Seems CITV was run in a similar way to what the old repeater stations in the mining towns ran with videotaped programming delivered weekly from the nearest state capital city.
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Today’s TV: Thursday 9 October 1980
from the NZ Listener and The Press
TV One
11.35am Play School
Noon News
12.02 The Young and the Restless
12.30 See Here
12.40 Beauty and the Beast
1.05 Here’s Lucy (Rpt)
1.30 Days of Our Lives
2.25 Fun Factory, including:
2.25 Join In
2.40 Rainbow
2.55 Murffi
3.05 Vision On
3.30 Chic Chat
4.10 The New Mickey Mouse Club (Rpt)
4.35 The Video Dispatch
5.00 Wonder Woman (Final) (Rpt)
6.00 Production Line
6.30 News
7.00 Close to Home
7.30 Regional Programmes
Top Half (Auckland)
Today Tonight (Wellington)
The Mainland Touch (Christchurch)
7.30 South (Dunedin)
8.00 Washington Behind Closed Doors (Part 5)
10.00 Ballet Contrasts
11.00 News
11.05 Closedown
TV2
2.30pm Crown Court
2.55 The Cedar Tree (Part 2)
3.20 Rhoda
3.45 Dinah and Friends
4.30 Poldark (Rpt)
5.25 George and Mildred (Rpt)
5.55 News
Includes further headline bulletins at 7pm, 8pm and 9pm
6.00 The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
7.00 Blake’s 7
8.00 The Oregon Trail
9.00 Archie Bunker’s Place
9.30 Eye Witness
10.00 News at Ten
10.30 The Rookies
11.20 Blansky’s Beauties
11.45 Closedown
Today’s TV: Tuesday 9 October 1990
from the NZ Listener and The Press
TV One
10.00am Teletext in Vision
10.15 Play School (Rpt, G)
10.40 Rainbow (Rpt, G)
10.55 Roobarb (Rpt, G)
11.00 Edward VII (Part 10) (Rpt, G)
11.55 Te Karere Headlines
Noon One Network News
12.05 Film on One - I Ought to Be in Pictures (1978) (Rpt, AO)
1.55 Miss Marple (Part 2) (Rpt, G)
2.50 Knots Landing (PGR)
3.50 One of the Boys (Starting today) (G)
4.20 FM (Starting today) (G)
4.50 Emmerdale (G)
5.20 North and South Island Programmes
NORTH
5.20 Te Karere
5.30 WKRP in Cincinnati (Rpt, G)
SOUTH
5.20 Bugs Bunny (G)
5.35 Te Karere
5.45 The Mainland Touch (Christchurch) / The South Tonight (Dunedin)
6.00 One Network News
6.30 Holmes
7.00 Sale of the Century (G)
7.30 Neighbourhood Watch (Hour-long series premiere) (G)
8.35 Tuesday Documentary - The Living Dead (AO)
9.40 May to December (Part 2) (G)
10.20 One Network News
10.50 The Paradise Club (AO)
11.50 In Sickness and in Health (PGR)
12.35am Closedown
Channel 2
6.15am Teletext in Vision
6.30 Gumby Adventures (G)
7.00 ITN World News
Via satellite from London
7.30 Foofur (G)
8.00 ITN World News (Rpt)
A repeat screening of the 7am bulletin
8.30 The Smurfs (Rpt, G)
9.00 Teddy Drop Ear (Rpt, G)
9.05 Sesame Street (G)
10.05 Foreign Bodies (PGR)
10.40 Aerobics Oz Style (G)
11.05 Santa Barbara
Noon The Young and the Restless
1.00 Days of Our Lives
2.00 A Different World (G)
2.25 After 2, including:
2.26 Play School (Rpt, G)
2.50 Paddington Bear (G)
3.15 Seabert (G)
3.45 Live!, including:
3.50 Star Wars: Droids (G)
4.20 The California Raisin Show (G)
5.00 Happy Days (Rpt, G)
5.30 Blind Date (G)
6.00 Family Ties (Rpt, G)
6.30 Neighbours (Double episode) (G)
7.30 Cheers (Rpt, G)
8.00 Night Court (PGR)
8.30 Mini-Series - Shadows of the Cobra (Part 1) (AO)
10.35 Newsbreak
10.40 Monty Python’s Flying Circus (Starting tonight) (Rpt, AO)
11.20 St Elsewhere (AO)
12.25am Closedown
TV3
Noon Gems (Double episode) (PGR)
1.00 The Bold and the Beautiful (PGR)
1.30 Another World (PGR)
2.20 Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (Rpt, G)
2.30 Mighty Mouse & Friends (G)
3.00 Dennis the Menace (Rpt, G)
3.30 DuckTales (G)
4.00 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Rpt, G)
4.30 Home and Away (Double episode) (G)
5.30 The Oprah Winfrey Show (G)
6.30 3 National News
Includes “The Westcott File”
7.00 Family Feud (G)
7.30 McPhail & Gadsby - 1990: The Issues (G)
8.00 Hey Dad..! (G)
8.30 In the Heat of the Night (AO)
9.30 Hunter (AO)
10.30 Nightline
11.00 Hollywood Beat (AO)
12.00am Closedown
Sky News (CNN)
6.00am Sonya Live
7.00 Newsday
7.30 BBC News
6pm bulletin - via satellite from London
8.00 International Hour
9.00 Newsday
10.00 Early Prime
