Andrea Lamb

Growing up in Rangiora in the 1970s, with a love of horses, Andrea Lamb thought she would end up working with animals. But she couldn’t have predicted the roundabout way that would eventually happen — working for more than a decade on The Zoo, one of New Zealand’s most popular television shows.

It was while she was on her OE in London that Lamb found a temp job with Worldwide Television News (now known as APTN) and got a taste for working in the media.

On her return to New Zealand in 1992, she took the Diploma course at the NZ Film and Television School in Christchurch. She was looking for a combination of hands-on practical training and access to networks and opportunities.  "It was so that I could one gauge whether it was really something I wanted to do, and so I could meet people that were working in the industry to try and get myself into it."

At the end of the course, Lamb was interviewed for a role with successful independent company Communicado, led by the charismatic Neil Roberts. She became a production assistant in the highly profitable corporate communications division, working on corporate videos for businesses like Lion Nathan, Countrywide Bank and Air New Zealand. 

"All that work came from connections that Neil had to the people who were running those organisations. Communicado were great at giving you opportunities. I went from production assistant to production manager, and then I started doing some directing."

It was a buzzy time to be around the media in Auckland. Communicado were moving into feature film production with Once Were Warriors, and were rapidly taking advantage of the new market for independent productions commissioned by local broadcasters and funded by NZ On Air.

It was at Communicado that Lamb first met John Harris, who would prove to be an enormous influence on her career. But her next move, in 1997, was to another legend of New Zealand reality TV: Julie Christie and her company Touchdown Television.

Changing Rooms was "one of the first international format series that came to New Zealand." Lamb worked on three seasons of the influential home renovation show, often as one of the key directors: "There were two houses and there was a director in each house. I ended up being one of them for a number of seasons."

As was often the case in those days (as with Shortland Street), the developers of the original format would supervise the early episodes, and show the locals the ropes. “It was such a quick turnaround. We filmed on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Meanwhile, all the rushes were going straight back to the post-production teams, who were editing immediately. I was basically a location director and a story director.”

Changing Rooms proved so popular that Touchdown quickly came up with variations on the theme. After the Ginette McDonald-hosted Ground Force (another overseas format), Touchdown produced April’s Angels (hosted by April Ieramia). This time the renovation was a community facility like a local hall, rather than private property.

"There were high expectations and we worked really long hours, but I didn't mind because I enjoyed it and I learned an awful lot."

The 90s was a boom time for local content in primetime, and Touchdown were at the forefront. "It was a time when everyone agreed that New Zealanders wanted to see themselves on the screen and there was advertising back then...so there was money to pay for those shows. The audience wanted it, the networks wanted it and we loved making it."

John Harris had started his own company Greenstone Pictures in 1991. He was still working from a small office in Mount Eden when he recruited Lamb to be a producer/director in 1999. "It wasn't really an office," Lamb remembers. "Our tape storage was in the old bathroom, things like that. So we were just making do."

Greenstone would become a powerhouse of reality television, and sold a number of its shows overseas. Lamb was there to work on a newly-commissioned project called Love thy Neighbour (later to become hit show Neighbours at War). This was an early move into what Lamb calls “docu-soap”: reality shows with much more drama than the home and garden renovations at Touchdown.

"It was a challenging series," says Lamb. "It was difficult to get people to agree to want to be on TV. There was that side of it, and then there were the other people that couldn't wait to get on television to tell their story."

In 1999 the show came along that Lamb describes as “my best five or six years in television” – The Zoo. As director and producer, Lamb would spend up to eight months a year with her crew at Auckland Zoo, capturing stories about the animals and the humans who looked after them. "We were like part of the team of keepers, you know — except obviously we didn't do anything with the animals."

The Zoo was a huge success. The show was "appointment viewing" on Sunday night in primetime on TV One. It won multiple awards and spawned several spinoffs. The various shows took Lamb around the world following Auckland Zoo experts as they worked on or observed wildlife conservation projects.

After six years with The Zoo, Lamb was promoted to Executive Producer at Greenstone, which saw her supervising multiple shows at one time. The merger with Cream TV in 2010 saw Greenstone's slate of productions grow even more, and Lamb was promoted once again — to Head of Production.

"Initially, I did miss being out in the field. But then there were other great things with it as well: mentoring new producers and directors, handing over shows that you'd worked on, and helping others to take them on. Also, in that Head of Production role, I started to get more involved in the setting up of new shows, helping to establish, 'is this a viable series'?"

Lamb spent time with the Victoria Police while the Australian version of Motorway Patrol (known as Highway Patrol) was being developed, seeing if their stories would translate as well to the screen as ours. The show is still running 15 years later.

One programme that Lamb developed from scratch was History Under the Hammer for Prime TV. Unlike Going Going Gone, this show was less about the drama of the auction and more about individual items of interest, tracing their history and telling stories of New Zealand in the process.

While international sales — of finished shows, and also the intellectual property of formats — are a vital contributor to the sustainability of an independent production company, Lamb says that overseas audiences were always secondary when they were developing ideas.

"It was always firstly for the local market — and then if it travelled internationally, great. Sometimes we might have made a separate version of something, like a New Zealand version and then an overseas sales one later on. But that wasn't a key driver. It was telling great stories, and telling New Zealand stories."

Lamb left Greenstone in 2015 to join Mediaworks (then owners of TV3) as a commissioner. A year after that she left television entirely to join Auckland University, and develop a new generation of interactive learning resources for schools. "We created all this really cool online learning content, including games and animation. All the stuff that I love — all still storytelling."

Profile written by Dan Slevin: published on 31 October 2024

Sources include
Andrea Lamb
'Andrea Lamb' LinkedIn website. Accessed 31 October 2024