The Gulf is better than pretty much every other New Zealand show that I've seen (and I've watched a lot). The Sounds, a Canada-New Zealand co-production, is also great, but edged out by The Gulf.. The acting is excellent, and The Gulf is considerably more realistic than many shows (for example, The Brokenwood Mysteries, which is fun but has some serious fantasy elements, such as the sheer volume of murders in the small town). One of the most important realistic portrayals in The Gulf is of opioid addiction in white Caucasians, including the extremely important fact that opioid addiction is a symptom of experiencing trauma, that opioid addiction is not the problem. The untreated effects of trauma are the true problem. One of the other important, realistic portrayals in The Gulf is of the past and present horrific treatment of New Zealand's millennia-long sole inhabitants, the Maori.
The Gulf does have one huge problem: it's subtitles are R-A-C-I-S-T. Each time that a Maori speaks in Maori, the subtitles say: "foreign language". The Maori language is the least foreign one in New Zealand.
Review of The Gulf
