The Governor 3 - The Mutinous Lieutenant (Episode Three)

Eyre? Terribly serious Mr Eyre? The poor man.

– Lady Eliza Grey (Judy Cleine) on hearing Edward Eyre is to be her husband's new Lieutenant-Governor

I have been charged with governing this country, not you, not anybody else but me! And I will govern it, not just a part of it, not just in the interests of a few land hungry settlers but all, every man, woman and child. And that includes the Maoris. If I hand power over to your friends the Maori people would be destroyed within ten years and you know it.

– Governor Grey (Corin Redgrave) bites back at his Lieutenant Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephens)

I find that being on a ship is as close one can come to purgatory on earth...

– Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephens) on his aversion to sailing

For some reason God has put us together — a trial of some kind. But everything is in Grey's favour; he has the status and the charm.

– Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephens) vents to his fiancee ( Janice Finn) about Governor Grey (Corin Redgrave)

I have walked halfway across this land. I won't give up now.

– Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephen) on his determination to cross central Australia by foot, near the opening of episode three.

I think that in the Governor's case he finds reason for his dalliance in the fine print of the Treaty of Waitangi; he uses it as justification for everything else.

– Politician and poet Alfred Domett (Michael Noonan) alludes to Governor Grey's dalliances with Māori women

I'm not that much of a man, Adelaide ... I have a certain physical courage. Sometimes I think it is only stubbornness. It is my strength and my weakness. I go on when other men give up, but sometimes I don't know when to give up.

– Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephens) opens up to his fiancee Adelaide (Janice Finn), after walking from New Plymouth to Auckland in four days

You must never fall into the snares of matrimony Mr. Eyre, it is man's destruction.

– Alfred Domett (Michael Noonan) advises Mr Eyre over drinks

He reminds me somewhat of a rather nervous hedgehog who has just stumbled into the light of day.

– Wellington Judge Chapman (Michael Haigh) observes the new Lieutenant Governor at a ball

He remains rather aloof...but now and again he comes very much into the foreground and you can get a vivid picture of him. I tend to try to play him as I find him in the script, reinforced I suppose, by what I've read about him, heard about him; whether it's entirely true to Grey's personality. I think there's no way of knowing.

– British actor Corin Redgrave on playing Governor George Grey, The Listener, 1 October 1977, page 40

...Eyre is reported to have taken a keen interest in Māori affairs and helped to acquire large areas of land for Māori within his province. After Henry Tacy​ Kemp negotiated a deal, known as Kemp's Deed, signed by 40 Māori chiefs, for Crown purchase of land across Canterbury, the West Coast and Otago, Eyre objected to the way it had been handled. Eyre said the transaction had been completed in just three days, not enough time to have ascertained the wishes of the natives, nor visit all the settlements interested. He called for a new deed to be executed, but was overruled by director-in-chief [George] Grey, who had come to despise Eyre.

– Writer Emma Dangerfield on Edward Eyre's battles with Governor Grey, The Press, 24 June 2020

We have had letters, phone calls, reported conversations in buses and trains and people telling us what they'd heard at their work. The ratings revealed that at its peak The Governor rated higher than any other New Zealand production and averaged 50% of the viewing population, the sort of rating you normally only get for rugby tests or Olympics.

– Governor producer Tony Isaac on the show's huge TV audience, The Auckland Star, 7 November 1977

...when I read the scripts and saw what an epic scale the programme was going to be, I was surprised and pleased. I don't think you would find many opportunities to do something on this scale now in television companies anywhere.

– Lead actor Corin Redgrave, in documentary The Making of The Governor (clip three)

Do you think they're incapable of governing themselves responsibly? ...Do you not believe in democracy?

– Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephens) asks George Grey (Corin Redgrave) when settlers are to get an elected legislative body

Constitutional associations my foot! Pompous men having dinner together, getting up petitions to England to have me recalled.

– Governor Grey (Corin Redgrave) slams Wellington settlers who are seeking democracy

The correspondence between the two men vividly illustrates their different temperaments and abilities: Eyre's lengthy, tedious, self-justificatory dispatches; Grey's neat, unanswerable, incisive, snubbing epistles. Grey lost no opportunity of gently but unmistakably informing the Colonial Office that Eyre was far more of a hindrance than a help.

– Historian Michael Wordsworth Standish, on relations between Edward Eyre and George Grey, in a 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand profile of Eyre

I do not disobey orders, however outrageous. I wouldn't give him that excuse.

– Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephens) starts to express his frustrations over working under George Greywith

We cannot differ on anything Mr Eyre; you are my Lieutenant. Do we understand each other?

– George Grey (Corin Redgrave) to his new second in command, Edward Eyre (Jeremy Stephens)