Nigel Latta’s TV career highlights, from Darklands to tough parenting advice

Nigel Latta was a respected author and clinical psychologist, but to many New Zealanders, he was best know for his TV work, where he talked about the difficult subjects and made complicated information a little easier to understand.

Latta died on Tuesday, aged 58, after being diagnosed with gastric cancer in 2024. The day before his death, his latest book, Lessons in Living was released. It was the latest in a long back catalogue which included his hit 2003 book Into the Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us, where he examined the psychology of criminals. It later became the subject for Latta’s first TV series, Beyond the Darklands.

Latta was nominated for Best Presenter at the 2011 Aotearoa Film and Television Awards for The Politically Incorrect Guide To Teenagers, which was also nominated for Best Information Programme. He was also made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2012 for his contributions to psychology.

In 2016, he co-founded production company Ruckus Media, which produced both his own content and feature films such as Born This Way: Awa’s Story and Stan, the documentary about musician Stan Walker and his own experience with cancer.

In many ways, Latta was ahead of his time, investigating subjects we are still grappling with today. He spent time in prisons to learn more about the psychological effects of New Zealand’s criminal system, tackled questions about sugar and alcohol addiction, investigated internet scammers, and championed mental health.

For many fans though, Latta was best known for his no-nonsense parenting advice, advocating for practical strategies in raising children, and dubbing primary school homework pointless.

In the wake of his death, the Herald looks back at some of his most impactful moments on screen and his lasting legacy in New Zealand broadcasting.

Beyond the Darklands - 2008-2012

TVNZ’s Beyond the Darklands was Latta’s first foray into television and utilised his skillset as a forensic psychologist to pull back the curtain on the inner workings of murderers, sex offenders and seasoned criminals.

The show predominantly looked at what went on in the minds and lives of criminals that led to the crimes they would go on to commit.

The show ran for four years and profiled highly controversial offenders such as convicted murderer and Samurai sword attacker Antonie Dixon, Centrepoint commune sex offender Bert Potter, double-killer Mark Lundy and 2001 Panmure RSA killer William Bell.

The Politically Incorrect Parenting Show - 2009

Based on his book of the same name, The Politically Incorrect Parenting Show promised a no-nonsense take on basic parenting principles.

In Latta’s view, parenting had become too stressful and complicated, and he wanted to help demystify the myths of parenting and help caregivers actually enjoy raising tamariki.

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald at the time, Latta said the show was there to remind parents not to take it all so seriously.

“What I try to do in the TV show and the book is to give people useful things that they can actually use to make things better, but also just reassure people that life is not that complicated.”

After the Quake: Nigel Latta’s Guide to Helping Children Cope - 2011

Following the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake that killed 185 people, Latta felt compelled to create a show looking at the impact on children following the disaster.

The 30-minute special, presented and produced for TVNZ, focused on helping children process trauma from the quake and other disasters they may face in life.

Latta also launched a website the same year to give parents resources and tools to help guide their children through major upheavals in their lives and held mental health seminars across Christchurch, determined to give the city the mental toolkit needed to rebuild.

Nigel Latta - 2014

Latta’s self-titled series, Nigel Latta, was a six-episode series exploring some of the big issues across Aotearoa. The episodes explored alcohol (The Trouble with Booze), child abuse (Killing Our Kids), schools (The School Report), inequality (The New Haves and Have-Nots), the prison system (Behind Bars), and sugar (Is Sugar the New Fat?)

The team behind the show consulted with those directly impacted by the issues, as well as academics and social workers.

Latta told the Herald at the time that the show taught him people don’t talk nearly enough about important issues.

“A lot of people told me they were astounded by the facts and statistics in this series. That tells me we need to have a lot more dialogue about this stuff. Instead, we are constantly bombarded with trivia. Brangelina getting married. Lady Gaga falling off a piano stool. Some politician saying something dumb. Maybe we need to talk less about that stuff, and more about the things that are really important.”

The show was a success and was later retitled The Hard Stuff, which was rebooted in 2017.

Nigel Latta Blows Stuff Up - 2015

Latta’s 2015 explosive science series, Nigel Latta Blows Stuff Up, was arguably one of the psychologist’s biggest television pivots.

In the series, Latta set out to teach viewers how the world worked through pulling things apart, blowing stuff up, free-falling, crashing, and other dramatic experiments, adding “some fun to fundamental science”.

The Hard Stuff With Nigel Latta - 2017

A rebrand of 2014’s Nigel Latta show, The Hard Stuff tackled some (more) of the biggest, most awkward and difficult to understand issues facing New Zealand at the time. Latta wanted to make them easier to understand and debunk the myths behind them.

Subjects included housing (Affording a Home), immigration (The New New Zealand), retirement (The Retirement Bomb), tertiary education (Degrees of Success), kids online (Screenagers: Living Online), politicians (What Do Our Politicians Actually Do?), the economy (Selling Ourselves Short), and suicide (Let’s Talk About Suicide).

What Next? - 2017

In 2017, Latta joined TVNZ presenter John Campbell to co-host a series of live panel specials on an apocalyptic show called What Next? The interactive show examined what New Zealand could look like in 20 years and featured futurists like Derek Handley and Wendy McGuinness.

Latta served as both presenter and executive producer on the series.

Campbell told Breakfast at the time that he was excited to work alongside Latta. “This is a good project - it’s a Nigel Latta-driven project, and I’m a big fan of Nigel’s work, I think he’s fantastic, and these are questions we need to answer.

“To achieve the future we want, we need to make decisions that will create a country we’re proud to pass down to the people who follow us.”

Mind Over Money with Nigel Latta - 2017

Alongside a panel of experts, Mind Over Money with Nigel Latta looked at the complex psychology surrounding money and how people are affected by it.

Latta explored the correlation between happiness and money by observing millionaires as well as those with significant debt.

The series also aimed to help Kiwis break down mental barriers around spending and saving, and help adults guide children to grow up financially responsible.

Kids: An Instruction Manual with Nigel Latta - 2020

Latta went back to his parenting roots for this six-episode high-tech observation series. The show rigged more than 20 cameras in the houses of willing Kiwis, observing them 24/7 in order to help them build happier, calmer and more cohesive households.

Lata says the series aimed to help solve simple problems in everyday family life, with simple science-backed solutions.

In an interview about the show, he told the Herald that he hoped to make a little change with what they produced.

“Even though we make documentaries about big issues, no one is expecting us to solve the economy or inequality, yet there’s still a beginning, a middle and an end, whereas clinical work doesn’t have any of those things.

“Making telly is a lot of sitting in front of a screen typing, and 13-hour days, and running late and getting lunch at three when everything is closed and racing to catch planes, and hot days carrying s*** up and down stairs, but there are also lots of moments that are magical.”

You’ve Been Scammed by Nigel Latta - 2023

With a surge in internet scams in New Zealand, Latta set out in his 2023 series to find out the psychology behind why Kiwis are falling for them.

He not only explored why people were being scammed, but also who was most vulnerable, specific traits and how to reduce risk.

Speaking to Paula Bennett on her podcast, Ask Me Anything, Latta said he was drawn into investigating scams as the scale of the issue was “astounding”.

“I do think it’s kind of ironic because everyone’s getting so wound up about teenagers driving cars into buildings, but if you think about the scale of the problem and harm caused - and I’m not saying those things don’t cause harm and trauma to people - but also, people are losing millions and millions of dollars.

“And these are not just millionaires losing millions of dollars. These are people losing 300 bucks here, 50 bucks here, 1000 here, who can’t afford to lose that much.”

This article was first published by the NZ Herald and is republished here with permission.