Piha Rescue

The very short 2007 season of one of my most favourite television programmes has finished tonight.

The programme linked through the heading might last for a couple more weeks before TVNZ wipe it off. It will give you an idea of the quality of the programme.

Tonight's closer was a full hour long programme, instead of the usual 30 minutes. It follows a team of juniors (as young as 15) who are in their first patrol season, and some of whom have been qualified for beach duty less than a week. After a fairly stormy close to the afternoon (quite a neat NZ version of a thunderstorm)a family reports that their father went swimming about 30 minutes beforehand and has not returned. The programme follows the resulting search; I will not tell you the outcome.

See if you can get hold of it on the TV One site - use "Piha Rescue" in google if you must, but it makes a better keyword than search key.

See what the best of NZ youth are capable of, and how they react in extremely stressful conditions.