The boys are back in town! After a wait that seemed like it lasted forever, with film shot during Covid lockdowns in 2022, we finally get a second season of Men In Kilts. However, there are some changes – they’re in New Zealand! And there are only 4 half-hour episodes, so we have to absorb them and love them while we have a chance.
Beep, beep! Get in, we’re driving through New Zealand. #MenInKilts pic.twitter.com/8e1TVImZlv
— Men in Kilts: A Roadtrip with Sam and Graham (@MenInKiltsSTARZ) August 14, 2023
New Zealand is a country unlike any other, and most of us have never really had a glimpse of it, except possibly in the Lord of the Rings films. That’s how Graham McTavish came to live there – he says in the show that when was was in the country working on the Hobbit films, for 2-1/2 years, he told a producer that someone would end up staying there – and it was him (John Bell also had a role in this trilogy). I have a personal connection to New Zealand – my son and his brand new bride went almost right from their wedding reception in 2019 to moving to the North Island. They have had two little boys since then, and my husband and I were on one of the first flights over when the border opened on May 1, 2022. He too fell in love with the country, when he worked on a cruise ship going back and forth from Australia to New Zealand for six months. So this season is close to my heart. Just for fun, here’s a song my son wrote as they were preparing to move. This is him, Greg Conrad, singing and playing all instruments. He’s now working as a professional musician in the Hawke’s Bay area.
The first episode was certainly fun – as Sam told Graham, this is adrenaline country, and they got right to some of the biggest adrenaline producing activities they could find, to Graham’s chagrin. Reviewing a show like this, where we’re not going to discuss plots or characters, is a little different. So as I did with Season 1, I’m going to try to bring you some additional information about the places the guys go, the specific activities they do, or the people they meet. And that’s why this week’s review is a little late – I chatted with the owner of the ziplining company that Sam and Graham visited!
ZZZZZZZZIP!
Kirsty Tennent is one of the owners of Paradise Ziplines, along with her partner Chris Russell. Kirsty and Chris were stuck in Australia for much of NZ’s lockdown – the country had a very strict re-entry policy, even for citizens, which included a mandatory 2-week quarantine in a government-managed facility. Spaces in those facilities came up by lottery, but there were very few spaces and it was fairly expensive. Many kiwis ended up stranded out of country. This segment was filmed in January 2022, and the two employees shown in the piece, Dougie and Shane, are no longer with Paradise because it was basically shut down for such a long time! Kirsty and Chris saw this segment for the first time this past Monday night, when the show debuted in New Zealand.
Had you ever had a program come and film with you before?
No, this was the first filming of this type that we had had done with us.
What did you hear about the shoot – any stories you heard about Sam and Graham? Graham looked TERRIFIED, lol! (I’d love to do a zipline, but not THAT high up!)
I heard that Graham was genuinely terrified and took considerably longer than shown in the episode to actually come to terms with doing that first line – it felt more like 10 minutes rather than 1 according to Dougie! Dougie in fact thought that perhaps he wasn’t going to go (this happens very seldom but when it does it’s usually due to it being someone else’s idea of fun to book on our activity… someone maybe like Sam!), so kudos to him for stepping past that fear and trusting that the “diabolical mind” of Chris Russell was in fact sane enough to have constructed a perfectly safe (but adventurous) zipline course!
I did love how much Graham’s demeanor totally changed as he went through the course – from Terrified to “WOW” (I lost count of the number of times he and Sam said that).
How long were they with your guides? Do you have any pictures from the shoot you can share?
I’m afraid we don’t have any pictures – our guides were with the team for about 4 hours in total on the course. It’s quite a bit of work  (and time) filming something like this as the drone set up and 3 main cameras have to be broken down and transported across each line then reassembled. There were about 26 in the production team on site that day – many of whom ended up coming back in the following days as customers to experience the zipline (as of course only Sam, Graham and the camera crew actually went through the course on the day of filming).
How long have you been open? Are you back up to speed now? Is ziplining big in New Zealand?
We had a soft opening December of 2017 – April 2018 – closed for that winter then reopened in October 2018 and remained open year round since then until shutting for Covid in March 2020 – after which it was a very challenging situation with NZ having it’s borders closed to international travellers for a good chunk of time and we were open as much as we could be with the superstars of the show being Dougie and Shane (featured in MIK). We did a complete restart on Oct 1st 2022 and since then have had excellent visitor numbers and we have been very pleasantly surprised at the number of return customers and referrals we have been getting – a sure sign that people are enjoying themselves!
Our Operations Manager at the time, Dougie, is Scottish, and we have a bit of a tie with Lord of the Rings as we look out over sights used for filming and Chris has (rather tongue in cheek – he has a bit of a diabolical sense of humour, as well as a diabolical mind for building amazing adventure activities) called our epic down river line (often the favourite one and 200 mtrs long) the “Orc Chasm” – this is the line that Sam and Graham were buzzing about it being amazing on the show.
Swimming with Sharks
Well, this looked terrifying! But in an interview for Emmy magazine, Graham said that he was eager to do this activity! I suppose you’re relatively safe in that cage – it didn’t look like there was an opening large enough for the shark to get in (at least that big of a shark).
On Top of the World!
I can’t believe this was Sam’s first time in a helicopter! And commando, to boot…. brrrr!! But the view was stunning. This was in Milford Sound, one of a trio of sounds that are very popular South Island cruise stops. Here’s a picture of Milford Sound that my son took when his cruise ship stopped there.
photo by Greg Conrad
Milford Sound on top of glacier
The first men on a glacier ❌
The first men in kilts on a glacier ✅ #MenInKilts pic.twitter.com/u6pItFuu6h— Men in Kilts: A Roadtrip with Sam and Graham (@MenInKiltsSTARZ) August 13, 2023
Next Week
Sam and Graham learn about the Maori, New Zealand’s indigenous population. I’ll bring you some additional information about the language and culture!
And join us on Monday nights live on Instagram to discuss the episode and any other MIK/Outlander news – if you miss it, you can watch the replay anytime! 9 pm eastern/8 central, instagram.com/OutlandishlyTIBS
Outlander Season 5 Trading Cards are on the way! If you still want to purchase, we have some stock still available.
Delivery will be shortly after September 6.
Click here to see what’s available.
Follow me on Twitter: @ErinConrad2 and @Threeifbyspace
