmmaking arose from her work as an art therapist. Her films have screened in most leading film festivals including NZ, Venice, Sundance, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne and have won awards in Italy, Canada, Australia, Britain, USA, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland.

Chris Hampson – producer

Chris Hampson has worked in the film and television industry for more than 30 years, and as a producer since the mid-1980s. He has produced numerous film and television projects, written for television, directed for theatre and acted on both stage and screen. Before turning to the screen, he started his career as a publishing editor, and after scripting stints in radio, television and at the New Zealand Film Commission, he produced the feature film Illustrious Energy. He is currently a member of the Board of the New Zealand Film Commission.

He was executive producer of television series Shortland Street for its first three years, before developing and executive producing the NZFC’s low-budget feature scheme, ScreenVisioNZ.  He later formed the production company ScreenWorks, launching with law drama Street Legal, whose four-season run proved highly successful.  He continues to produce and develop film and television projects.  He recently produced the acclaimed feature film White Lies, which was selected for the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

Sue Rogers – associate producer

Sue Rogers worked closely with her life partner Jim Booth, producer of Peter Jackson’s Meet The Feebles, Braindead and Heavenly Creatures, and she maintained the progress of his Midnight Films production slate following his death in 1994, producing Forgotten Silver, the mockumentary directed by Peter Jackson and Costa Botes. She also produced Heaven, from the novel by Chad Taylor and directed by Scott Reynolds, which won the Audience First Prize for Best International Feature at the Toronto Film Festival in 1997. She produced When Strangers Appear (aka Shearer’s Breakfast) also directed by

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Scott Reynolds; and Tongan Ninja, the debut feature by Jason Stutter, as well as his second feature Predicament. She was co-producer on Gaylene Preston’s Home by Christmas.

Dave Armstrong – writer (with Gaylene Preston)

Dave Armstrong’s recent television work includes TV one dramas Billy and Spies and Lies. He has also written for drama series Cover Story and The Strip. His television comedies are well-known: Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby and Spin Doctors, for which he won an Academy of Film and Television Award for best comedy script alongside with Roger Hall and James Griffin. He wrote episodes for the animated cult hit Bro Town (was also script editor), country comedy Willy Nilly and the ensemble Skitz which gave birth to The Semisis, written by Armstrong.

His hit play, Niu Sila, co-written with Oscar Kightley, won a Chapman Tripp Award for Best New Play and received the Arts Foundation Award for Patronage in 2006. After it was performed in the Auckland International Arts Festival, Niu Sila was performed at the 2007 Pasifika Styles Festival in Cambridge England. The Tutor won best new NZ Play at the 2005 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards.

Thomas Burstyn – Director of photography

Canadian Kiwi Thomas Burstyn CSC, FRSA is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker with 30 years experience as a cinematographer. He trained at the National Film board of Canada as a documentary maker before moving into feature films. He directed the multi-award winning This Way of Life; One Man, One Cow, One Planet and Flash William among others. He was cinematographer on New Zealand features The Insatiable Moon, The Lost Tribe and Mr Wrong, which was directed by Gaylene Preston. He also worked with Preston on the drama segments of TV3’s documentary Strongman: The Tragedy. His recent work includes Universal Cable’s 11-episode sci fi series Defiance, shot in Toronto.

He was nominated for an Emmy Award for cinematography for The 4400 in 2005, won a Genie Award in Canada in 2002 for Magic in the Water and a CableAce Award for The Hitchhiker: True Believer.

John Harding – production designer

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John Harding has a versatile and varied career as film production designer, art director, character and costume designer, as well as theatre and event designer, and design tutor. He was a costume designer on James Cameron’s epic Avatar. He worked for Weta Workshop for five years on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in many design, construction and art director roles. He also designed and developed miniature sets, native costumes and weapons for Weta Workshop for Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

His most recent film as production designer is Gaylene Preston’s Home By Christmas. Before that he did Jason Stutter’s Predicament. His work includes TVOne telemovies Rage, Tangiwai and Until Proven Innocent, as well as The Lost Children, a 13-episode television series set in 1860s New Zealand and the award-winning short film Fog. He won the New Zealand Film Awards best design award for his work in the short film The King Boys. His work as art director includes US telemovie Fatal Contact: Bird Flu In America, New Zealand television series Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson), and Larry Parr’s feature film Fracture.

Lesley Burkes-Harding – costume designer

Lesley Burkes-Harding is an award-winning period costume specialist who won New Zealand Film Awards best costume design for her work on Her Majesty, a coming of age drama set in 1953, and was a finalist for Qantas Film & TV Awards best costume design for Out of the Blue. She designed costumes for The Locals, Jubilee and Predicament. Her most recent feature film is Gaylene Preston’s Home By Christmas.

She has designed costumes for many US television features and series filmed in New Zealand, including Spartacus Blood and Sand, Ike – Countdown to D-Day, Lucille Ball Life Story and Murder in Greenwich. She was a Qantas Film & TV awards finalist for her work on NZ television drama Until Proven Innocent. She was the NZ assistant costume designer for James Cameron’s epic Avatar and worked as a construction specialist for Weta SPFX on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. She was vfx costume designer for the Peter Jackson/Steven Spielberg collaboration Adventures of Tin Tin.

Paul Sutorius – supervising editor

Paul Sutorius has a long career spanning feature films, television drama, documentaries, comedy and current affairs. His feature films include four directed by Gaylene Preston – Home By Christmas, Ruby and Rata, Bread & Roses and War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us – as well as The

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Irrefutable Truth About Demons (director Glenn Standring), Chunuk Bair (Dale Bradley) and Kingi’s Story, KingPin and Mark II (Mike Walker).

He won best film editing at the NZ Film & TV awards for Ruby and Rata and best documentary editing for Getting to Our Place (which was produced and co-directed by Gaylene Preston with Anna Cottrell), and the same award in 2006 for the documentary Aspiring. His television drama editing dates back to the classic Pukemanu and includes The Longest Winter, The Governor, Mortimer’s Patch and more recently Insider’s Guide to Happiness, Until Proven Innocent and Tangiwai. His most recent feature is White Lies.

Alun Bollinger – 2nd Unit director/cinematographer

Alun Bollinger’s major credits as cinematographer include Goodbye Pork Pie, Vigil, Heavenly Creatures, Forgotten Silver, The Frighteners, Matariki, White Lies, Love Birds and River Queen which he also partly field directed. He shot War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, Bread and Roses, Perfect Strangers Home By Christmas and several documentaries (Learning Fast, Titless Wonders, Hone Tuwhare and Lovely Rita) with director Gaylene Preston.

