Last Friday cameraman Chris Brokensha spent a day tootling up and down the river with Eliza and her human co-stars Bob Van Pierce (as the skipper), Hone Cooper (a trainee skipper who took on the role of fireman, the crewman who feeds the boiler with coal) and John Clode (as the fireman's assistant).
Mr Brokensha said few working steamboats remained in New Zealand, and even fewer looked as good as the Eliza Hobson.
"It's been beautiful, and the guys have been absolute stars," he said.
Producer Kate Peacocke said the series used items which came up for auction to time-tunnel back into history. In this case it was a telescope made in the 1860s and owned by a Captain Hammond of the Northern Steamship Company. It was sold at Cordy's auction house in Auckland this year.
The episode filmed in Kerikeri would tell the story of early steamship travel in New Zealand.
Greenstone TV found just one other suitable working steamboat, in the Canterbury town of Kaiapoi, but it had been converted to diesel.
"We really needed people shovelling coal," Ms Peacocke said.
The 10-metre, kauri-hulled Eliza Hobson was built at Warkworth in 1996. Later this month the Northern Steamship Charitable Trust will start an operation taking up to 14 passengers at a time between Opua and Paihia.
Profits will help pay to restore the 101-year-old Minerva, a 20m steam ferry built to run between Auckland's Queen St and Howick. The Minerva is awaiting restoration on Kerikeri's Cobham Rd, opposite the bowling club.
The Eliza Hobson was modelled on the SS Puke, a steam launch built in the late 19th century and used in the Kaipara logging trade. It is now owned by the Maritime Museum in Auckland.
