| Creator: | Pip Hall Philip Smith |
| Director: | Peter Burger |
| Starring: | Dominic Ona-Ariki Joel Tobeck Alison Bruce |
| Composer: | Claire Cowan |
| Country: | New Zealand |
| Language: | English |
| Num Seasons: | 3 |
| Num Episodes: | 16 |
One Lane Bridge is a New Zealand crime drama television series, premiering on TVNZ 1 in 2020. The series stars Dominic Ona-Ariki as Ariki Davis, a newcomer detective, Joel Tobeck as Stephen Tremaine, his superior, and Alison Bruce as Tremaine's wife, Lois. The show follows events around the latest in a mysterious chain of deaths which have occurred on a one-lane bridge near the town of Queenstown.[1] The series is also notable for its inclusion of aspects of Māori spirituality as a core part of the plot, such as the notion of matakite, roughly equivalent to divination.[2]
The series was filmed primarily in Queenstown and its surrounding area, with the eponymous bridge located over the Dart River / Te Awa Whakatipu near the township of Glenorchy, approximately northwest of Queenstown. Other filming locations include the Queenstown waterfront and areas around the nearby town of Arrowtown.[3]
One Lane Bridge premiered in April 2020 on TVNZ 1, in the middle of New Zealand's first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. The show was met with mixed reviews, with Stuff's Malcolm Hopwood describing the characters as "tight-lipped, charmless, one-dimensional people"[4] and the Spinoff's Catherine McGregor saying that the writing of the series "fails to live up to the drama of its breathtaking location".[5] Stuff's James Croot was more positive, describing season 1 as "an engrossing, evocative, supernatural-tinged detective drama, a Central Otago-set Kiwi answer to Scandi-Noir complete with terrific performances from a well-assembled ensemble."[6]
Season 1 of One Lane Bridge was filmed over three months in late 2019 by Great Southern Television, entirely on location in the Queenstown area. The series initially had a budget of NZ$7 million, which was supported through funding from NZ on Air, Australia's Seven Network, and All3Media.[7] [8] Filming for season 2 took place over 10 weeks in February 2021, on a slightly smaller budget of $6 million. Queenstown mayor Jim Boult has been vocally supportive of the series, having written a letter of support to help secure funding for the production of the show's second season.[9]
In September 2021, TVNZ announced that One Lane Bridge had been renewed for a third season and pledged up to $5,945,400 for this, which it said would "build on the previous season's talent development opportunities across directing, production, and script writing for local and emerging practitioners."[10] Season three premiered on TVNZ1 on 7 November 2022, with all episodes in the series available for streaming on TVNZ's online platform TVNZ+ at the same point.