Belt yourself in for a high-revving new local drama about young Asian migrants and petrolhead culture on the streets of Auckland

Andy Wong plays Lin, a student and boy racer from Beijing, in TV2's new series Ride With the Devil. Photo / Supplied

Andy Wong plays Lin, a student and boy racer from Beijing, in TV2's new series Ride With the Devil. Photo / Supplied

Saturday night, Queen St: The blinding glare of headlights fills the street as cars slowly cruise the strip.

Turbochargers tick over at traffic lights, while teenagers hang out of windows, shouting taunts above the surging engines. Beeping horns, squealing tyres and hollering bystanders all add to the cacophony.

It's a scene any Aucklander will recognise. A typical Saturday night in the city. And one that writer Murray Keane instantly saw as the setting of his new series, Ride With the Devil.

Writer, director and creator of the series, Keane has always been a bit of a petrolhead.

"I used to come up from Helensville on Friday nights in a MK III Zephyr. It's the same thing now, just with different cars and different people."

It wasn't until years later, wandering the length of Queen St one night, that Keane had the idea to film the street scene.

"I just thought, 'This looks fantastic. If I could just bring a camera down here and start shooting what's going on in Queen St, we could do something really interesting'."

That was five years ago. Keane set to work making a pilot, Burnout, which looked at the car culture of Auckland. The pilot was well-received, but failed to get funding from New Zealand on Air. Another big project had been given the green light so Burnout was put on the backburner.

Four years later, Keane reassessed the idea and decided to add a different point of view to the series.

Enter Lin, played by Andy Wong, a student from Beijing, struggling to come to grips with his new hometown.

"We had the idea of basing it around an Asian family, of bringing Andy's character from Beijing and having him arrive in Auckland and going, 'My God - where is everybody?'."

TVNZ loved the idea, and with NZ On Air Innovation Initiative funding, the six-part series got the go-ahead. It is the first time a mainstream New Zealand drama has featured an Asian lead character, a fact which drew Wong to the role.

"I really like the Asian storyline. It is quite important to me. Being an Asian male actor, there isn't a lot of work around. You get guest roles [Wong once played Li Mei's fiance on Shortland Street] for one or two days, but that's about it.

"I think the Asian male in New Zealand society has been misrepresented, so when I saw the opportunity to change that ..."