The Governor: Episode 1

The first in a six-episode series based on the life of Sir George Grey – the man who became the single, most powerful man in the making of nineteenth century New Zealand.

The Governor / Te Kawana, New Zealand, 1977

Episode 1 The Reverend Traitor

Director/producer: Tony Isaac
Production co: Television One in association with the NZ National Film Unit
Executive producers: Michael Scott-Smith, Tom Williamson
Series written by: Keith Aberdein
Based on stories by: Michael Anthony Noonan
Editor: Jamie Selkirk
Lighting cameraman: Kell Fowler
Music: Ross Harris
Sound: Kit Rollings, Geoff Shepherd
Production designer: Warren Sellers
Art director: Ron Highfield
Costume designer: Rohanna Hawthorne
Wardrobe mistress: Joan Grimmond
Wardrobe assistants: Andrea Burns, Christine Bait
Maori advisors: Moana Raureti, Tupi Puriri
Translations: Jim Pou, Koro Dewes
Military adviser: Brian Wilson
Moko artists: Napi Waaka, Eruera Nia
Liaison: Don Selwyn
Carving: Para Matchitt
Special effects: Bob Duggan, Mitch Lovett, Johnny Morris (explosions)

With: Corin Redgrave (Sir George Grey), George Henare (Hone Heke), Grant Tilly (Henry Williams), Tamahina Tinirau (Te Rauparaha), Judy Cleine (Lady Eliza Grey), Auton Lowe (Bishop Selwyn), Anne Flannery (Marianne Williams)

And featuring: John Cronin, Robert Gould, Jim Haami, Roy Hope, Paraire Huata, Bill Johnson, Ivin Kiripatea, Kim Priest, Peter Sakey, David Skinner, te Whatanui Skipworth, Emie Stanley, John Tahu, Sef Townsend, Napi Waaka, Celia West, Lawrence McDonald, Waihoroi Shortland

DV (originally 16mm), 90 minutes

First screened on TV1 on Sunday 2 October, 1977
Awards: 1978 Feltex Award for Best Drama

The first in a six-episode series based on the life of Sir George Grey – a man who was Governor of South Australia and South Africa – and who became the single, most powerful man in the making of nineteenth century New Zealand.

Episode One The Reverend Traitor, begins before Grey’s arrival with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It follows Hone Heke and his defiant stand when he chops down the British flagpole, his sacking of Kororareka, and defeat by Governor Grey (by taking a fortified fighting pa on a Sunday while the defenders were at worship). Grey’s success against Heke ends the war in the north, allowing him to turn his attention to the missionaries, particularly toward Henry Williams from the CMS who, for twenty years, had worked to turn New Zealand into the world’s first theocracy. Using documents captured in the taking of the pa and the fact that he held land purchased from his Maori flock, the Governor destroys Williams’ credibility, succeeding in having him sacked from the Missionary Society.

In 1977 The Governor was the most ambitious drama series ever produced in New Zealand television history. Writing in 1985, when episode one was rebroadcast as part of TVNZ’s 25-year celebrations, Roger Moroney put it succinctly, “Undertaking the six-part series was, for television in this country, the equivalent of a boy going on from a couple of weeks at Outward Bound to have a crack at the north face of the Eiger. It was expensive, and critically received. What should have burst upon the international programme buying market as a blockbuster for New Zealand television production merely sat about in the shelves, waiting for 25 years of television to go by so it could have another airing.” — Daily Telegraph, 27 June 1985

Even before it was broadcast The Governor was controversial. The Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, attacked the programme and what he saw as the producers’ ‘spend, spend, spend’ attitude. Muldoon was so incensed that he ordered a Parliamentary public expenditure committee to investigate budgeting and the control of expenditure in television.

Commenting on The Governor in 2000, Lawrence McDonald wrote “The negative fallout from The Governor (alleged budgetary blowout of $1.4 million, ‘excessive’ nudity and violence, controversial Trotskyite lead actor, etc), which attracted the ire of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, effectively spelt the end of such ambitious historical dramatised documentaries on New Zealand television. Apart from the series Pioneer Women in the early 1980s, there has been nothing quite like it since.” And it still holds true. — Diane Pivac

Screenings: The Governor screened on 7 September 2005 as part of 'Rarely Seen, But Important (& Pleasurable)', a season selected by x-Film Commission marketing chief, Lindsay Shelton