10.30 Showbiz Today
11.00 The World Today
Noon Moneyline
12.30 Crossfire
1.00 Prime News
2.00 Larry King Live
3.00 CNN Evening News
4.00 Moneyline
4.30 CNN Sports
5.00 Newsnight
6.00 Showbiz Today
6.30 Newsnight Update
7.00 BBC News
9pm bulletin - via satellite from London
7.30 CNN Sports
8.00 Newsnight Update
8.45 CNN Newsroom
9.00 Larry King
10.00 Crossfire
10.30 Early Bird News
11.00 Daybreak
11.30 Business Morning
12.00am Daybreak
12.30 Business Day
1.00 Daybreak
2.00 CNN Morning News
3.00 World Day
4.00 Daywatch
5.00 Newshour (Continues to 6am)
Sky Sport
Noon College Football (NCAA 1990/91)
2.00 Bodies in Motion
2.30 Bodyshaping
3.00 Surfing - Triple Crown
3.30 Waterskiing
4.00 The Lighter Side
4.30 Truck Challenge
5.00 Boxing
Superbouts - Harry Arroyo v Terrence Hill
6.00 Motorsport
1990 CART PPG Indy Car World Series - Marlboro Challenge
7.00 Sky Sportsweek
8.00 Football (La Liga 1990/91)
9.30 American Football (NFL 1990/91)
12.00am Closedown
Sky Movies
Noon Campbell’s Kingdom (1957) (G)
2.00 Blind Trust (1986)
4.00 SpaceCamp (1986) (G)
6.00 Purple Rain (1984) (R13)
8.00 Mini-Series - Judith Krantz’s Till We Meet Again (Part 2, final) (GA)
10.00 Hundra (1983)
12.30am Closedown
Neighbourhood Watch - Roger Hall’s unforgotten sitcom
At 7.30pm on the evening of Tuesday 9 October 1990, TV One (now TVNZ 1) debuted a brand new television comedy series from the pen of New Zealand’s premier playwright, Roger Hall.
Having already reshaped the landscape of homegrown television satire with the beloved public service comedy Gliding On, Hall turned his sharp observational wit away from government office cubicles and directed it over the suburban garden fence. The result was Neighbourhood Watch - an ambitious 11-part comedy-drama set against the backdrop of late 20th century Kiwi suburbia.
Despite boasting a pedigree cast of New Zealand stage and screen luminaries, production backing from Avalon Studios and an intriguing lineage stemming from Hall’s acclaimed theatrical work, Neighbourhood Watch has largely vanished from collective cultural memory. With not a single broadcast master or clip currently preserved on platforms such as NZ On Screen or shared across digital archives, the series represents a fascinating piece of lost New Zealand television history.
From the trading floor to Keynes Avenue
The fictional setting for the series was Keynes Avenue, an archetype of middle-class Kiwi suburbia. Hall had already spent much of the late 1980s satirising the aspirations, pretensions and economic anxieties of this exact demographic on stage. In Neighbourhood Watch, he revived and adapted several characters who had previously featured in his hit plays Share Club and its post-1987-stock-market-crash sequel, After the Crash.
The transition from stage to screen offered Hall an expanded canvas to explore the fallout of economic deregulation and domestic ambition in suburban New Zealand. The premise was deceptively simple: eight local residents in Keynes Avenue agree to band together to form a neighbourhood watch scheme. Ostensibly assembled to deter burglars and look out for local safety, the group quickly found that crime prevention was merely an excuse to convene.
What ensued was a collision of disparate personalities. Keynes Avenue was populated by an incongruous mix of money-hungry climbers, petty gossips and nosey-parker neighbours who routinely meddled in each other’s business, sparking a flurry of domestic entanglements, eccentric projects and escalating community disputes.
The residents of the Avenue
Produced by Comedia Pictures (under founder and executive producer Tony Holden) for TVNZ, Neighbourhood Watch assembled an ensemble of exceptional domestic talent and was recorded in front of a live audience at Avalon Studios in Wellington. The core ensemble of eight brought distinctive theatrical verve to the street:
- Miles (Peter Elliott): Elliott brought his customary charm and dramatic heft to Keynes Avenue. Prior to that, he was better known as Rex - one of the bad guys from Gloss.