He has won numerous New Zealand awards for his work and was nominated for an AFI award for his work on the Australian feature The Oyster Farmer. In 2005 he was awarded a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate for outstanding lifetime artistry in cinematography and was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He was recently the subject of a documentary Barefoot Cinema: The Art and Life of Cinematographer Alun Bollinger by Gerard Smythe.GAYLENE PRESTON INTERVIEW

Why did you want to make something about Christchurch?

We moved from Greymouth to Hawkes Bay when I was ten. In the following year there was a big cluster of earthquakes and a tsunami warning that closed the school. I was traumatised. Later, when I was an art student in Christchurch, I worked holidays in a resthome in Napier and it was full of old people who were survivors of the 1931 lethal quake. That got me interested in earthquake stories, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that I started videotaping oral histories from 1931. These eventually became an installation for the Hawkes Bay Art Gallery Trust and contributed to a documentary (Earthquake) for TV3 for the 75th anniversary.

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In September 2010, I had friends and family in Christchurch, so I was paying attention to the Christchurch earthquakes, and when I pay attention, I’m a filmmaker.

What is the time span of the stories in HOPE & WIRE?

HOPE & WIRE is set from September 3, 2010 to the autumn of 2011. I started working on it in December 2011. It’s an intricate investigation into recent history, though I’ve had to predict certain outcomes so that HOPE & WIRE retains relevance.

And you’re not trying to cover everybody’s experience over the whole time span of the earthquakes, are you?

It is not about everybody’s earthquakes. I have steered clear of extremes and focussed on stories of common experience. HOPE & WIRE distils as many stories of common experience as possibly to present compelling, sometimes funny, sometimes searing drama.

It’s not really about earthquakes, it’s about people?

You find out a huge amount about the psychology of trauma in an earthquake zone. The first thing you notice is that everyone reacts differently. Everyone’s physical situation is different, but also everyone’s psychological situation is different. What causes one person to rise above and triumph could be another person’s absolute tragedy. In a large communal disaster where you’ve got a lot of psychological disruption, people are thrown together or pushed apart. There’s a psychological earthquake that follows the physical earthquake and it’s the psychological earthquake that I wanted to explore.

And you chose drama as the way to explore it?

HOPE & WIRE being a drama offered me a great opportunity to observe and research more like a novelist. You can tell a story without any living person having to own it. HOPE & WIRE is a social and psychological investigation - that makes it sound as though it’s going to be hard to watch - but it’s not. My job as a filmmaker is to illuminate through stories. I hear a story, I’m told a story, I read a story, then I take those stories and I apply them to the story families that I’ve created for the whole series.

Story families?

I’ve created story families in order to tell a larger tale. The central story family was inspired by a photo essay in The Press called ‘Camp Mother’s Big

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Adventure’, about a couple who were forced to live in their backyard and reported that they had become healthier and happier. That story gave me the inspiration for the “positive heart” of the series. Before I found that, I had been worried that the series could be too difficult to tell. Good storytelling needs the light to shine through the dark.

There’s a middle-class family who live in Merivale and a young kiwi family who live in suburban Atlantis, near Bexley. Those three character families gave me the ability to not only look at the quake reaction across different social groups, but also different age groups, from young children and teenagers right through to the elderly. Please talk about each group, starting with Muntville?

Muntville is an old inner city house with a few flats in it. Upstairs live the white power boys with Monee and their dog. In the front are University students and down in the bottom flat are Len and Joycie, welfare beneficiaries - but Joycie has a little job once a week looking after an elderly woman. Len is a retired seaman from Liverpool. He’s a unionist who has an opinion on everything. When the first earthquake strikes, their kitchen is wrecked so they start cooking outside and looking after stray animals who have been deserted by their quake runner owners. It’s a small step for them to start looking after stray people.

Their landlord Greggo is a small-time developer. He drives naked through the dark streets in September, checking his properties. Greggo has a loose business arrangement with his mate Ryan, a digger driver. Ryan, his wife Donna and their two little girls live near Bexley in their dream home in a cul-de-sac in Atlantis. They’re mortgaged to the max so when the earthquakes happen and Ryan finds his skills in demand, he’s making money and doesn’t take seriously that Donna is totally traumatised. The tragedy of that couple is that one reacts with “flight” and the other with “fight” and it’s almost irreconcilable.

Meanwhile in Merivale lives Ginny, the perfect middle-class wife, with her adored lawyer husband Jonty, and their two teenage children. Ginny sings in her church choir and is family focussed but when the earthquakes reveal secrets, she is forced to turn and focus on a much wider world. The earthquakes cause her to discover strengths she didn’t know she had, and she embraces an entirely new direction in life. She discovers compassion.

There’s a theme about caring for one another that runs across the whole series. This includes Ryan, the good neighbour who gets left with everybody’s keys when they all leave. When he loses people to look after as the suburb

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empties, he implodes because his internal world is bereaved. He’s a fix-it guy with no-one to fix it for, and he can’t fix it for himself.

I’m interested in contrasting the characters. For example – look at what happens to Jonty. He owns a holiday house in Wanaka and the family home in the city and has a good relationship with his bank manager. He might actually be more heavily mortgaged than Ryan and Donna over in Atlantis, but he has a lot more choices. There are people who, no matter what happens to them, they’ve got choices. Like Greggo, the opportunist, fast-talking guy on the move. He tells us “I’m a glass half-full kind of guy”. No matter what happens, he’ll never tell you he’s in trouble. He might be up to his ears in it but he’s never going to say. And then you have Joycie and Len, who have been doing disaster management for years. They take each day as it comes because every day is a bit of a crisis one way or another for them. They are therefore used to only dealing with today’s difficulties, and not worrying about tomorrow. They cope the best. They’re used to it. They have nothing, so they have nothing to lose.

There is a possibility that people will refer to HOPE & WIRE as “New Zealand’s Treme”, how do you address that?

If Treme hadn’t been made, I don’t think HOPE & WIRE would have happened. Treme led the way in telling an entertaining story set in a wrecked city. There are similarities – for example the music - threading The Eastern through HOPE & WIRE. But the difference with HOPE & WIRE is that the earthquakes provide every inciting incident of the drama in the characters’ lives. You can look at anything any character does and see that they would not have done that if it weren’t for the earthquakes.

