Rumpy-pumpy not so on ‘Kew’ in early days

The headline was dismissive. ‘‘New TV soap draws short shrift’’. I was The Southland Times TV reviewer when the first episode of Shortland Street aired 30 years ago this week. But that wasn’t my assessment.

It came from Southland Hospital. In what might only forgivingly be called a news story, I’d felt that, as a public duty, I should contact the hospital to see how the episode compared with real life.

Particularly since, as the subsequent report read: ‘‘The soapish shenanigans included a doctor ducking off duty for a heated romantic entanglement with an aerobics instructor.’’

The doc was of course a virile, young Chris Warner (Michael Galvin) clinching in a confined space with a character whose name is forgotten but was played – as everyone well knew – by that nice Susy Aiken, the hostess familiar from the rather more chaste-than-itsounded Blind Date.

Was this sort of thing, I demanded from Southland Area Health Board treatment services manager Rob England, in any way representative of reality?

Shortland Street, he stonily replied, should not be confused with Kew Road.

In truth, he was most upset at the depiction of a birth in which ‘‘nobody bothered to get the afterbirth’’.

‘‘And as for a doctor disappearing for nookie during the day, it doesn’t happen like that in Invercargill – not for the doctors at this hospital I can tell you,’’ he added.

A follow-up question – ‘‘as far as you know, surely’’ – didn’t go down particularly well and I didn’t include that bit in the story.

While some people realised that such series were nonsense, it was worrying that some may believe what they saw, he concluded.

So Dr England instead recommended viewers stick with the British series Casualty, which was normally realistic in its depiction of procedures and the advice passed onto viewers.

Elsewhere in New Zealand, the debut drew fire from other professionals. Medical inaccuracies, characters who discussed doctors and patients in the waiting area, and phones that went unanswered – none of this impressed real-life counterparts of the Shortland Street team.

TVNZ was swift to reply, saying a big effort had been made to try to make the programme as accurate as possible. In fact, a midwife’s role had been taken by a real-life midwife.

Tucked away in the back of the paper, where it belonged, was my own review.

I was struck by the breathlessness of it all.

We had Aiken in a heavybreathing clinch with Galvin, while across the road a gasping woman was about to deliver a child.

Meanwhile, the receptionist was catching her breath at the discovery her teenage son was the father.

A naive, young nurse was sighing heavily at the realisation she had just been ripped off by a teenage thief.

And the charge nurse (that would be Carrie Burton played by Lisa Crittenden) was huffing and puffing about the stroppy new doctor.

The most famous line from that exchange – ‘‘You’re not in Guatamala now, Dr Ropata’’ – went unremarked upon. My bad.

The review concluded: ‘‘It’s going to be a marathon production but started as though it was a sprint, which was just as well, since it was only really the sheer pace of the debut which saved it.’’

The camera was as busy as the actors poking over characters’ shoulders and whizzing around behind stretchers. The scenes were all short-short-short, none of those lingering soap-operatic shots we’d become used to from the imported likes of The Young and the Restless.

‘‘No pregnant pauses either – especially not from the pregnant woman.

‘‘In just half an hour we’ve had the first crash, the first infidelity, the first childbirth, the first dishonest dealing, the first doctor in trouble, the first administrator grizzling about broken rules ...’’

Thirty years on, there’s been lots happening since then.

Probably should have hit up Southland Hospital for an update. Who knows, maybe it’s become more realistic? Or maybe the hospital has become more soapish. Either way, we probably have a right to know.

And, in case you haven’t been paying attention, Chris and whoever-Suzy-was-playing – it didn’t last.