- Maureen (Sandra Rasmussen) & Warren (Geoffrey Dolan): Arriving on the street in the opening episode, this couple represented the fresh blood navigating the idiosyncratic dynamics of their new neighbourhood.
- Victor (Bruce Phillips): Veteran actor Bruce Phillips added his formidable stage presence to the street’s shifting interpersonal alliances.
- Charles (Michael Haigh): The late Michael Haigh, beloved for his iconic deadpan role as Jim in Gliding On, reteamed with Hall to portray Charles, one of Keynes Avenue’s senior fixtures.
- Agnes (Dorothy McKegg): Celebrated stage, television and radio actress Dorothy McKegg gave life to Agnes, an eccentric presence whose domestic life frequently upended community meetings.
- Garth (Lloyd Scott): Known across the country for his warm screen persona and radio presence, Scott played Garth, an enthusiastic instigator of street activities and quizzes. He was better known as Scotty from the late Barry Crump’s Toyota Hilux commercials during the 1980s and 1990s.
- Zena (Sue Malthus): Newcomer Sue Malthus rounded out the cast as Miles’ wife, Zena, injecting a youthful energy into the street’s middle-class neuroses.
Walking the knife of comedy-drama
While many viewers expected another breezy workplace farce in the vein of Gliding On, Hall had a subtler, more poignant tonal balance in mind. He explicitly described Neighbourhood Watch not as a straight sitcom but as a comedy-drama.
Speaking ahead of the first episode’s transmission, Hall articulated his artistic ambitions:
“I always enjoyed programmes like Steptoe and Son because it had that knife edge between tragedy and humour. To some extent I’ve tried to do the same thing with Neighbourhood Watch.” - Roger Hall
By channelling the bittersweet pathos of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s classic British comedies, Hall aimed to reflect the underlying domestic fragility of the era. Suburban life in 1990 was marked by economic uncertainty, shifting gender roles and community alienation masked by polite social convention. The live audience format at Avalon provided energy, but the dramatic undercurrent kept Keynes Avenue grounded in genuine human vulnerability.
The broadcast run
The series launched on TV One with an extended hour-long premiere titled “Getting to Know You” on Tuesday 9 October 1990. The opening episode wasted no time throwing the neighbours into turmoil: Maureen and Warren moved into Keynes Avenue just in time for the inaugural watch meeting while the neighbourhood was shaken by Charles’ birthday celebrations and Agnes unexpectedly having kittens.
Following the premiere, the programme occupied its standard 30 min slot on Tuesdays at 7.30pm. However, like many local programmes transmitted in the heat of a Kiwi summer, the schedule was subject to the whims of live sport.
On 11 December 1990, the series was entirely pre-empted when TVNZ crossed live to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for coverage of the World Series Cricket clash between New Zealand and Australia. The coverage was paused for One Network News (at 6pm), Holmes (at 6.30pm) and Sale of the Century (at 7pm) before crossing back to the MCG, with a 15 min break for the late news (at 10pm).
The following week, on 18 December 1990, Neighbourhood Watch returned under unusual scheduling circumstances. Transmission was pushed back to 8pm to accommodate TVNZ’s live coverage of New Zealand’s decisive qualifying match against Australia from Hobart, pausing only for One Network News and Holmes. That evening’s episode, “I Could Write a Book”, delved into an arrangement between Agnes and Charles while the street buzzed over the identity of an unseen newcomer.
The 11-part run culminated on Christmas Day (25 December 1990) at 7.20pm in an episode titled “There’s Always a Question on Rugby”. The finale saw Garth orchestrating a street trivia quiz while Zena confronted Miles with pressing questions of her own, drawing the curtain on Keynes Avenue’s turbulent inaugural year.
A missing artefact on Kiwi screen culture
More than three decades after the residents of Keynes Avenue first gathered on screen, Neighbourhood Watch remains virtually inaccessible to modern audiences. Unlike Gliding On, Hall’s 1990 comedy-drama has yet to surface on NZ On Screen, on the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision website or on digital streaming platforms.
Whether tape masters sit dormant within the Avalon archives or forgotten VHS recordings linger in Kiwi homes, Neighbourhood Watch stands as a tantalising missing link in New Zealand television history. It brought together some of the country’s finest performers at a transitional moment for local television and blended Roger Hall’s sharp theatrical characterisations with the raw vitality of a live television studio audience.
Keynes Avenue may be quiet for now… but its story remains well worth rediscovering.
Correct me if I’m wrong.