Wouldn’t some of those things have happened anyway: like Hayley being just a typical teenager, Tim longing to get away from home?

In the case of Hayley and her friends, their development is accelerated because of the trauma of the earthquake. Without it, they may have slowed down a bit, they might have gone to school a bit more. Monee’s an abused young woman in an abusive relationship and if that abusive relationship hadn’t been forced out into the backyard of Muntville, it could have gone on for some time. It’s an earthquake story about things being thrust out into the light because the walls have fallen down. I was told about similar circumstances occurring in Napier in 1931.

Donna talks about the taniwha under Christchurch. Where does that come from?

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I was sent a drawing of ‘the monster under Christchurch’ by a child who was a quake refugee, and I heard that among some Maori, there was a belief that taniwha had been disturbed because Christchurch was bult in the wrong place. Back when I was researching the Napier earthquakes, I was told first-hand stories of the taniwha in Napier - of the flesh-coloured shark being in the Ahuriri lagoon that day.

How did it come about that you cast Bernard Hill in the role of Len?

I met him when he was in New Zealand working on The Lord of the Rings and we immediately clicked. He is a good person to talk to about script and story and we always thought we would do something together one day. He kept coming back to New Zealand and on one of his trips I gave him the outline of HOPE & WIRE because I thought he would be perfect for Len, the unionist couch potato partner of Joycie. I offered him the part, but I never really thought he would be available to do it.

Alongside the large cast of exceptional actors, including Rachel House, Chelsie Preston Crayford, Luanne Gordon and Stephen Lovatt, you cast several Christchurch actors? With a strong ensemble core cast on board, it was a great opportunity to use, not only extras and small speaking parts from Canterbury, but also to cast up-and-coming talented young local actors. The teenage stories are full of Christchurch actors. We were given the Ilam School of Fine Arts film school facilities over the Christmas holidays where our casting director, Christina Asher, ran open auditions. We found Lucy Wyma who plays Hayley, and David Sutherland, who plays her brother Tim. Eilish Moran, a respected Canterbury theatre actress, plays Monee’s mother Deirdre.

You also cast some Christchurch non-actors?

Simo (Mohamed Abbari) is a chef. I saw him in one of Paua Productions’ Aftermath earthquake documentaries. They followed his story of losing his restaurant in the September earthquake, getting another one that was destroyed in December and having his next one locked behind the cordon after February 22nd. A remarkable man. Of course by the time we had him acting in the movie, he’d already set up a falafel cart and a new restaurant out at Riccarton that we then used as a location.

Why did you choose Dave Armstrong to write the scripts with you?

Sadly, Graeme Tetley, my writing partner for most of my career, died in 2011. He survived being in Lyttelton during the February 22 earthquake but died of a

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heart attack after watching TV reports of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. I believe he is an earthquake victim. The line Len says about being in Lyttelton: “If you want to know where the earthquake was, it was right under my pink bum” is Graeme’s line about his experience.

I knew I needed to work with someone who was used to translating true stories into drama. I'm a great admirer of Dave Armstrong’s theatre work. He’s also an experienced TV series writer and is stronger than I am on story - whereas I work from character and internal disharmony - so we make a useful team. I’m always looking for inciting incidents that are going to impact internally on the characters, but he would always push for more external story. It was a hard process because we hadn’t worked together before, but ultimately very rewarding.

Because of the short interval between writing your first draft, getting funding and shooting the series, you have said the whole process was invigorating. How so?

It felt so fresh. The usual process is: you have the idea, write the script and then spend five, 10 or 20 years getting the funding, by which time you’re sometimes asking yourself “what was I trying to say here?”

The incredible thing about HOPE & WIRE for me as a filmmaker is that I finished writing the shooting draft of the scripts just two weeks before we started shooting. That’s brilliant because I was physically in the place of the story while being deeply immersed in the script writing. I was in two places at once – I was in Christchurch writing it in 2013 with my head in Christchurch in 2010-11. It was demanding for the production, but the up side was that I had a film crew there doing pre-production while I was writing. It’s easy to think of the film crew as a whole lot of technicians who run the gear, but actually a film crew is a whole lot of people who go out at night and meet people. They would come back from the pub and tell me about things they’d heard, so the last draft of the scripts got coloured and kept changing as I learned more everyday details.

Who do you see as the audience for HOPE & WIRE?

I hope HOPE & WIRE is a relevant, truthful and entertaining drama series with an emotional impact that is a fitting reflection of that time in that place. Ultimately, HOPE & WIRE is about what happens when the social crucible cracks and the light shines in.

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PRODUCER CHRIS HAMPSON ON HOPE & WIRE

“HOPE & WIRE deals with the lives of three discrete groups of Christchurch people during the earthquakes, and it concerns that period from September 2010 to April-May 2011. It’s deliberately not about the earthquakes as such: there’s already been enough of that on TV. It’s not meant to be a recreation of the earthquakes – rather it’s about the lives of three different groups of people and what happens to them under such stress. It’s an unusually extreme opportunity to not just make up what might have happened – but to actually see it as recent history. Because what happens to these characters is what has actually happened to some of the people in Christchurch.

There are three main groups in the story: at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder there’s a large central-city house divided into flats. We have a lawyer and wife whose children attend private schools, and they have a well laid-out ordered life. And the third is an upwardly mobile family of ordinary New Zealanders.”

“Although Gaylene has researched the stories of real people, the characters she has created come out of her past, some from elements of her family. There’s a real South Island spirit woven through the characters. Her family comes from the West Coast and she’s used them as vehicles to carry real stories.”

“One of the things that fascinates me about Gaylene is that she is probably the only one of my contemporaries working in film who is capable of synthesising documentary reality into fiction. She’s done it with her own family and created something universal and real with War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us and Home By Christmas. And now she’s done it with the stories of the people of Christchurch - she’s synthesising those into a version of reality, of drama. I cannot think of another practitioner in New Zealand who has the resources, humanity, ability and experience to do that.

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“HOPE & WIRE doesn’t attempt to be sensationalist. The object is to put human beings under a microscope and see what we do under extreme pressure and stress. It’s not just about the earthquakes. One of the things you observe in Christchurch is the extraordinary good humour of people, even though they’re hardened by and enduring a kind of a post traumatic stress that’s gone on now for approaching three years. New Zealanders have the ability to find humour in misfortune as a way of grappling with it: and the people in this series do just that. This is a story about the triumph of simple humanity over events and that simple humanity revolves around a sense of humour, the ability to not make light of things but to find humour in moments. If you didn’t find humour in them, it would just simply overwhelm you.”

