{"id":49660,"date":"2025-09-29T07:42:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T07:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/49660\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T07:42:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T07:42:05","slug":"why-shortland-street-is-tackling-a-deadly-new-virus-and-how-the-plot-could-help-viewers-process-the-covid-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/49660\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Shortland Street is tackling a deadly new virus \u2013 and how the plot could help viewers process the Covid pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent episode showed Dr Chris Warner <\/a>stumped after Dr Esther Samuels became the latest victim of a virus that produces debilitating Covid-like symptoms and a rash, severely impacting people with comorbidities and leading normally healthy people to isolate.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t just a replay of recent pandemics<\/a> \u2013 Driver frames it as \u201ca contained hospital thriller that tests preparedness, ethics, and relationships as we head toward the Christmas cliff[hanger]\u201d.<\/p>\n

But why decide to fully flesh out the contagion topic<\/a> now, nearly three years on from the worst of it? Driver says it was because \u201cwe all needed some respite\u201d from it while we lived through it, and they wanted to explore things in a deeper, more personal way.<\/p>\n

\"NgahuiaNgahuia Piripi as Esther Samuels, who is struck down with the virus. Photo \/ South Pacific Pictures<\/p>\n

What matters is how stories are told<\/p>\n

Sophia Dawson, a senior psychologist with WHOLEistic Psychology, says the psychological impact of pandemic film and TV<\/a> depends less on what is being portrayed on-screen and more on how the viewer interprets what they are watching.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some, I imagine, it could take them back to what they experienced for themselves during the pandemic \u2013 fear, grief, uncertainty. And for others, it may not register so strongly on their radar and instead prompt less emotive memories of the experience. The difference will be in the meaning each individual made of the event at the time and how they have processed the experience since.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says it\u2019s important to talk about difficult things, such as the pandemic, because it helps to make us more resilient. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a society, we need to be mindful not to slip into avoidance through tiptoeing around difficult topics in the hope of never stirring strong emotions. While completely well-intentioned, that approach doesn\u2019t build resilience. Instead, over time, it can reduce our tolerance for emotional discomfort, making it harder to face life\u2019s inevitable challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to conveying TV storylines that deal with pandemic trauma, Dawson says it\u2019s important they are told compassionately, and with context. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd perhaps accompanied by a content note or warning, so viewers are given the chance to reflect: \u2018Is this something I want to engage with right now?\u2019 This approach empowers choice, without censoring or avoiding certain topics and conversations,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Dawson believes that when handled with sensitivity, storylines such as Shortland Street\u2019s can help people process grief associated with the subject. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut they can just as easily touch on less healed wounds if they are handled less compassionately, or if the [viewer] isn\u2019t ready to engage with those feelings yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PsychologistPsychologist Sophia Dawson says how stories are told matters and makes a difference to how they are received.<\/p>\n

At Shortland Street, Driver knows the impact the show has, and says they thought carefully about the way they produced the contagion storyline.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very aware that our audiences will have experienced some aspect of these stories in their own lives, which is why we approach all stories with care and humanity, making sure they resonate without feeling exploitative,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a hospital-based show, trauma is part of our storytelling DNA. Our characters and patients face disease, accident, injury and death every week. But those events are never the end in themselves, they\u2019re the springboard for our characters, how people respond, care for one another and grow through adversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show also has a team of medical experts permanently on staff and within the writing team who advise on every medical story.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spectacle creates the stage, but it\u2019s always the characters\u2019 humanity and heroism that carry the story,\u201d Driver says.<\/p>\n

Dawson says people who may be hesitant about the virus storyline should watch it with intention, be mindful of their \u201cinternal thermometer\u201d or feelings and perhaps view the show with a close family member or friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s feeling too heavy it\u2019s okay to switch it off and come back to those sensations curiously later.\u201d<\/p>\n

A good way to make sense of things<\/p>\n

University of Canterbury\u2019s Dr Erin Harrington<\/a> has run a course called The Cinema of Contagion, which looks at the impacts of these types of stories on-screen.<\/p>\n

She says research indicates media representations of disaster can help people figure out how to understand challenging things or make their own meaning. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the first weeks of the Covid pandemic, the Steven Soderbergh film Pandemic went right to the top of the iTunes movie chart, so there was an obvious sense that people had a morbid fascination with the topic and were looking to film to help understand what was going on,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cStorytelling, be it books, movies, or TV, can help us think through things or experience them in different ways. It can also help us learn things about ourselves, develop emotional resilience and emotional regulation, or help us feel like we\u2019ve overcome something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BeforeBefore Covid, the movie Contagion was seen as speculative fiction. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

At the same time, she says fictional representations already have a buffer around them and having an \u201cextra bit of distance\u201d can, in some cases, be helpful when managing difficult responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this paradox, where telling a story in a fictional manner can bring us closer to the truth than just watching straight footage. We know the patterns and story beats of things like a fiction film, or a soap opera, so we recognise that what we are seeing is going to eventually resolve in some way, unlike real life,\u201d Harrington says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way stories are constructed can also help us think about wider connections [such as] top-level responses to disaster alongside personal narratives, each of which puts a different lens on events that are often really difficult to process.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Harrington, like Dawson, says there isn\u2019t a \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d approach when dealing with these kinds of topics.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone experiences things and deals with things in different ways. For some people, overt representations can be comforting and a way of processing feelings and events. For others, it can be really triggering,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She points to research out of Denmark that studied the appeal and benefit of horror films and experiences like haunted houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey found people tended towards three camps \u2013 adrenaline junkies, white knucklers and dark copers, [who] might use horror to help deal with feelings of anxiety and experience them in a safe way.”<\/p>\n

Harrington is \u201csurprised\u201d at how little New Zealand has reflected on the acute phase of the pandemic, and that perhaps addressing it through things such as Shortland Street is a good way to start.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels a bit out of sight, out of mind, like we don\u2019t want to think about that right now,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s time to start reflecting on this a bit more? Fiction is a good way of making sense of things that feel too big to make sense of.\u201d<\/p>\n

New episodes of Shortland Street air Mondays-Wednesdays on TVNZ 2 and on TVNZ+.<\/p>\n

Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald\u2019s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke\u2019s Bay Today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent episode showed Dr Chris Warner stumped after Dr Esther Samuels became the latest victim of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[29786,95,1558,4057,9719,43208,2814,124,8607,6659,156,5431,5838,221,3192,23500,296,185,302,700,663,5430,3025,17154,117,111,139,69,13218,36095,10903,43210,36200,5204,43209,6661,5411,9524,427,5424,5412,2889,223,1961,2044,12901,8431,4276,102],"class_list":["post-49660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-airborne","tag-and","tag-been","tag-behind","tag-cinema","tag-contagion","tag-coronavirus","tag-could","tag-covid","tag-deadly","tag-entertainment","tag-hageman","tag-help","tag-how","tag-illness","tag-impact","tag-into","tag-is","tag-its","tag-latest","tag-looks","tag-mitchell","tag-most","tag-nations","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pandemic","tag-plot","tag-popular","tag-postcovid19","tag-potentially","tag-process","tag-psychological","tag-scare","tag-shortland","tag-soap","tag-story","tag-street","tag-streets","tag-tackling","tag-the","tag-this","tag-time","tag-viewers","tag-virus","tag-why","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}