Shortland Street

This is quite possible one of the worst shows ever made.

The acting is bad. The scripts are bad and repetitive. The whole show is bad!

I could barely stay awake through the episodes I was subjected to! It's so bad, that I can't even watch it to laugh at how bad it is! Everything about this show annoys me!

This show also promotes bad morals. Which wouldn't be so bad, apart from the fact that so many people in New Zealand actually LIKE this show. And they seem to think that the way these bitchy, grumpy hormonal fictional characters carry on is normal and acceptable.

Come on New Zealand, you can do better than this! Look at...oh hang on, I can't think of ANY good New Zealand TV shows. Except TellyLaughs. And they were great because they pointed out what was wrong with New Zealand's worst TV shows.

Shortland Street was pretty good for a soap (although I prefer Home and Away, which has more excitement like a gun-toting, crystal-meth addict on the lose), but Shortland Street has gone down hill.

If you like your programs with 99% relationship stuff and 1% excitement, then you might like the 2005 series of Shortland Street. I haven't actually watched much of it, but I can tell from the ads on T.V. that relationships are the main source of entertainment for 2005.

But, if you can see episodes before 2005, it has had some good stuff and the end of year cliffhangers are a must for most viewers of this type of soap opera.

I regret to say that I find this television programme boring, predictable and totally lame. But what do you expect, it is a melodramatic soap opera, is it not! The characters are shallow, more predictable than the sorry plotline we endure every week. It does, however, match other soaps ie 'The Young Doctors', 'Sally Jessie Raphael' and 'The Young and the Restless'. Fortunately, this will never equal ER or even Chicago Hope.

I really see no appeal to this show, it's a struggle for me to watch when I'm forced to. I remember watching it a lot when I was a kid, but that's because back then there were three channels, we couldn't get TV3 and TV1 was pretty bad reception.

The show is repetitive and, personally, boring. When forced to watch it, I know what's going to happen because I can almost always say "This happened ten years ago," and it will have, except with different characters... well, sometimes it's the same characters.

Also, sadly, there are often untalented actors. But that can almost be excusable, as there is admittedly little public outlet for actors in New Zealand to hone their skills.

In all, I feel that the show is rather cheap. So I guess if you want to watch something with limited quality, and you didn't watch the show already a few years ago, you can give it a shot, but I wouldn't recommend it.

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with this show - sometimes it is gripping, funny and touches on various social issues pretty well, and other times the story and the characters are so stoopid I want to scream! I've been watching it off and on since the beginning of 1992, there's been times when I can't miss a single episode, other times when I couldn't care less. Shortland St does pretty good villains, though - the characters of Mckenzie Choat, Oscar Henry, Greg Feeney and Aleesha Cook (among others) are all unforgettable!