Almost half a million of us tune into Country Calendar every week. On its 60th anniversary, we talk to a director, producer and voice of the show Dan Henry about its powerful hold over Kiwis.
Drop Dan Henry in almost any small New Zealand town and he can direct you to a decent coffee and a Thai green curry.
That’s just one of the joys of having worked on Country Calendar for 17 years – these days as a director, producer and that soothing, instantly recognisable voice of the show.
Watch current episodes of Country Calendar, as well as classic episodes of the show dating back to the 1970s on TVNZ+
Over those years Henry has travelled to many of Aotearoa’s valleys, peaks and planes. Usually he, along with a cameraman and a soundman, will get a motel (and a curry) but sometimes they go to places where there are no motels.
Henry’s camped on mountain tops with feral goat hunters; he’s slept in shearing quarters on back country stations; he once woke at dawn on a crayfish boat that was anchored in Luncheon Cove in Fiordland’s Dusky Sound to hear a disconcerting noise coming from the bush. “I thought what the hell animal is that? And it was a kākāpō booming from nearby predator-free Anchor Island. And you know, to have the opportunity to do this for a job. It's just a dream come true.”
Not that the city born and bred Henry knew anything about crayfish or sheep or goats or any kind of farming when he began working on Country Calendar. “Not at all. I was raising a family in the suburbs in Wellington and yeah, very much a townie. I had a great love of the outdoors but I used to joke that I didn't know a heifer from a hectare when I joined the show.”
But it helps to be a bit clueless, he says. “So much of our audience lives in urban areas, and so if I'm seeing things from that point of view and asking those dumb questions and having things explained in lay person’s terms, I think that helps our audience come along for the ride.”
And come along we do. Every Sunday night about half a million of us tune in for a half-hour hit of stunning scenery and a simple, uplifting story about rural Kiwis working their butts off to scratch a living from the land. Cue that unmistakable jangling theme song. (It’s called Hillbilly Child.)
But with so many of us now city bound, sitting in traffic and working on screens, what is the enormous, enduring appeal of this 60-year-old show about farming?
Henry believes there are many reasons, but one key one. “It's just bloody good. It looks good, it sounds good, it has seamless editing and storytelling. It’s made well by people who care about the farmers. They never set anyone up or make them look foolish. They’re always there to support people to share their stories so that viewers will be inspired.”
And he stresses that, while he’s become the face of these anniversary interviews, he’s by no means the lone figure behind the magic. “There’s a team of 28 or 30 great television practitioners who make this program.”
'It was boring as batshit'
It’s fair to say that Country Calendar had inauspicious beginnings. When the show began in 1966 it was designed as a rural news show and it was as dry as a piece of old mutton.
"It was boring as bat shit!" the late Frank Torley, a stalwart of the show, explained to reporters on the show's 50th anniversary in 2016, just before he died that same year.
Then, at some point in the late 1960s, somebody had a brainwave. Instead of getting stiff, studio-based experts to lecture farmers, why not take the cameras out onto the land and let the farmers tell their own stories?
Torley, who worked on the show for almost 50 years, was still there when Dan Henry joined in 2008. “I learned a great deal from Frank,” he says. “Frank was a great people person – a lover of people – there was no one he met that he couldn't strike up a conversation with.
“And that is pivotal to what we do on Country Calendar. It's about people, connecting with them and building an environment where they open up and share and do so joyously. That was Frank's great trick – and it's not a trick, it's just who he was."
'You don't rock up and get the cameras out'
Frank Torley had a saying that the Country Calendar team still lives by: No interviews on the first day.
“Which simply meant that you don't rock up and get the camera out and and say 'right, quickly, give us all your secrets'. You need to win people’s trust and give something of yourself to allow people to give back," says Henry.
Another key figure in the show’s development (who still directs some episodes) is Julian O’Brien who took over from Frank Torley as producer and brought valuable lessons, of a different sort.
“Frank was an absolute joy to be around but he was a bit loose on systems," says Henry. "He had scraps of paper and things written on recipe cards stuck to the wall; it was pretty old school and that worked when the show was 12 or 20 episodes a year. But when you’re scaling up and cranking out 40 great primetime episodes a year, as we do now, you’ve got to have your shit organised and that skill is what I've inherited from Julian – just trying to maintain my systems and make the workload easier for our 30-odd strong team.”
As for the winning formula of the show, little tweaks are made all the time. About a decade ago, the farmers were brought even more into the foreground when the presence of a reporter was dropped and the storytelling became more documentary in style. There’s still Henry’s voiceover but he likens its presence to a rhythm guitar. “If it’s doing the job well, you don't notice it.”
And of course, the nature of the content changes all the time. Farming isn’t what it used to be. Kiwis aren’t who they used to be. The land and are climate are becoming more challenging – something the show doesn't ignore, although it strives to maintain its trademark positive tone – and technology plays an ever bigger role.
“We've done quite a few stories on fenceless farming and halter collars around cattle that send them a vibration when they're nearing the virtual fence line, and you can direct the cattle from an app on your phone while you’re having your coffee at the kitchen table,” says Henry.
In early epsides the farmer’s wife would invariably be filmed tending the children or pulling a tray of scones from the oven. Now, says Henry, she’s just as likely to be helping out on the farm, or managing the farm, or sometimes the wife has a wife of her own.
As some vintage episodes of Country Calendar become available on TVNZ+ (the tenth one dropped today), Henry recommends logging on to check out "the daggy collars and wide ties, people smoking as they muster the cattle.
"It's great because it gives you a sense of the social change and how far we've come."
Watch current episodes of Country Calendar, as well as classic episodes of the show dating back to the 1970s on TVNZ+
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