Miriam Margolyes Photo: Screenshot
Opinion: New Zealand viewers may find chunks of Miriam Margolyes' new series Miriam Margolyes in New Zealand a tad cringey.
Clearly aimed at an Australian/international audience, we get explainers on commonplace words and even lines like, "I'm off to meet some local Kiwis, as New Zealanders call themselves."
Further Miriam-splains include:
"Dave suggested I come here [Whanganui] to meet the local Māori tribe, or iwi."
"Time to do some research, starting with how New Zealand, like Australia, came to be settled by Europeans or Pākeha as we're called here."
Jarring explanations of the obvious aside, there's still plenty to enjoy for local audiences.
Australia is British-born Margolyes' adopted home, and the premise for this show is that she is researching an upcoming film role here where she is to play a New Zealand nun who goes on an extended roadie.
She'll also learn more about New Zealand in the process.
"It seems unforgivable to be so ignorant about a country that has always been Australia's closest ally," she explains.
Over two episodes as Margolyes travels the North and South Island, she aims to remedy that.
Inevitably she's in a campervan, following on from her success in travel show Miriam and Alan Lost in Scotland and Beyond. And as in that programme, the trademark sweary, flatulent, posh aunty schtick is present and correct here.
A slightly clunky interlude where she talks to Dave at a stop-go sign, learns a little te reo then is invited to a Hurricane's game in Wellington, sets the tone for a programme that can veer towards cliché - rugby, tick, remote-ingenuity, tick, Pavlova, tick.
Nevertheless, Margolyes is engaging and charming company, and her delight at much of what she encounters on her trip is infectious.
Travelling to Whanganui to meet the iwi to learn about how they fought to have the river recognised as living person, Margolyes is welcomed to the marae with a waiata, and is visibly moved by it.
Moving north we take in the nuns at Tyburn Monastery - as part of her film research - and then to the green, rolling hills of Matamata and Hobbiton - although quite what a film set for a fictional world, created by and Englishman 80 years ago, says about modern New Zealand is moot.
Miriam Margolyes in New Zealand Photo: screenshot
The show picks up steam as she heads north, she visits the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre, then to a school in Panguru where the students' haka dazzles her.
"Wow! God this is fabulous."
She ruminates on what she saw as she veers south to visit the Black Ferns at their training ground on Taupō.
"If you're looking for something to explain why New Zealand is special, why it's different from Australia, come to Pangaru, go to the school talk to Whina Mina and watch the Kapa Haka, I'm just dazzled by it."
While her first experience of rugby in Wellington has failed to convert her, she is enamoured of the Black Ferns and Ruby Tui and she sits down for a chat and tp share kai.
"Not because I love rugby, but for what these powerful women represent."
Miriam Margolyes and Ruby Tui Photo: screenshot
More broadly New Zealand's women impress her, she says.
"What I've also seen on my journey so far is the strength of Kiwi woman in shaping this country's identity."
The programme takes a more sombre turn as she heads south in episode two.
On the West Coast she meets Pike River families' campaigners Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse and is shown the concreted up mine where 29 men still lay.
On a lighter note, at Lake Takapō, she meets baker Angie and reopens the great trans-Tasman pavlova controversy.
Margolyes then swings by Southland, bearing gifts of pavlova, to meet two dairy farmers who founded Groundswell to protest, among other things, against the last government's plans to cut methane emissions.
Margolyes, a committed almond milk drinker, has a somewhat awkward but respectful conversation - the science on methane as a greenhouse gas isn't settled, they tell her.
In Christchurch, where Margolyes meets Abdul Aziz, who confronted the Christchurch terrorist at the Linwood mosque and received country's highest honour for civilian bravery the New Zealand Cross, is the most affecting segment of the two-parter.
"He had such grace, you come away feeling that he has love and respect for the people around him, that decency, sweetness, quietness that spirit that is New Zealand, it's so special I found it incredibly moving."
For New Zealand viewers, seeing our own country through an outsider's eyes is the main interest here, and the people she meets on the way are the stars of the show.
She thinks so too.
"There's a lot to learned from New Zealand, whether the rest of the world knows it or not. The spirit of place the story the relationship between place and person it can be an example to all of us. I've been enriched and enchanted by the people that I've met."
Miriam Margolyes in New Zealand is showing on Neon and Sky Go from 9 February.
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