Shortland Street is “so many genres contained in one”

He’s been part of Shortland Street since 2015, but Ben Barrington says the New Zealand soap still challenges him with its mix of genres, layered into a hospital drama.

“This is what a lot of the audience I don’t think realise. It’s so many genres contained in one,” he tells TV Tonight.

“It’s so elastic in its nature. It’s a medical drama with the day to day ins and outs of the workings of a hospital, but one moment you could be at someone’s bedside explaining to them, their cancer is really serious. Next thing you’ve been kidnapped and held at gunpoint.

Next thing, you’ve inadvertently eaten a cupcake which contains something you’re allergic to, and you turn blue, so there’s a wacky, slapstick element to it,” he continues.

“The next thing it turns out, you know how to handle a firearm because you’re saving someone from marauders!”

Barrington plays cosmetic surgeon, Drew McCaskill, who dabbles in general surgery, as well as plastic surgery. But there’s another side to his character that gives Barrington room for a bit more fun.

“He’s really like, egotistical and always sort of had something to prove,” he explains.

“I’ve been involved in those kinds of storylines where I’m ostensibly very alpha and high status. But it’s a recurring theme that I get these ideas to outdo someone, to one up somebody, and then that blows up in my face somehow.”

But it is the writers who throw in the unexpected as well as humour.

“There’s always been a delightful element in the time I’ve been here. There’s really comedic characters who are always going off on harebrained schemes that are that are going wrong, and the carpet gets pulled from underneath them.”

The variety of storylines and the production team are what keeps him in his hospital uniform, nine years on.

“There’s a volcano, an armed man in the hospital, and you all have to band together to overcome them somehow. There’s just so much going on. The audience just buys it. The cast, the writers and the directors have always done such a good job of handling all these things truthfully, no matter what they are, no matter what the theme of those storylines is. It always sells.”

Shortland Street screens on 7Plus and TVNZ (New Zealand).