“HOPE & WIRE was the chance to make a drama that was based on something that was of historical significance. It is about how people’s lives are affected by events totally beyond their control and how they begin to grapple with that. How they try to put pieces of their lives into order again. The opportunity to work on something that has that much human reality, that much sense of human dignity was too great to turn down. The idea here was to use television to cement in our collective memory a past, a history and a sense of legend – and I believe this series goes some way down that track. Gaylene described it to me as her wanting to send a postcard to the rest of New Zealand saying, ‘look, we’re still here, we’re still getting on with our lives in an environment that at times looks post-apocalyptic.’

“I hope the audience will laugh and cry but also I hope the audience looks at Christchurch and remembers the enormity of what happened there and remember that it’s filled with their fellow New Zealanders going through a remarkable trauma: and that it’s an ongoing trauma that will continue for many years.”

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CAST BIOS AND INTERVIEWS

Bernard HillRachel HouseJarod RawiriMiriama McDowellLuanne GordonStephen LovattJoel TobeckChelsie Preston CrayfordThe Eastern

Bernard Hill plays LENBernard Hill plays Len, who, having arrived in Lyttelton in 1976 and played his part as a union advocate, is now a bored welfare beneficiary who has found a late-life love with his darling Joycie. He’s lovable curmudgeon with opinions on everything, which he shares from the couch.

With a career spanning 35 years, Bernard Hill is among Britain’s most accomplished actors, working in film, television and theatre. His major film roles include King Theoden in Lord of the Rings, Captain EJ Smith in Titanic, Cole in The Bounty and Yosser Hughes in Boys From the Blackstuff. He played Gratus in the acclaimed series I Claudius and Sergeant Putnam in Gandhi.

His other films include Madagascar Skin, Drug-Taking and the Arts, Dirtysomething, Drowning by Numbers, Bellman and True, Milwr Bychan, Squaring the Circle, The Spongers and Pit Strike.

He earned critical acclaim for roles in stage and television productions of Shakespeare's plays and TV adaptations of such classics as The Mill on the Floss, The Wind in the Willows and Antigone. He won Britain's Press Guild award for Achievement of the Decade for his performance in Boys From the Blackstuff. In 1994 he received a BAFTA award for his starring role in Screen Two: Skallagrigg TV drama.

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What was it that attracted you to this series HOPE & WIRE?

I suppose it was the general concept of putting something on record that actually happened. Putting it in a dramatic way but mixed with real footage, but also I knew that Gaylene, with her particular eye - which is very documentary-like - and that vision translated into drama made for quite an interesting mix.

I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else, because I knew that Gaylene would do it with integrity and honesty and accuracy. She’s got strong links to Christchurch with a profound sense of supporting the people who have survived the earthquakes.

Was it a difficult decision to come all the way over here to do this?

Once I knew all the conditions would fall in place with Gaylene and how she was going to approach it and the people she was talking about getting on board, I could see that it was going to be, if not groundbreaking, it was going to be pretty close. Its own little mini-earthquake, if you like.

An old friend of mine Tom Burstyn is director of photography - I’ve known him for quite a long time. Mark Ashton, (one of the first assistant directors), I've known from Lord of the Rings. I’ve never worked with Alun Bollinger (2nd unit director), but I know him. Things like that. There were lot of elements that seemed it was right for me to do this and I felt it would make me feel more integrated into kiwi life.

How much time have you spent in New Zealand?

I have a very strong emotional link with New Zealand - going way back to about 1983, when I first came here to film parts of Roger Donaldson’s The Bounty. Since then, I’ve been here for Lord of the Rings and I’ve been coming back here regularly with my son since we finished shooting Rings. I came for the big premiere in Wellington and a holiday with my son, who wanted to have another look around because he’s thinking of doing a gap year here.

Did your feelings for New Zealand play a part in your decision to take this role?

Doing Rings - travelling around as much as we did - I felt I was kind of living here and I felt that the country had given me an awful lot and that people I met and associated with had given me an awful lot and this in a way was some kind of way, not a majestic way, but some kind of way to give something back.

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One thing I would say is that this would never have happened if Gaylene Preston wasn’t Gaylene Preston.

Have you known Gaylene for a long time?

We met – there’s some question of where we actually met and when – we’ve both got our own different opinions of that, like we have about most things, but anyway we met while I was here doing the main body of Lord of the Rings. At that time she had a script, Perfect Strangers, and I kind of worked with her about a character she was interested for me to play. We worked quite extensively and then for various reasons we weren’t able to do it.

So, I think from then on we thought ‘come the time’, and we’ve kept in touch over the years. When she was in England with Home By Christmas, I came to the London Film Festival screening, and she came to stay with us. It turns out almost every kiwi I met in London that I came across knew her anyway, or was related to her.

Have you been involved for a long time with HOPE & WIRE?

Yes. I like being involved from the beginning. Gaylene and I came down to Christchurch and we went inside the cordon to the red zone, escorted by CERA. Then, when I got back home, Gaylene gave me some notes that she’d written and a synopsis. And from there eventually there was a general template and it kept growing through to individual first drafts.

Your character, Len – is he an activist, an anarchist or just somebody who wants to just get on with it?

He’s all those three, really. In varying stages of his life he was a real activist and a very strong unionist and even though he’s English, he’s obviously got a lot of commitment to the fine workings of kiwi unionism.

I think he’s mainly concerned with the stability of his life, of his relationship and he follows Joycie’s lead because she’s, as he says, she’s the camp mother. He follows that and supports her. I mean, his main strength comes from Joycie. They help each other. They’re like two fish that swim side by side. Neither leading; neither following.

The commentary that Len provides throughout the series is quite provocative. What’s your take on that?

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A lot of it came from me anyway. Gaylene and I would chat about Len and I’d say we should do this and that and she be making mental notes and then interpreting it all into the script. I knew that process was happening, so I turned it on a bit.

The earthquakes wake Len up a bit, but he’s always got something to say about everything. That’s quite a warming thing. Some of it is tongue-in-cheek, but some of it is serious.

