Shortland Street: Inside an Icon (25th anniversary)

My name's Rachel...and I'm an alcoholic.

– Rachel McKenna (Angela Bloomfield) delivers a dramatic line

A parent watching that at home, they might take a cue from that, they might never have thought about it. I think that's the cool thing about Shortland Street you're watching it with dinner and then you're like 'does my kids do that..?"

– Family violence commentator Richie Hardcore on the (in)famous 'dick pic' story-line

Some people have watched it since 1992 and have grown up with it and grown up with the characters, and it's familiar, and I think being New Zealand we're a small country, and Shortland Street is our only soap. So I think it's really sentimental to a lot of people.

– Actor Teuila Blakely on the place Shortland Street has in the Kiwi cultural landscape

I always used to liken Shortland Street to the town village. it's where all the news and all the drama of the town all comes together into this one place. The reception area is like the meeting square in the middle, where there's the town cryer who was obviously Marge . . . and all the drama happens there, which then feeds out into the rest of the village.

– Actor Robyn Malcolm

You do get really attached. I mean I bawled my eyes out when Joey died, and he'd murdered several people...

– Actor Lucy Elliott on the power of Shortland Street

It's become New Zealand like lamingtons and pineapple lumps and L&P. It's become one of those things that people associate with this country.

– Producer/director Simon Bennett on the way Shortland Street has been absorbed into Kiwi pop culture

Audiences at first were quite shocked and possibly a little bit confronted to hear Kiwi accents every night in a New Zealand drama.

– Producer/director Simon Bennett on Kiwi cultural cringe, at the start of this documentary

I actually found that one of the most challenging things about being on the show was that people forgot I was an actor, and just thought I was Vasa and then, similarly, treated me as such. And like I said she was a very contentious character who people actually loved to hate. So then I felt that people started hating me!

– Teuila Blakely on the drawbacks of acting on a popular soap

Every week we thought we were going to be fired, and I used to go home and say to my partner 'you know, I don't know how much longer I'll be working in this job'. Because the ratings were not the best in the first year.

– Writer turned producer Maxine Fleming, at the start of this documentary

Originally we all thought we were part of an enormous turkey, that everybody hated...because they did.

– Actor Michael Galvin, at the start of this documentary

I really remember very strongly . . . that's one of the things they hated about the show — those awful Kiwi voices.

– Actor Michael Galvin on early criticism of the show, early in this documentary