Country Calendar’s producers chanced upon the music, Hillbilly Child, by UK composer Alan Moorhouse as they searched the record library for an updated theme song in 1974.

The then-new producer Tony Trotter said he and a colleague, John Veysey, were in a rush and landed on the music “in about five seconds flat”.

“We looked at each other and said: ‘That’s it, that’ll do’,” Trotter recalled during a special 40th anniversary Country Calendar show, 20 years ago.

That’ll do, indeed.

Like the show it introduces, the music has endured. TVNZ’s Country Calendar is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Why is it so popular and what’s it like, really, behind the scenes?

Down on the farm

Nikau Coopworth stud is on rugged Waikato land at Waikaretu, an hour and a half southwest of Auckland, locked between Raglan to the south, Port Waikato to the north, and – today – a heaving Tasman Sea, dumping early-spring waves onto the farm’s coastline to the west.

It is wild country, subject to weather extremes – bone dry and hot in the summer and very wet in winter. There’s evidence of a former Māori pa nearby.

For everyday townies, it takes particular skill on this September day to navigate waterlogged pathways and fields in admittedly freshly acquired gumboots and a rental car.

The Country Calendar film crew of three – director Katherine Edmond, cameraman Steve Fisher and sound recordist Tim Brott – are here to interview and film Kate Broadbent.

The expat Canadian – “Canadian Kate” as she’s known in the community – is perfect “talent” for Country Calendar, a sheep breeder with a passion for genetics, using scientific testing to produce hardy, parasite-tolerant sheep.

Broadbent sums up the show’s influence and success as well as anyone.

“It’s just genuine. It isn’t reality TV, it’s reality with a capital R – it’s just normal people on their farms with their businesses doing what they do, and that is so relatable.

“I didn’t brush my hair this morning. Nobody cares,” she says, laughing. “It is real people.”

She says the show bridges a perceived difference between townies and rural communities.

“There is a perception that … there is a gap, but the urban population are proud of their agricultural heritage. They’re proud of what we do here on the land, and Country Calendar is a way to put those stories in front of them.”

A popular local identity, Broadbent has a colourful turn of phrase and natural charm in front of the camera, qualities that the Country Calendar producers are always seeking in early meetings with potential subjects.

Broadbent and her great-niece Lily are front and centre for filming today – day three of a six-day shoot, spread across several months.

Nikau Coopworth farm – Broadbent has owned the stud since 2009 and leases the land – also has a commercial ewe flock and dairy/beef trading cattle that complement the stud sheep operation.

Today, she carefully studies her prized animals ahead of shearing tomorrow. She’s starting to select her best rams for auction in a couple of months.

She has decades of records, which have enabled her to understand how to breed a sheep that is resistant to facial eczema and other parasites.

Broadbent talks of agriculture’s place as the backbone of New Zealand and the importance of Country Calendar in showcasing that.

“It might be cliché, but it’s the truth, and so putting that forward for everybody to have a glimpse and a look and a taste of what we’re doing here on the land is incredibly compelling.

“And farmers watch it as well.”

A Sunday night phenomenon

Country Calendar, which has been sponsored by Hyundai since 2011, is consistently in the top 10 shows on broadcast television. It is the most popular show on television, behind the 6pm news.

More than 2.5 million New Zealanders watched at least one primetime episode or repeat on TVNZ 1 in 2025, according to Nielsen viewership numbers. Each Sunday night, it reaches an average of 779,000 viewers.

And on TVNZ+, the 2025 series was watched by more than 396,000 accounts, with just over three million streams as of early December.

While the theme music is instantly recognisable, Dan Henry’s voice wouldn’t be far behind.

Wellington-based Henry has been connected to Country Calendar since 2008 and has been its producer since 2023. He has been narrating the show since 2016, following the early retirement (and shortly thereafter the untimely death) of the legendary Frank Torley.

“I never really considered I had a TV voice, but my kids tease me about it mercilessly,” he says.

Henry has his own theories on the show’s success.

“It’s a strange combination of not having changed over time but also having changed subtly over time,” he says.

“There’s been constant evolutionary changes over 60 years, so staying relevant would be part of it.

“I think the longer the show goes on, the greater that sense of nostalgia becomes part of its appeal, in the sense that everything in our lives seems to be at a quickening pace.

“There’s constant change, the change is getting quicker and quicker, and we’re bombarded with it.

“People constantly tell us, ‘Oh, my parents used to make me watch it as a kid, and now we watch it with our kids, and it’s fantastic’, and ‘I’ve been watching it since the 60s’ and those things.

“It’s a constant in people’s lives, and I think that’s more and more important.”

He also says Country Calendar is one of the “few places on New Zealand TV you can see New Zealanders just being themselves”.

They’re “not trying to compete for something, or sing the best song or do the best dance or make the best soufflé. They’re just doing what they do, and they’re proud of it.”

‘A hankering for a life in the country’

Director Katherine Edmond also believes there are multiple reasons for the show’s longevity.

“The fact that we just try to let people tell their own story … documentary television has gone through lots of different phases and there have been fads and fashions.

“We’ve always tried to keep it pretty authentic to people just talking in their own language and in their own way about what they do, and so I think that’s helped it survive.

“I also think there are a lot of New Zealanders who have a slight hankering for a life in the country or an experience in the country.

“So this is a way of vicariously having a bit of that by watching Country Calendar on a Sunday night and going into your week, maybe feeling slightly more cheerful about life.”

The show’s origins

As Henry says, Country Calendar has changed subtly over time. It originally started in March 1966 as a predominantly studio-based show, focused entirely on news for farmers.

A clip from the first show features a pipe-smoking presenter, Fred Barnes, introducing an interview with meat producer board chairman Sir John Ormond.