This thing she’s got Len saying about it’s not a coincidence that global warming is happening and we’re getting more earthquakes. Well, there’s no real count on earthquakes to say that we’re getting more than before, but there’s plenty of conspiracy theorists out there, so this is represented by Len’s rave. All the dodgy bits she sticks in Len’s mouth. We have a laugh about that.

Rachel House plays JOYCIE

In HOPE & WIRE, Rachel House plays Joycie, a caregiver who lives with her soul mate, Len, in a big old house that becomes “The Free State of Muntville” after the first earthquake. Joycie is the heart of the series, the den mother who cares for everyone, with her motto: “keep calm and carry on.”

Of Ngai Tahu and Ngati Mutunga descent, Rachel House is an award-winning director and actor in New Zealand theatre who continues to make a significant contribution to the rise of Maori Theatre. She was recently Artistic Director of Toroihi raua ko Kahiri, The Maori Troilus and Cressida, which was performed in the NZ International Arts Festival and in London’s Globe Theatre’s Globe to Globe Festival.

Her film roles include Whale Rider and Eagle versus Shark. In the highly acclaimed Boy, she played Auntie Gracie and was acting coach for the child actors. She plays Maraea in the internationally respected White Lies.

In 2008 she attended the Prague film school and was awarded Best Director for her short film Bravo and the Audience Award for another short, New Skirt. In 2010 she directed a short film The Winter Boy, which has been selected in many international film festivals. Rachel House received an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2012.

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In describing the role of Joycie in HOPE & WIRE, Rachel House says:

“I was very drawn to Joycie and Len’s predicament and the world they create in order to survive. Joycie’s perspective is very interesting: she keeps saying throughout the series ‘I’ve been to hell and back and I’m not letting any old earthquake get me’. When this interviewer comes along and asks she’s been, she says ‘well, actually we’ve really sorted ourselves out. We’re both a lot healthier. We got off the couch, we stopped watching television and our lives have improved.’ “I know that Gaylene has researched all these people thoroughly and there’s a very truthful perspective in those characters. It’s great writing with great characters. The series has a big, big heart.”

“There is the view that Joycie is the heart of the series, but for me it’s actually the spirit of survival which is the heart of the series and in that case it’s all of the characters because they’ve all survived. I think Joycie is a wonderful person and she steps up to the camp mother role very easily She’s a care-giver and -I mean you only have to look at her to see that she cares for everybody else but not really herself. I’ve had a fair bit to do with care-givers because I’ve got elderly parents and they are just the heroes, their life is about looking after other people. And so I feel very proud to represent that aspect of Joycie.”

“This series is an opportunity to show what has actually gone on for the people living in Christchurch, how they’ve had to deal with it and how it has affected their lives. It’s still going on and will continue to go on for years and years, no doubt.”

“It was quite an honour to film it in Christchurch and what I've been really moved by is how many people are ready to tell their stories. We were surrounded by the people who it really happened to and there was no avoiding it. You’d go to the supermarket or a shop or to a party and people would tell you their story. It felt like it was a very, very intense time and there seems to be a great sense of community down there which I really enjoyed.”

“Bernard and I did a scene with the student boys and we got the actual newspaper that came out the day after the February 22 earthquake. It was just mind-blowing when we opened it. For starters, one of the actors playing a student was on the front page. He said ‘that’s me’ and another one said ‘that’s my teacher.’ I know Bernard was deeply affected by that. It was just page after page of details. It was extraordinary and it felt like we were kind of re-living it.”

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Jarod Rawiri plays RYAN

In HOPE & WIRE, Jarod Rawiri plays Ryan, a digger driver who aspires to own his own machine and to provide the best for his family – “gold taps” as he says to his wife Donna, the love of his life. He cannot leave Christchurch while there’s a job to be done cleaning up and fixing the place.

Jarod Rawiri’s feature films include the recently premiered Fantail as well as Matariki, Jinx Sister, and A Song of Good. He starred in award-winning short films Kerosene Creek, directed by Michael Bennett, and Tama Tū, directed by Taika Waititi. He was also the lead in Michael Bennett’s short film Tangi and Lauren Jackson’s new short, I’m Going to Mum’s.

His television roles include Wattie in the acclaimed TV3 series Harry. He played Hone Heke in What Really Happened?, Ike Metekingi in Billy, Mana in The Almighty Johnsons and Constable Hashtu in Stolen. Other television work includes Auckland Daze, The Market, Mataku and Kōrero Mai.

He also has a distinguished theatre career, including the lead role in I, George Nepia in 2011 and in the 2013 Auckland Arts Festival, Tanemahuta Gray’s spectacular Māui and The Prophet, which toured NZ and Hawaii and Silo Theatre’s Angels in America in 2014.

He went to Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School with Miriama McDowell, who plays his wife, Donna in HOPE & WIRE. He is of Ngāti Whanaunga, Ngāti Tuwharetoa and Ngāti Hine descent.

Jarod Rawiri says of his HOPE & WIRE character, Ryan: “Prior to the earthquake, Ryan was a young professional trying to establish himself, to get his own little piece of the pie. He was with the love of his life, Donna, and his two little girls and was happy. He describes them as ‘just your average kiwi family.’ He was on his way to living his dream - having his own patch of grass, his own home, and his business.”

“Then he goes from being that idealistic, happy person, to having his world crumble around him. He loses everything. He loses his home, his job and his working relationships. He gets ripped off badly. He went from being someone who thought they were doing well for themselves in a career, to realising that he was just a small fish. It comes to that realisation. He discovers that people he thought were friends had just been using him. So I don’t know how you recover from something like that.”

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“In a lot of ways Ryan and Donna are the main tragedy of the series. Tragedy of the heart. As well as the mind. The earthquake reveals their desires but also their weaknesses and their differences. They weren’t able to meet each other through that. One leaves, one stays, how can you meet?”

“Ryan didn’t grow up with a strong Māori influence, he’s kind of your middle New Zealander, just trying to make a living and get on with working and being part of society. He wasn’t interested in trying to figure out his iwi or where his family came from. It was just all about living his little dream.”

On his reaction to reading the script:“I’m a typical Aucklander in that all I knew about the earthquakes was what I’d seen in the media and I had no real idea of the magnitude of what Christchurch people went through. So when I heard that this project was coming up, like every actor, I thought ‘oh, I’ll just go along to the audition’. So then I got the job and read the scripts and I started to understand what people had gone through and I really wanted to be a part of it.”

