Unreel: A Life in Review

by Diana Wichtel

Born to a Polish Holocaust survivor father and a 1950s Kiwi tradwife too busy to police her viewing, Diana Wichtel cut her teeth on the Golden Age of television.

But in the 1960s, things fell apart. Diana’s fractured family left Canada and blew in to New Zealand, just missing the Beatles, and minus a father.

Diana watched television being born again half a world away, and twenty years later walked into the smoky, clacking offices of the Listener where she became the country’s foremost television critic — loved and loathed, with the hate mail in seething capital letters to prove it.

Meanwhile, television’s sometimes-pale imitation — her real life — was beginning to unreel.

This is a sharply funny, wise and profound memoir of growing up and becoming a writer, of parents and children, early marriage and divorce, finding love again . . . and of the box we gathered around in our living rooms that changed the world.

‘This whipcrack of a book is such good company that my eyes hurt from smiling as I read it. (Was I smiling, or was it something else?) Here we are, in our audacity, our absurdity, our banality, and our hope. Stumbling towards something now largely past. Linear TV, life, Diana Wichtel herself, none of us are spared, but most of us are forgiven. This has always been Wichtel’s brilliance. Her sharp, funny empathy. (She’d be the perfect funeral guest.) She also has the critic’s obsession with delivering for the audience, or reader. As stunningly displayed in Driving to Treblinka, her words carry their truths off the page, impatient for our attention.

Genres: Memoir

326 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2024

About the author

Diana Wichtel is an award-winning journalist, and a feature writer and television critic at leading current affairs magazine, the New Zealand Listener. After gaining a Master of Arts at the University of Auckland, she tutored English before launching into a career in journalism. She lives in Auckland and was awarded a 2016 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship.

Biography source:Ms Wichtel's publisher, Awa Press.

Reviews

[Michele Hider · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great read. Diana deftly features so much about New Zealand television history and her own history in this relatively short book. It brought back some wonderful memories of my own childhood. Would highly recommend this to any New Zealander but particularly anyone who grew up here in the 60s and 70s.

[Kiwiflora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diana Wichtel's weekly TV review page in The Listener mag, along with Lois Daish's food column were my first reads each week. Marvellous writing from both of them, with the added bonus of recipes from Ms Daish. Diana was wicked in her reviews- succinct, incisive, funny. And at times tender, reminiscent. Always there seemed to be some parallel to what was going on in the world, or her life, or her neighbourhood to whatever she had been watching that week. Reading this book took me back to that, just like reading a very extended weekly TV review, although covering a fair few more years. They say it takes 10000 hours of practice to be any good at anything, and Diana was clearly on the road to that goal from her early childhood in Canada. TV came late to NZ, Diana already living here as an older child when it finally began transmission. It must have been hell for her to come from the TV heaven of the North America/Canada continent to suburban Auckland in the early 1960s.. The trauma obviously set something off in her! In this memoir she weaves her life with the TV she watches, how one mirrors the other. At the heart of all her writing and musings are her family life - from the chaos of her childhood as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, migration to NZ and subsequent teenage years. Marriage, children, domesticity, writing career reflected in much of the TV she watched and commented on. Much of this is covered in her first book Driving to Treblinka which should probably be read before this later one. Her musings touch not just on the sitcoms, the dramas, the series such as The Sopranos, but also on real events such as 9/11, the death of Princess Diana, Covid, and how the screening of these events actually shapes how we see the world, and thus ourselves. She has a bit to say about reality TV - is this the TV we deserve! I love her enquiring and questioning mind, which makes me, the reader, also question and think about the TV I watch and my reaction to it. Some photos would have been great too!

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wichtel has previously written award winning "Driving to Treblinka" about her search for the truth about her father, a Polish Holocaust survivor. In "Unreel" we learn about Wichtel's early childhood in Canada - while her parent's marriage was falling apart, she was glued to the box in the corner, witnessing the start of the Golden Age of television. And when the family - minus her father, migrated to New Zealand, she was once again under the spell of television in her new country. In adulthood, Wichtel worked for "The Listener" where she became the country's foremost tv critic - I myself, never missed an issue, her columns were destination reading - funny, dripping with acid sarcasm and wit, not to mention a clever turn of phrase.
Unreel is Wichtel's life set against the backdrop of all the dramas, comedies, soaps, documentaries and films that she watched and critiqued, full of nostalgia and remember-whens - a great read.

[Anne Herbison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't imagine that anyone has watched as much television as Diana Wichtel, from her childhood in Canada to present day New Zealand - all interlinked with her life story. An astounding book. I have enjoyed her columns in the New Zealand Listener and hearing her speak about this book and her history in critical writing at the Christchurch Word Festival recently enriched my experience of reading this memoir.

[Rosemary Baird Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good snappy writing but I realised I didn’t love this because I’m not that interested in TV and didn’t watch much growing up so it’s not nostalgic for me. The memoir bits were the best but because of the thematic nature it was a bit disjointed. Very much a media luvvies book as evidenced by all the promotional quotes. I think I should have read her earlier book instead.

[Jess Brien · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun history lesson on NZ (and overseas) TV! Definitely found it more interesting when we hit the 90s and I could understand the references haha. Highlighted SO many paragraphs - really made me think. Especially how essential imagination is for building empathy.

Read after attending Diana's session at the WORD writers' festival in Christchurch.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this makes me wonder what I did with my life. (Even though people say to me, you've done so much, you should write a book or two)
Diana is 10 years older than me, but all of the TV she was watching, I watched too.
Loved the openess of her family struggles, the exposure to generational trauma.

[Helen Cummings · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the writing style and the parts of the memoir that described the authors life but I was less enamoured with the long expositions on favourite television programmes some of which I have never watched and have no interest in.