Close to Home - Episode 300

Oh yeah? Rob Muldoon got thrown out in a bloodless military takeover...

– Riki (Jim Moriarty) delivers some choice political sarcasm

That was lover boy? He just hung up on me.

– Christine (Heather Lindsay) is miffed at new fiancé David (Stephen Tozer)

As it seems to be the season, Maggie's said she'll marry me!

– Riki (Jim Moriarty) steals the limelight at Ken's (Harry Lavington) birthday party

You know what, Christine? He was going to go off to work today, but I told him I want to have a man to man about the facts of life.

– Riki (Jim Moriarty) has a laugh with Christine (Heather Lindsay) about her fiancé

Half a tonne. I'm feeling old too — do I look 50?

– Ken (Harry Lavington) laments getting older, at the start of this episode

Although Close to Home's greatest cultural contribution was to maintain a regular niche and output for local drama, equally significant in the development of a drama production industry was its function an an ongoing training ground for writers, directors and producers. It became a foundation layer in the production pyramid for local TV drama.

– Author Trisha Dunleavy, in her 1999 book Ourselves in Primetime, page 72

Grab yourselves a glass and stop taking the limelight! This is my party. I demand to be the centre of attention. It was very thoughtless of you to get engaged on my birthday.

– Ken (Harry Lavington) jokingly takes control at his fiftieth birthday party

[The show] revolves around the trials and tribulations of the Hearte Family. The Hearte Family is a vaguely middle-class, or potentially upper middle-class, or even lower middle-class family, it’s very hard to tell because everybody in the 70s seems to dress the same miserable way and look uniformly dour. The Heartes have all the problems that you’d expect a family in Wellington suburbia to have in the 70s: they’re very cold, probably low-key alcoholics, and very white.

– Playwright Sam Brooks experiences Close to Home in 2018, The Spinoff, 19 March 2018

I wrote for the second Pukemanu series and, when TV One started, became one of the regular writers on Close to Home. It was this that allowed many of us to become professional TV drama writers — and I mean professional in the money sense. With two episodes a week it was possible to earn a living writing for television. It probably supported five of us and gave another five an impetus to work at it.

– Prolific TV writer Keith Aberdein on the importance of soap Close to Home, in 1999 book Ourselves in Primetime, page 73

In 1975 Harry Lavington was known as "the second most famous man in New Zealand" after Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. Such was the power of soap opera Close to Home . . . He joined the cast as baker and family man Ken Paget in the show's third week on air in 1975. His two week contract grew to three months and finally to seven years. The plots and woes endured by the characters made for a memorable epoch for him. He recalled once persuading scriptwriters that the idea of his onscreen wife Dot, played by Glenis Levestam, having an affair was not worth pursuing; to Lavington's horror the plotline was given to his character instead.

– Bess Manson writes about late actor Harry Lavington, The Dominion Post, 15 May 2018