On working with writer/director Gaylene Preston:“She is everything in a director. I’ve never met anyone who is so passionate about film-making and every aspect of it. I’ve worked with people who understand the visual side, the technical side, the pictures, or the performance side, the acting. But I’ve never worked with a director who’s interested in what the frame looks like, what the actor looks like, how the sound works, how many people there are in the background, how bright the light is, what colour the water is. I’ve never worked with someone that passionate about what the picture is actually saying. She’s very thorough. In that way it feels like you’re working with a genius.”

A highlight:“I got to spend a bit of time on a digger. Driving it was amazing. I was nervous at the start. There were some technical moves that only an experienced driver could do, so there was a stunt driver, but I tried to do as much as possible. I really enjoyed driving the massive digger. There’s something exciting about having a machine that weighs two tonnes and you have control of it. Boys with their toys, I guess.”

Miriama McDowell plays DONNA

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In HOPE & WIRE, Miriama McDowell plays Donna, mother of two girls and wife of digger driver Ryan. She is terrified by the earthquakes, believing them to be taniwha, and flees for Auckland, taking her children to the safety of her mother’s place.

Miriama McDowell, of Ngāti Hine and Ngāpuhi descent, has two award nominations: supporting actress at the NZ Screen Awards for her role as Hibiscus in Toa Fraser’s feature No 2, and best actress in the Aotearoa Film and TV Awards for her role as Jessica in This Is Not My Life.

She played Sgt Denise Traill in Stolen, Hariata in What Really Happened: Waitangi and Foxy Lady in Dean Spanley. Her other television credits include Outrageous Fortune, Shortland Street, Interrogation and Mataku.

She also performs in theatre, including Raising the Titanics, Havoc in the Garden and The Prophet. She went to Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School with Jarod Rawiri, who plays her husband Ryan in HOPE & WIRE.

Miriama McDowell describes her HOPE & WIRE character, Donna:

“When we were discussing the character’s costume, we kept talking about Michele Obama: very well put-together, quite conservative, strong-willed. For her it’s about paying the mortgage – she’s one of those people that values things – gold taps, as Ryan promises her.”

“Before the earthquakes, that was what it was about – paying the mortgage, having a freehold house, having a nice house, not rocking the boat too much. And that’s the tragedy of the story: if the earthquakes hadn’t happened, I don’t think anything bad would have happened to that family. I think they would have had a really great life, brought the kids up nice, retired and bought a boat to go fishing.”

“After she left, she had a real instinct that if she went back, she would die. There was a turning point for her and she went, ‘I have to get out of here and if me and my kids don’t get out of here, something really bad is going to happen.’ The taniwha is one label for it, but I think she had an instinct, a sense of doom: something really bad was going to happen if she went back. Like ‘I got out and if I go back I’m tempting fate’.

On Donna’s fall into the pit of liquefaction: “The physical thing of going into the liquefaction was just so intense. I just can’t imagine how that would be in real life. They dug a hole and we had to shoot the bit where I slip in and then shoot the bit when I’m right in it in a separate shot. I had to go under and it was cold, muddy water. It was not like

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being a spa pool. It was cold, dirty water and every time I got out it was really cold and it was disgusting. Jarod called it the pit of eternal despair.”

On working with Gaylene Preston:“I loved the chance to work with Gaylene. From the minute I met her, I thought ‘Oh, I feel really comfortable with her. She feels like a theatre director’. It felt like she’s the kind of director that wants you to try stuff out and figure it out as you go. She’s a real collaborator. She has a very strong vision about what she wants, but she doesn’t know the answer when you start a scene, which I love.”

“This is why the story is so alive and fresh. The thing that amazed me about her is that even two days from the end of shooting, she was still going up to people - extras, delivery people, truck drivers in the area - and asking them what their story is. It’s never too late with Gaylene. She is a storyteller. She really wants to know people’s stories. I guess it’s like that thing of ‘you might tell me one thing that’ll change my perspective on this character, so I’m going to ask you just in case you’re that one person’. Amazing.”

Luanne Gordon plays GINNY

In HOPE & WIRE, Luanne Gordon plays Ginny, an upper middle-class woman whose husband Jonty, a lawyer, is the breadwinner. They have two teenagers, the petulant and rebellious Holly and quietly determined Tim, who suffers brain damage in the earthquake. Ginny’s world is turned upside down in every possible way by the earthquakes and she has to find her own resilience and independence.

HOPE & WIRE is Luanne Gordon’s first job on returning to New Zealand from six years in the UK, where her work included an Irish feature Sensation and TV dramas Shameless and Casualty.

Her film credits include King Kong and Mee-Shee: The Water Giant and she won the best supporting actress NZ Film Award for her role in Stickmen. Her television roles include the lead as Melissa in The Strip, DS Angela Darley in Interrogation, Maxine in The Insider’s Guide to Happiness and she played Grinhilda in Xena Warrior Princess. She has also worked in theatre and won the Chapman Tripp Best newcomer award in 2000 for Serial Killers.Luanne Gordon says of her HOPE & WIRE character, Ginny:

“Ginny’s in a really happy marriage - she’s been married for decades to a successful husband with his own law firm. They have money, they don’t want for anything and their children are at the finest schools. She sees her family

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as being nothing spectacular, just a regular family, although they have a lot of money and privilege.

“After the earthquake, she loses trust in her entire family and she talks about how the earthquake - the rocking and shaking of the foundations of the earth - wasn’t the only thing that was rocked and shaken. It was the foundations of her family that were really rocked.”

“She becomes less concerned with material things: her appearance, the superficial consumerist aspects to her life. Her life had always been perfect. She was always protected. When all that protection was eroded and she couldn’t trust her husband to take care of things, she had to go out and do it for herself. She discovered that she really cares about what’s going on, and that makes her much stronger, more capable and more courageous.”

“I was away in the UK when the Christchurch earthquakes hit. I came back in November 2012, and I saw a Campbell Live story where they showed footage of Christchurch and how it was before the earthquakes and how it is now. I was watching that in tears. The earthquakes were a huge thing for people to go through. People outside of Christchurch talked about it for however long they talked about it, and people tried to help and did what they could, but then they tended to forget about it and get on with their lives. But people in Christchurch are still going through it and I think HOPE & WIRE is an important New Zealand story to remind us of what happened. I love that I’m back in New Zealand and involved in telling a really important New Zealand story.”

