Short Poppies
television series

Short Poppies is a New Zealand mockumentary TV series starring, created and written by Rhys Darby and directed by Jemaine Clement and Michelle Walshe.
It follows real-life entertainment reporter David Farrier as he talks to "extraordinary" New Zealanders who happen to live in the same small fictional town known as "The Bay". At the time of filming, Farrier worked for TVNZ's competitor, MediaWorks.
All eight episodes became available in New Zealand on 1 April 2014 through TVNZ On Demand and became available in the United States on 4 April 2014.
Characters
All of the Short Poppies characters David Farrier interviews are played by Rhys Darby.
Terry Pole
Terry Pole is a lifeguard who enters and reclaims the title of "Best Legs" in the local competition. He has a one-sided soulmate relationship with Georgina (played by Georgia Hatzis), is good friends with Policeman Mike (played by Jonno Roberts) and is picked on by the other lifeguards. He is oblivious to most things going on around him, unless it is to do with his legs, including Georgina telling him they are not a couple or that one of the lifeguards has a crush on him.
Steve Whittle
Steve Whittle is a ufologist and conspiracy theorist who runs an alien abduction workshop at the library. He lives with his musician girlfriend, Elise (played by Jackie van Beek) and his mother, Tessa (played by Annie Whittle) who does not like Elise.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17064231. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Short Poppies” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.