Both Jack, 24, and his younger brother Cameron, 21, have followed their parents – Ward-Lealand has been married to actor and director Michael Hurst since 1988 – into the entertainment industry. “I think both children have a very realistic idea of the business because they’ve got two freelance parents who have never really known what the future was going to hold,” she says. “I’ve been in the industry for 40 years and Michael for 45, so they’ve got a really clear idea of how hard you have to work.
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Life is murder for Jennifer Ward-Lealand in The Brokenwood Mysteries. “They’ve really got their feet on the ground. Working with Jack was one of my favourite things of the year actually.”
James Croot07:05, Jun 04 2021
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CREAMERIE (TVNZ ONDEMAND) Despite the premise, initial aesthetics and the presence of the luminous Tandi Wright, a dystopian drama akin to the under-rated, sadly short-lived
This is Not My Life, this Kiwi black comedy
is not. Instead, it’s an, at times anarchic, kind of anti-
Handmaid’s Tale that’s not for the easily offended. Our main trio are messy, complicated, straight-talking women and those unfamiliar with the production team’s previous shows
Flat3 and
Friday Night Bites could be in for either a hilarious surprise, or rude shock. Fans of the work of JJ Fong, Perlina Lau, Ally Xue and director Roseanne Liang, who also serves as one of
SBS On Demand
New Zealanders always seem to pull off quirky comedy-dramas and this dystopian series is masterful, with deadpan humour and a terrific cast.
Creamerie opens eight years after an unexplained virus has wiped out the world’s men and boys - we get a brief, gory montage of the virus taking hold in a men’s locker room, swiftly followed by huge pyres of men’s bodies - and New Zealand is now run by women. But life in the fictional Hiro Valley is not the feminist Utopia it appears to be. In a flip on
The Handmaid’s Tale, women are in charge, but things have still deteriorated into a fascist state, albeit one predicated on “wellness”, and run by the charismatic, guru-like Lane (Tandi Wright).