“Gaylene Preston is one of New Zealand’s finest filmmakers. I do not know an actor who would have turned down a role in this series. She’s very organic in her approach and flexible to her environment. I completely trusted that she would know when she’s got what she needs. I felt I was in safe hands, and that’s a really fortunate position to be in for an actor.”

Stephen Lovatt plays JONTY

In HOPE & WIRE, Stephen Lovatt is Jonty, the lawyer who is caught out juggling a few too many things when the earthquakes strike. He faces questions from his investors and eventually from his wife, Ginny, when the money-go-around grinds to a halt. And there’s also the matter of his flirtatious dependence on his colleague, Emma.

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Stephen Lovatt has recently played two policemen – he was Officer Pete in Jane Campion’s acclaimed Top of the Lake and DI Kevin Gray in Harry and he was Rog the servo worker in the feature Fantail.

He is best known for his role as Max Hoyland in the Australian soap Neighbours, and he also has major roles in US productions made in New Zealand. He played Tullius Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Hades in Xena: Warrior Princess and Galen, the Vampire Hunter in Hercules the Legendary Journeys, as well as roles in Legend of the Seeker, Cleopatra 2525 and Power Rangers.

His NZ feature film work includes Savage Honeymoon, Show of Hands, and The End of the Golden Weather and NZ television work includes Strongman, The Cure, Go Girls, Duggan, Waitangi: What Really Happened, Being Eve, Mataku and The Strip.

Stephen Lovatt says of his HOPE & WIRE character, Jonty:

“He’s just doing a perfectly adequate job as a lawyer and he’s got a lovely wife and two lovely kids and a lovely house and it’s all just fine really. He’s comfortable. They have the holiday home and the marriage is good. It’s a good life.”

“Then the earthquake happens and in an instant Jonty realises that the house of cards that he’s been operating is going to fall around him because he hasn’t been running his trust fund particularly well. He realises that people are going to need their money and he has no real records of it.”

“The structure of the story over the series as a whole is kind of like an earthquake. It fractures, it doesn’t have a central narrative, it breaks apart - often in strange and quite disconcerting ways - and you lose characters and then they pop up and their story has travelled and you just jump in and there they are, moving through the next bit. And then they turn around and talk right at you, and it’s all kind of discombobulating and fractured. It’s as if the way the story is structured is similar to what the story is about. It’s about a fractured community and people’s lives being fractured and it’s told in a fractured kind of way where hopefully the viewers are going to be hooked in because it’s an emotional ride for them.”

“I really wanted to be involved with this. I heard that Gaylene was doing a television series set around the earthquakes and what’s happened to Christchurch and because I know Gaylene's work, I wanted to be in it.”

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Joel Tobeck plays GREGGO

Joel Tobeck’s HOPE & WIRE character Greggo is a property developer who leaps out of bed, rushes to his car and drives naked through the earthquake-ravaged streets to check on his properties after the first earthquake. Writer/director Gaylene Preston says this incident is based on a true story.

Joel Tobeck has an international career in television and film, which includes US series Sons of Anarchy, Spartacus: War of the Damned, City Homicide and Hawaii Five-O, Without A Trace, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules, Young Hercules and Cleopatra 2525; Australian series Tangle, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, The Doctor Blake Mysteries and 30 Seconds. His NZ television drama work includes Siege, Underbelly NZ: Land of the Long Green Cloud, This is Not My Life, Lawless, Interrogation and Mercy Peak.

His feature films include the critically acclaimed Little Fish, Eagle vs Shark, Memory & Desire and Perfect Strangers. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 30 Days of Night, The Water Horse, Mee-Shee: The Water Giant, Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell and Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, for which he won a New Zealand Film Awards best actor award.

Joel Tobeck says of his HOPE & WIRE character, Greggo:

“I don’t think Greggo changed much between before and after the earthquakes, given the way he operates as a property developer. Once the earthquake happened, he saw the opportunity to really take advantage of the situation, so I think his modus operandi is the same. For him, it’s about getting as much out of the situation as he can.”

“I know property developers are not very popular at the best of times, which is why I guess in some unconscious way I've tried to make him more humorous, more of a likeable rogue. Because these guys aren’t popular. There are a lot of people there who have been ripped off by landlords and building companies and they’ll tell you they’re sick of it.”

“The earthquakes are such a serious matter and there’s so much drama going on you have to make light of some things. It’s a reflection of the New Zealand spirit that Gaylene captures so well in this series. There’s a nice humorous side to it and the characters are quite endearing. I don’t think you want to six episodes of total cry-fest. It’s got to be balanced out.”

On why he accepted the role: “Gaylene rang and obviously if Gaylene Preston rings and asks you to do something, you do it because she won’t take no for

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an answer. I’ve always loved working with her. We did Perfect Strangers together. She has a unique way of working. She can make stuff up on the go, which I love. She gave me a good break with Perfect Strangers in that I got to work with Sam Neill and she’s so respected and been around so long now that if she says she wants to you do something, you do it.”

“She said ‘I've got this role I'd love you to do’, so I thought ‘well, in a small, peculiar, insignificant way this is my way of helping Christchurch.’ I arrived back from LA on the day of the earthquake and to see those images and to hear those stories . . . It doesn’t really hit you until you get here how tough it’s been for everybody, so I guess my taking part in this series is fairly paltry, really, in the light of what's been going on, but it’s all I can do at the moment.”

Chelsie Preston Crayford plays MONEE

In HOPE & WIRE, Chelsie Preston Crayford plays Monee, a teenage runaway living with a group of white power thugs with her beloved dog, Unty, who comes to Joycie and Len’s attention in the backyard of Muntville.

Awarded the Australian Logie award for Outstanding New Talent in 2012, Chelsie Preston Crayford is establishing a successful career on both sides of the Tasman. The award was for her performance as Tilly Devine in the hit series Underbelly: Razor. She followed that with roles in telefeatures The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and Dripping in Chocolate. Her most recent Australian series is the upcoming CODE, a six-hour series for ABC TV, with David Wenham, Lucy Lawless, Adam Garcia and Dan Spielman.

She played her own grandmother as a young woman in Gaylene Preston’s feature Home By Christmas and had roles in Anthony McCarten’s Show of Hands and Taika Waititi’s Eagle vs Shark. Her NZ television drama work includes Fiona Samuel’s Bliss and TVNZ series The Cult, which earned her a best supporting actress nomination in the Qantas Film and Television Awards. She was awarded Best Performance in a Short Film at the 2007 New Zealand Screen Awards for her role in Peter Salmon’s Fog, winner of the audience vote at Cannes Film Festival Critics Week.