It was dry, humourless material featuring lots of men in suits – content that Trotter wanted to overhaul when he became producer in 1974. As he recalled in 2005, he felt the show “must be boring to most people. It’s certainly boring to me”.

That first show in 1966 did have a field-based piece about Central Otago apricots – it was that frontline material that Trotter wanted to build on, along with a focus on people and characters which survives today.

“The people in our programmes … they represent the best of us,” says Dan Henry. “The innovation, the can-do attitude, the positivity, the resourcefulness and the resilience.”

One of the most memorable interviews was broadcast in 1987 – dairy farmer Elsie Jane Westhead outlined, very matter-of-factly, a brutal attack on her by a cow, after she found it with a premature calf.

“I was always told that if you picked up a calf, and put it in front of you, a cow would never touch you,” Westhead told the show.

“Don’t believe it.

“I put the calf in front of me and she just walked straight up to me and put a horn through the calf … it disappeared somewhere.

“She rolled me, she roared, she jumped over my legs, she tore this off, right off, it was just hanging out there somewhere, said Westhead, pointing to her hand.

“And then she went through my skull about there, and cracked it around there. She was just going through my back when I thought of my dog, and I whistled him.

“As soon as he saw the difficulty, he took to her. And she took to him.

“She had a horn in his nose, tore his nose, but that gave me enough time to get up.

“I had quite a way to go, but my word, you can run when there’s something after you.”

‘Unashamedly positive’

Close calls aside, the show has, over the years, featured a range of disciplines beyond the traditional farm gate, including fisheries, mussel farming, high country stations, horses, alpacas, kiwifruit and sunflowers.

“How could you not love it?” says Broadbent.

The show has regularly featured rural innovations and Kiwi geniuses. The late, great helicopter pilot Sir Tim Wallis once took a crew on a rather daredevilish high-country flight to round up deer (musters have been a regular feature of the show) – and there have been lighter moments, too.

Trotter was behind the idea of occasional spoof shows. The first and perhaps most famous was broadcast in 1977 and featured a farmer playing a “musical fence”, apparently a new form of leisure and enjoyment on the Kiwi farm.

Another spoof featuring remote-controlled farm dogs was so convincing that it sparked numerous complaints of inhumane animal treatment.

Henry says Country Calendar is “unashamedly positive”.

He says the programme doesn’t get into disputes or too much controversy.

“I think that is to the benefit of the show. Being able to bring a little slice of it to New Zealanders on a Sunday night before their working week is hugely important.

“People like to go into the working week feeling good about themselves. Showcasing people who are doing well and are proud of what they’re doing and passionate about it is something that really only our show can do.”

That’s not to say the show hasn’t been at the centre of some controversy in the past.

Its 2022 episode on Lake Hāwea station, owned by 42 Below founder Geoff Ross and his wife Justine Ross proved to be 23 minutes too many for many traditional farmers.

The Ross’ farming methods – including playing classical music (Vivaldi) in the shearing shed instead of traditional rock music and placing soft mattresses for sheep to land on after going down the shearing chute – provoked criticism of “wokeism” and “PC bullshit”.

The Ross family was concerned the show hadn’t fully grasped the concept of their farming methods, and that it did not portray the commercial returns for farmers focusing on sustainable practices.

Country Calendar defended its editorial approach of showcasing diverse farming methods, and it also warned people to be more civilised on its Facebook page, encouraging constructive discussion and warning against “constant whinging, moaning and arguing”.

At the time, Henry said: “Country Calendar’s focus is on the people and what they’re doing on the land, meaning our programmes don’t always have room to cover all the commercial and/or environmental goals that a longer documentary might. We had 23 minutes to tell a very complex story, and we covered a lot of new ground.”

Country Calendar found itself back in the headlines a year later when the then Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson criticised TVNZ for failing to showcase New Zealand’s true “identity”.

“I want to see some of the country stuff. Country Calendar has been brilliant for New Zealand TV, but I think our New Zealand identity, with respect, is much more than that now,” Jackson said at the time.

“They’ve been just saying ‘oh, well, there’s the New Zealand story, it’s Country Calendar’. I think it’s wider than that. I think Kiwis are growing – this country has been changing.”

Country Calendar producers will argue that their show, over 60 years, has not only showcased that change, but championed it.

Henry says there is no shortage of story ideas for Country Calendar, which produces 40 episodes a year and is funded by NZ on Air – the agency has allocated $745,122 for this year.

A researcher scours trade publications, viewers regularly approach the show’s producers, and the almost dozen or so contracted directors will hear about stories as well.

Each episode of 22-23 minutes (the rest of each half-hour is for ads) takes an average of about five days to shoot. Work is virtually complete on the new season’s first shows, which will start appearing from early February.

On Nikau Coopworth farm in September, Fisher, Brott and Edmond worked closely with Broadbent, including filming an interview in which they used the farm’s rugged coastline as a unique, scenic backdrop. Fisher also used a drone for artistic and dramatic aerial shots.

Henry says: “The best part of this job is getting to go to those corners of the country where you might not get the opportunity. To drive down that gravel road and meet people that you wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to meet … fantastic people.

“There’s not a Country Calendar I’ve done that I haven’t enjoyed in some way. They’re all different. I love getting down to Central Otago and to Canterbury and the high country.

“The job’s taken me to all sorts of different places, and they’ve each had something different to offer.”

Henry talks of the show being aspirational.

“If you’re stuck in your 9-to-5 job in the city and it’s all a bit of a grind … [you are] able to tune in once a week, at 7 o’clock on a Sunday and see something that you think could be our exit strategy. ‘We could do that’.

“If it’s a small block of lavender on the outskirts of town or a high country station … to be able to think, we could get there, that could be us. I think that really strikes a chord with people.”

Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.