Sons of a preacher man

New local drama Testify pits an Auckland evangelical church against the LGBTQ+ community. 

- RUSSELL BROWN

TESTIFY

TVNZ 2, Monday, April 8, 8.30pm; Tuesday, April 9, 9pm; TVNZ+ (both episodes), April 8

We all have some kind of church. The one in the opening scene of Testify is a nightclub. It's a little while before we get to the other kind - a big, noisy hall operated by Avow, a megachurch with secrets and money - but they both look and feel like heightened environments.

"They're two very different environments," says series co-director David Stubbs. "But two environments where people immerse and submerge and are led - by either a DJ or a preacher." Both are grounded in their own realities: respectively, Auckland's Karangahape Rd and the young, brown, queer scene that has provided its afterdark energy in recent years; and the big evangelical churches that are part of the lives of tens of thousands of Kiwis.