One Lane Bridge - First Episode

Take me out the back, put a bullet between me eyes . . . it's good enough for the animals, it's good enough for me.

– Elderly ex- farmer Jack Ryder (Peter McCauley) to his son Andrew (Dean O'Gorman)

What am I going to do without him?

– Emma Ryder (Nathalie Morris) grieves for her father, with detective Ariki Davis (Dominic Ona Ariki)

Apparently I'm an asker of stupid questions...

– Tilly (Phoebe McKellar) after a gaffe with new arrival Ariki Davis (Dominic Ona Ariki)

You have no idea. This f***ing place eats you alive. Jack, Marion . . . Grub.

– Kate Ryder (Aidee Walker) unleashes after her partner's unexplained death

It’s funny because I didn’t know what the workload was for a lead character. When you’re doing these support characters, you’ve always got downtime, so when I heard that I’d be down in Queenstown for like 10 to 11 weeks, I was telling my partner, 'Babe, I might start trying to learn the guitar considering all this downtime'. But there’s no downtime.

– Actor Dominic Ona-Ariki on the workload of being lead in drama One Lane Bridge, Stuff, 5 August 2021

This show is the brainchild of Pip Hall and Philip Smith, two of the country’s most experienced TV creatives . . . Smith, the CEO of screen production powerhouse Great Southern, lives in Queenstown, and his hometown’s jaw-dropping landscapes take pride of place in the series. The immensity of Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables give One Lane Bridge an air of brooding inevitability . . . The natural beauty is something of a scene-stealer, in fact, constantly drawing the viewer’s attention out the window or over a character’s shoulder to the spectacular landscapes beyond. If that sounds like a slight, it is. One Lane Bridge’s main issue is that behind the natural set-dressing is a drama that fails to land.

– Catherine McGregor, in a review of the first two episodes, The Spinoff, April 2020

The first scene is astonishing . . . Six bodies, four seemingly unconnected death scenes — it’s a scene so unsettling that I was reminded of those mystery logic puzzles, the ones that can only be solved with yes or no answers. My favourite as a child was this: a man is found dead in a phone booth, broken glass is everywhere and the phone is hanging off the hook. What happened?

– Catherine McGregor, in a review of the first two episodes, The Spinoff, April 2020

Introduced during lockdown, One Lane Bridge was an engrossing, evocative supernatural-tinged detective drama, a Central Otago-set Kiwi answer to Scandi-Noir complete with terrific performances from a well-assembled ensemble headed by Joel Tobeck and Filthy Rich’s Dominic Ona-Ariki.

– Critic James Croot looks back on season one, Stuff, 15 August 2021