Ride with the Devil

"Ride With The Devil", Tuesday nights, 11pm on TV2 is based around new-Asian youth Lin Jin (Andy Wong, Shortland Street) and the friendship he forms with bad-boy racer Kurt Williams (Xavier Horan, The Market). Written and directed by Murray Keane "Shortland Street" and "Outrageous Fortune" and produced by Rachel Jean "The Market" for Isola Productions, "Ride with the Devil" was made with money from the New Zealand On Air Innovation Initiative.

The series doesn’t pull any punches and features teenage sex, swearing and wheel-spinning, tyre-smoking suburban car stunts. But what makes this production special is the accuracy with which the characters are portrayed – all of the storylines have been culled from real life news stories and situations, the cars featured in the show are all genuine and so are many of the ‘stunts’.

“We wanted to make this show as relevant as possible to a New Zealand audience, with realistic characters and storylines,” says director Keane; “not just a TV version of them. We cast the cars and all of the extras from real Auckland car clubs and what you see on the screen, besides the actors, is footage of real people and events. This is what our youth do on a Friday night”.

The series is set in Auckland, with the main characters living in Te Atatu and Manukau and hanging out on the main Queen Street drag. But Jean says that Ride WithThe Devil doesn’t just apply to Auckland.

“The stories in the show are relevant to Kiwis all over the country – Wellington, Christchuch, Hamilton. The performance car scene is huge here; this is what the kids are into. There is a lot of press on ‘boy racers’ but the truth is they aren’t a homogenous group. They are your sons, nephews, cousins and brothers, and they are driving your daughters, nieces and sisters on our roads. Ride WithThe Devil tells the stories behind the headlines, the choices young people make and the consequences those choices bring.”

Thrown into the mix of boys, cars and girls-who-like-boys-with-cars is Lin, fresh off the boat from China and wide-eyed at the freedom available to young people in New Zealand. His mainland character contrasts with his aunty Wendy Zhung (Lynnette Forday, "Shortland Street") and cousin Amy Zhung (Caleigh Cheung, "Shortland Street") who are New Zealand Chinese.

“Amy, Lin and Wendy are not token ethnic characters,” says Jean. “They are core cast and the story revolves around them. Most of the scenes involve them in the first episode, and that is a first for New Zealand drama. In New Zealand, Asians are still viewed as the ‘other’ in society whether people like to admit it or not. We wanted to get to the stories underneath the public conception and show Asian characters as kiwi characters at the same time.”

The series also sees a return to the screen of much loved kiwi actress Angela Bloomfield "Shortland Street" as Shona Pierce, a woman who becomes dangerously entwined in the lives of the two passionate young hotheads.

Screening six, half-hour episodes, "Ride WithThe Devil" is slick, contemporary New Zealand television that tackles current cultural issues and shows a further development of the dramatary style that made The Market into a household name in South Auckland. (Source: http://www.ridewiththedevil.co.nz/about.htm)