John Lye

A meticulous, unflappable producer and director, John Lye’s career spanned three decades – most of it spent with TVNZ in Christchurch and Avalon. Lye did time as a cameraman and floor manager. Later he commanded two major productions of the 1980s — That’s Country and McPhail and Gadsby. After leaving TVNZ in 2000, he helped launch Big Brother Australia and live broadcasts of New Zealand Parliament.

He was the only person I fully trusted with transforming a script into a finished sketch… I had complete faith in John’s judgement. If the plants needed light, then let there be light and if John said a sketch wasn’t working, we knew it wasn’t working. David McPhail, on page 170 of his autobiography The Years Before My Death