Her theatre work includes the innovative Carnival of Souls, which travelled to Sydney and Perth Arts Festivals; Silo Theatre’s That Face, The Vagina Monologues, Ruben Guthrie and Angels in America. She has taken her first steps as a director, with her short film Here Now a finalist in the 2013 NZ International Film Festival Short Films competition. On HOPE & WIRE she

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also worked with the production as acting coach for some of the young cast members.

Chelsie Preston Crayford describes her HOPE & WIRE character Monee:

“She already lives in chaos – she’s estranged from her family, she’s caught up with a bad crowd - she has been isolated by her abusive relationship and her only friend is a dog. Through the earthquakes, she is liberated by the fact that everybody around her, for a moment, is in as much chaos as she is. Also, being forced to live in the backyard among people she would normally not associate with, brings light to her life.”

On the attraction for her of HOPE & WIRE: “There are so many attractions to this job for me. It really did feel like a bit of a dream scenario because I love working with Gaylene. We are mother and daughter and creatively we speak the same language. We have innate trust and a really shorthand fast-track level of communication. I wholeheartedly believe and respect her creatively. It felt like an incredible time to be in Christchurch. It felt like a blessing to actually have an insight into what is happening on the ground there. I haven’t worked in New Zealand for a couple of years, and this feels like such an important story for our country.”

“Gaylene’s work has always been historical, but this feels like current history. During the shoot we were living in a community, meeting different people every day, and everyone had a story. The stories are bursting out of them. It felt like a privilege on so many levels.”

“ I’m also very attracted to roles that are really not like myself, so that’s another drawcard for me. Playing the character Monee involves a physical transformation and a psychological challenge – a transformation of attitude, everything. That’s about as good as it gets as an actor.”

On her contribution to writing Monee: “I’ve got a bit of a fascination with quirky news stories, and every time I would come across an off-the-wall/offbeat story about Christchurch, I would send it to Gaylene. One of those stories was about a girl who was on trial for owning a dog that was trained to attack Asian people and I thought OMG this is crazy. Gaylene read the Court Report and decided the character could be a good girl who had been led astray by her boyfriend. Hey Presto! Monee!.”

THE EASTERN

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The Eastern is the band that features in HOPE & WIRE, doing what they did with friends after the earthquakes – performing in any venue, including backyards, around Christchurch, buoying up morale, bringing people together. The Eastern song, Hope & Wire, inspired the title of this series and plays over the opening titles.

Composer Adam McGrath says, “Songs have jobs to do, songs have work. They do different things and they have different things that they need to do. And this song had some work to do. Hopefully the little humble song is strong enough to withstand all of this.”

“I wrote the song at Christmas the year of the earthquake. If you’re going to have a natural disaster and then try and express that in some sort of artistic way, you’re either going to go one way or the other: you need to be really hopeful or full of despair and we chose to be hopeful. Hope isn’t enough, though - it’s an intangible and it’s important - but you need the practical stuff, so that’s where the wire comes in.”

THE EASTERN : Biography (from their Facebook profile)

The Eastern are a string band that roars like a punk band, that swings like a gospel band, that drinks like a country band, that works like a bar band, that hopes like folk singers, and sings love songs like union songs, and writes union songs like love songs, and wants to slow dance and stand on tables, all at the same time. Whether roaring as their big six piece string band or swinging the loud lonesome sound as a two piece and averaging over 200 shows a year, The Eastern can hold it down in all settings for all comers.Constantly on tour, The Eastern have played in every nook and corner of the good isles of New Zealand, and have broken strings and dented floors in parts beyond. From Papanui to Portland, Shirley to Sydney they’ve seen more than their share of barrooms and street corners, but treat any opportunity to hold it down and play as a gift and one they’d be fools to waste. They play like they mean it, like its all they know how do…because they do and it is.

They’ve toured with Steve Earle (twice), the Old Crow Medicine Show (twice) and the Lilʼ Band of Gold as well as opening for everyone from Fleetwood Mac to the Jayhawks to Jimmy Barnes to Justin Townes Earle as well as Jim White, Victoria Williams and Vic Chestnut. Over the past five years having delivered up two albums (‘The Eastern’ and ‘Arrows’), three e.p.s and near-on 1000 shows, The Eastern have garnered a reputation as NZ’s hardest working band. They gather converts and friends wherever they or their records land. Thrillingly, the rolling, rambling, shambling, spirit raising atmospheres they project in their live shows have endeared them to the

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hearts of many. It’s obvious they care about the audience as much as the songs. They make friendships and family wherever their songs and stories ring out. The trust they’ve built between themselves and the folks who come and hear them is something they’re rightly proud of and they remain thrilled and amazed it’s that relationship that has been able to keep their wheels on the road and their bellies fed, not least the fact that as the years pass the threat of their former day jobs coming back to capture them fades back into the ether.

Due to start recording their third album in February 2011, plans were waylaid by the Christchurch earthquake, instead they gathered up friends and singers alike in their home town of Lyttelton (Christchurchʼs port) and begin work on the charity record ʻThe Harbour Unionʼ, ¬ the album debuted in the top 20 of the NZ Chart, was nominated for New Zealand country music album of the year and has proved to be a wonderful vehicle through which The Eastern and their friends can trade music for donations to the Christchurch earthquake fund.

They released across New Zealand and Australia of their third and most realised record ‘Hope and Wire’… a double album rolling out at a single album price its loaded with stories, heart and harmony as well as the grand barroom philosophising and old time fury the band are known for. Hope and Wire debuted at number 11 on the national charts and maintained a top ten position in the NZ artist charts for the two months following as well as gathering incredible reviews across NZ and beyond.

INDEX

PAGE NUMBER 1. BROCHURE

4. ABOUT THE SHOW - series description and synopsis

5. EPISODES – short summary

8. EPISODES – one page synopsis

9. FACT SHEET

15.THE MAKERS – Bios and interviews

19.GAYLENE PRESTON INTERVIEW

25.CHRIS HAMPSON INTERVIEW

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27. CAST – Bios and interviews

FOR PUBLICITY ENQURIES CONTACT: SUE MAY

suemay@xtra.co.nz

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