Digital whodunnit for the TikTok generation

Otago Daily Times

09-06-2025

A New Zealand-produced, 18-part series shines the spotlight on the dangers and growing epidemic of image-based abuse and bullying.
The Sender is about a group of prefects who have a final night of debauchery at a bach before taking on their roles and responsibilities in their final year of school.
But as the night unravels, anonymous messages hit their phones with secrets and scandals threatening their carefully crafted personas.
The series has been shot specifically for social media with the 18 episodes dropping on Instagram and TikTok.
The aim was to make a series that resonated with a Gen Z audience, producer Jessica Todd told Culture 101 and getting to grips with that demographic's slang was part of the research process, she says.
'Whilst like Gen Z obviously speak very differently to millennials and everybody else, I think it's also important to remember they're just smart audiences like the rest of us.
'And so from the baseline of starting to write and think about the storyline and think about how we wanted it to sound, we were like, okay, it really needs to sound authentic to Gen Z, and we are not Gen Z, so we're going to need to do a bit of research and figure that out and become acclimatised with the lingo and what's cool and what's not.'
Ultimately the story had to be strong enough to carry any audience, she says.
'It's just like any other project. It was just research and connecting with the actual audience and I think also just not pushing it too far out, like I feel some other shows that are trying to connect with a certain audience maybe go too far into the slang or vernacular.
'And we were like, it also just needs to be funny and good.'
The fact The Sender is a digital only production presented its own challenges, director Liv McClymont says.
'Gen Z are watching all of their content on platforms like Tiktok, Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, and they're all vertical platforms.
'So we have to write for those specific platforms and what they will allow us to do, because they can be quite restrictive about what we can show, there's certain things that you just cannot put on social media, I think blood, for instance, that is a big no-no.'
It also had to be shot in portrait mode, she says.
'We have six lead cast members and how are we going to fit all of them in one frame? It feels impossible, but we managed to do it with some very tricky blocking.'
Getting depth in each shot also required some deft framing, she says.
'We wanted to make sure that we had as much depth in every frame so that we could make it feel cinematic, even though we were in this portrait mode.'
Often the characters had to be stacked in unusual configurations to get them in shot, she says.
'We get two people sitting on the couch, and then another two people sitting behind them further back on the couch, and then another person standing behind the couch, and then all of a sudden, we've somehow, through height and dimension, got five people in one frame.'
The plotting had to be tight to engage with an audience whose attentions needs to be captured quickly, Todd says.
'We knew that we had to start every single episode with something punchy or interesting or absurd or dramatic, and end every episode with hopefully a decent enough cliffhanger to make you want to scroll onto the next one.'
The feedback has been positive, she says.
'They're really loving it, and I think are excited that there's a show for them that speaks to the world they live in, the issues that they're going through.'