Everybody remembers what they loved and hated about Police Ten 7. Except TVNZ

Graeme Tuckett is a contributor for Stuff to Watch.

So here we are. Twenty-one years, 750 episodes, a couple of presenters, two names and a claimed one thousand crimes solved – and TVNZ’s Ten 7 is at an end, with a three-part, three-night recap that TVNZ are calling the show’s most iconic moments.

Police Ten 7 was launched in 2002. It was intended as a Kiwi thrash at a Cops or an America’s Most Wanted. Cops had been an international hit and it was decided that a local version of the format could be a winner.

Police Ten 7’s format was perfect for the times. Every episode would feature a re-cap of an ongoing investigation, which could be as serious as murder, with a description of anyone the police were keen to, err, “speak to” regarding the crimes, always bookended by a stern reminder to not approach them under any circumstances. As if.

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The rest of the show – and the reason it still lives fondly in the memories of generations of Kiwis and Aussies, were clips shot on the front lines of policing.

Film crews would ride along in patrol cars and come back with footage of the drunk and the bewildered as they were being chased and picked up by the unfailingly polite and professional coppers in the car.

At its best, Police Ten 7 was useful and sometimes hilarious. At its worst, it could look like people with addiction and mental health issues were being exploited for our entertainment.

Watching the three “greatest hits” clips shows that TVNZ have signed off with, it’s clear they wish to distance themselves from the show’s past as well.

The signature years of Ten 7 were 2002 to 2014, hosted by Graham Bell.

Bell was a genius at what he did, and he was also clearly a nice guy who cared deeply about communities and the people who lived in them. But, he had a way of fronting this show that sounded more like a grumpy uncle at the RSA than anything we had heard on New Zealand television before.

Like him or not, Bell’s presence and his descriptions of his pixelated guest stars as creeps, halfwits, low-life’s, mongrels and lunatics were the guts of Police Ten 7.

But apart from a brief flurry of clips at the start of the first of the final three episodes, Bell is absent from these shows. It’s as though he barely existed. Or perhaps TVNZ is hoping we will forget what it was that made this show an “icon” at all.

There is some new footage, and a good selection of classic clips. “Always blow on the pie” is there, as is the Christchurch skinhead putting his face through a wooden fence, which is still the most weirdly nauseating thing I’ve ever seen on TV.

But the voiceover here is from new presenter Rob Lemoto. Lemoto is a South Auckland detective whose whakapapa is Tongan, and he is genuinely good at the job, with a concern and compassion in his delivery that is unfakeable. Even if it will remind you a little of the hilariously well-meaning crew at Wellington Paranormal.

Rebranded as Ten 7 Aotearoa, without Bell, the show was never going to be what it had been, for better and for worse. But to say goodbye to their one-time rating’s warhorse, it’s as though TVNZ have suddenly become a bit embarrassed they ever enabled Ten 7 to happen at all.

They shouldn’t be. It was what it was and we have all moved on. Pretending that Bell and his unrepeatable style were not what made the show what it was, is fooling nobody.