Hope and Wire - Full Series

Rachel House is simply tremendous as Joycie: she carries the drama and embodies the terrible mix of anxiety and fatigue that people in Christchurch know. The rendering of the earthquakes themselves and the blending of real-life footage with acted drama are a technical triumph...

– Writer Russell Brown on the first episode of Hope and Wire, Public Address website, 4 July 2014

Oh I hate that word; it's not even English!

– Ginny (Luanne Gordon) objects to her teenage daughter's use of the word 'munted'

I just wanted to be in it, really...we need to talk to ourselves nationally about these experiences and television is a good way to do it, especially as a drama.

– Actor Stephen Lovatt on his role in Hope and Wire, The NZ Herald, 29 June 2014

The lives of the people in the series have been shattered and the structure Gaylene's gone for in telling their story is similarly fractured; there's not really a central narrative so we'll see some of this collection of characters and then we lose them for quite a long period of time and when they pop up again their story will have moved a certain distance without us really being aware of how's it happened. It was quite challenging to not have a straight-line narrative to play, but it was also great fun.

– Actor Stephen Lovatt on director Gaylene Preston's approach to filming Hope and Wire, The NZ Herald, 29 June 2014

Visually there were moments of great power. There were nearly seamless combinations of actual and recreated footage of carnage — including file footage I've haven't seen before. The earthquake scenes were visceral. The decision to break the fourth wall, or to look and talk directly to the camera challenged me somewhat ... But the intent, to tell a sprawling story, to represent a raw and recent disaster called for an approach that somehow skirted the documentary and the dramatic.

– Reviewer Paul Casserly on the first episode of Hope and Wire, The NZ Herald, 4 July 2014

It's not anarchy; it's socialism, pure and simple.

– Len (Bernard Hill) after demanding cheaper rent for his neighbours, in the first episode of Hope and Wire

Māori warriors were slaughtered by tribes from up north — my tipuna — and then the Pākehā settlers came in here and built an entire city on tapu land.

– Donna (Miriama Mcdowell) in the first episode of Hope and Wire

There were five big jolts, qualified as after shocks. And one by one, they slowly just shook the city to bits. Churned it to dust. It just shreds everybody's nerves, that. Did my brain in.

– Len (Bernard Hill) in the first episode of Hope and Wire

...it seems to work. The warts-and-all approach, without sensationalism, brings it all back. The chaos. The desperation to hear your loved one's voice ... Hope and Wire — named after the messages that cropped up in the aftermath and were posted on to security fences around the red zone — is well handled. The characters are well portrayed and well acted. It's raw, but done with sensitivity.

– Christchurch-based reporter Kurt Bayer on the first episode of Hope and Wire, The NZ Herald, 3 July 2014

You know, if you'd asked me before all the shaking started, I would have said I was just a normal person, from a normal Christchurch family. No dramas, no big issues, no hidden cracks.

– Ginny (Luanne Gordon) in the first episode of Hope and Wire

The next morning... the daily newspaper gets delivered. Unbelievable. Their building came down! Staff members were killed. How they got that paper published, it's just impossible to fathom that they did.

– Len (Bernard Hill) on Christchurch newspaper The Press, in episode three

I come from there. Everything we've worked for is there.

– Ryan (Jarod Pawiri) on being reluctant to move away from Christchurch, in episode four

After September we worked out a plan, an earthquake plan. I would collect Hayley and Jonty would contact him, and we would all head home. Even if the place was a pile of rubble. But when it actually happens, you have no idea what to do.

– Ginny (Luanne Gordon) in the second episode of Hope and Wire

... I don't cry over broken piles. I see an opportunity and I go for it. Someone I know rented out his caravan for 700 bucks a week. Market rules: opportunities.

– Landlord Greggo (Joel Tobeck) in the third episode

Can we talk about something else? I'm experiencing Christchurch fatigue, like a lot of people in the city.

– Donna (Miriama McDowell) in the fourth episode of Hope and Wire

It might prove too painful for many Cantabrians to watch, but it should provide Kiwis outside Christchurch with a better understanding of just exactly what happened during the tumultuous recent period of our history.

– Christchurch-based reporter Kurt Bayer on the first episode, The NZ Herald, 3 July 2014

When troubles come, you're supposed to face them! Not run away...

– Dotty (Kate Harcourt) in the fifth episode of Hope and Wire

Whose going to buy this place now?

– Ginny (Luanne Gordon) in the fifth episode

...almost all the characters get redemption in Hope and Wire. It’s a story. A story woven together from hundreds that were written, reported, overheard at the pub.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, in her backgrounder on Hope and Wire

Been there, done that; they're so lovely when they're sorry.

– Joycie (Rachel House) watches Monee (Chelsie Preston Crayford) making up with her abusive boyfriend King (Kip Chapman)

This elaborate and engaging recreation might pour on more incident than we strictly need ... But veteran Gaylene Preston (War Stories) does a masterful job of matching news footage with recreated scenes of mayhem and intense family drama, and even some wised-up social comedy, with a fine cast led by Lord of the Rings veteran Bernard Hill as a Manchester socialist who’s seen one disaster too many.

– Georgia Straight (Vancouver) reviewer Ken Eisner, 2 October 2014