Weekend Rewind: Our favourite Kiwi TV dads

Rita and Ted West in Westside.

Opinion

By Nicky Harrop

With Father's Day on the horizon, NZ On Screen's Nicky Harrop goes in search of some of our favourite local TV dads.

In recent years, an influx of fatherly figures has walked on to our screens, courtesy of local drama productions. As the below examples highlight, their characters serve to remind us that these days, dads can come in all shapes and sizes.

During his 25 years (and counting) on and off Shortland Street, Chris Warner (Michael Galvin) has done his fair share of dad duty. With five marriages, and countless affairs, under his belt, by 2016 Chris was father to sons Harry and Phoenix, and daughter Trinity. But that wasn't all. A shock storyline saw three more adult children revealed - triplets no less! Here Galvin reflects on how much he enjoyed sharing screen time with the new arrivals, coupled with great footage of his discovery of their existence.

While on the surface, career criminal Ted West might not seem like the ideal father, there's no denying the Westside and Outrageous Fortune dad's devotion to his son Wolf. Here, in the debut episode of Westside, Ted (David de Lautour) emerges fresh from a stint in Mt Eden prison, overcoming an initially rocky reunion with Wolf to bond over a shared family work ethic, and a distribution of ill-gotten gains.

Watch the debut episode of Westside here:

In local drama Step Dave, twenty-four year-old barman Dave Robinson (Jono Kenyon) finds his life turned upside down when he meets the girl of his dreams - Cara, 14 years his senior, with three kids in tow. Across two seasons, the series went on to paint a portrait of modern Kiwi families, with Dave's character helping to redefine the boundaries of what it means to parent teenagers - even when you didn't father them!

Watch the debut episode of Step Dave here:

Nothing Trivial introduced us to another modern Kiwi dad, nice guy Mac Delany (played by Shane Cortese). Against the backdrop of his weekly pub quiz gathering we watch Mac deal with the changing parameters of his family - once again, the challenges of parenting teenagers, and the added complexities of a highly-strung ex-wife.

See an excerpt from Nothing Trivial here:

Scottish-Kiwi actor Erik Thomson has devoted large parts of his career to playing TV dads. Thomson spent six seasons as Dave Rafter in the hit series Packed to the Rafters, before taking the lead in 800 Words as writer and solo father George Turner. Back in the early 90s he was also known to New Zealanders as the on-screen father of baby "Stanley" with whom, alongside Lucy Lawless, he starred in a series of ASB Bank advertisements.

See Thomson, Lawless and Stanley, here: