The lights are back on at Te Pā, where Geo and Hemi and the rest of the "Ahikāroa" whānau have begun filming a fifth season of the hit bilingual show. Joanna Wane goes behind the scenes.

"Ka pai, is everyone set? Kia rite [standby]. Kei te huri [rolling]. Karawhiua [action]!" Season five of Ahikāroa begins where the season four cliffhanger ends — around the kitchen table. Scrambled eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast. A huge bowl of Cheerios. The kai looks … glossy. "That's been here since yesterday," whispers one of the crew. "I've heard they use hairspray to keep it like that."

Kid (Aniwa Whaiapu Koloamatangi) is still huddled in his faux-fur coat and diamante bling from the dramatic night before, which began with his show-stopping stage debut for the House of La Renta and ended with a man lying dead on the ground.

It's been nine months since that last episode dropped and there'll be a few more to wait before Ahikāroa finally returns to the screen, hopefully before the end of this year. (And for any fans still on the edge of their seats, no, I'm not telling you who's at the door.)

More than a dozen people, including two cameramen and a boom operator, are crowded on to the set of Te Pā, the fictional flat that's become Aotearoa's much hipper and edgier equivalent of the New York apartment in Friends.

Dressed in sneakers and an oversized hoodie, first assistant director Mahia Nightingale-Pene is calling the run sheet, marshalling three of the actors to rehearse their lines in one corner while the cameras re-angle for the next scene. Like most of the cast and crew, she's fluent in te rēo Māori, which not only dominates the bilingual script but is used as a working language on set. "I hokana tera" is the call everyone likes to hear her make. "That's a take."

A Covid-delayed production schedule means they'll be shooting through winter for the first time. That's bad news for Turia Schmidt-Peke, whose party-girl character Geo's preferred form of dress is bikini tops, when she's not at university studying law. "But you've got to stay true to the character," she tells Canvas during a pre-shoot costume fitting, where she gets her knickers caught in a zip trying on one of the skimpy outfits sourced for her by the show's wardrobe department. "Turia can be cold. Geo doesn't care!"

When Ahikāroa went live in 2017, initially as a series of five-minute webisodes before it was picked up by Māori Television, no one imagined it would become such a massive hit. An absolute stunner and everyone's favourite person on set, Schmidt-Peke has two university degrees and a background in production but had no acting experience when she was cast — ingeniously — in one of the lead roles.

Five years later, she and Nepia Takuira-Mita, who plays Geo's hapless but big-hearted flatmate Hemi, are still at Te Pā. More Outrageous Fortune than Shortland Street, the serial has built a hard-core fan base, particularly among its young Māori and Pasifika target audience. Across the first four seasons (all available on demand), it's been streamed almost three million times.

Te Ataraiti Waretini, whose company Kura Productions produces Ahikāroa, knew they'd got it right when she saw photos posted on social media from a Halloween party of someone dressed in character as Hemi with his pet goat.

"Drama is very powerful and when you see yourself [reflected on screen], you feel like you matter," she says. "Visibility is validity. There's no other show that is specifically about rangatahi, specifically in their world. And they're the most stylish people I've ever seen in a TV show!"

I n rangatahi speak, "ahikāroa" is loosely translated as "keeping it lit". The more traditional meaning is closer to "keeping the home fires burning", indicating title to the land through a long occupation and successful defence against outside challenges.

That's a nice metaphor for Te Pā, which has its own messy hapu. Between the partying and the bickering and drinking and the sex, their first loyalty is to each other. And while it's often a wild, funny ride — especially some of the scenes with Hemi — the show also goes to some very dark places. One of the core characters, Chantelle, died from a drug overdose.

"There's never really a happy-ever-after on Ahikāroa," says Schmidt-Peke, who's survived more than her fair share of toxic relationships as Geo. "It can be quite grim. And I think that's life. They go through the highs and lows, but there is no fairy tale."

Writer Annette Morehu, who's been on board since season two, is working on the season five finale when Canvas calls. (No, she won't give away any plot spoilers, either.) For her, the idea of "chosen family" is at the core of the show. "The stakes are always in the friendships," she says. "All these crazy things happen, but at the end of it, their home is Te Pā. When I'm writing about it, I like to think of it literally as a pā. It's their safe place and they retreat there in times of need."

Kura Productions founder Quinton Hita, better known as Q, came up with the concept for Ahikāroa because he wanted to make a show in te rēo that his kids would watch because it was cool. It must have worked, because one of his daughters ended up on the payroll, although her role was later recast when the character aged up and the storylines got a bit too risque.

In 2018, just before the first full season went to air, Hita told Canvas writer Kim Knight the show was audacious and taboo-breaking. It was, she noted, a pretty fair description: "It is definitely the first time a character has put his head between someone's knees and said, 'Is your watercress wet? 'Cos I'm starving, baby.'"

According to Morehu, the writing team was given a lot of freedom, as long as the storylines stayed authentic. "It's funny because Q is quite a reserved person himself and we'd come up with all these outrageous things. He'd sit there shaking his head and say, 'Okay, if that's what the young people are doing.' I think that's why it works so well, because although the show is a dramatised version, it's also the reality for so many," she says. "His other goal was to create Māori superstars through the characters. Look at Turia and Nepia — young Māori kids want to be them now."

Back in the day, Hita played ambulance driver Nelson Copeland on Shortland Street. Kura, a joint venture with South Pacific Pictures (which produces Shortland Street), specialises in Māori content and has just released the first-ever kids' drama series made in te rēo, Te Pāmu Kūmara. Later, Hita sold the company to Waretini, his managing director, but has stayed on as a consultant and rēo adviser.

At the beginning of each season, a hui is held to toss around ideas, from key plot points and character development to relevant social issues Ahikāroa might cover. "A big soup of Māori creativity," Morehu calls it. Head writer Joss King tells them to think of it as stories that will be shared around the fire with their people, and then work out what it is they want to say.

Morehu reckons each character and almost every storyline is drawn from the personal experience of the writers or their friends and whānau. Geo was based on Georgia Ihimaera, one of the show's first storyliners. Co-writer Jessica Hansell — the artist/musician Coco Solid — was the inspiration for Smooch.

Played by Te Ahorangi Winitana, Smooch was one of the original trio of flatmates at Te Pā but ran into trouble and disappeared at the end of season two. Smooch was considered such an unlikeable character on paper that the writers came under pressure to make her male (because women aren't allowed to be fiercely staunch, right?). Instead, she became such a fan-favourite there are still calls for her to make a comeback.

Ahikāroa has a huge following among the prison population, where Māori are over-represented. One of the current writers has a young son doing time and that's led to a related storyline being developed for the upcoming season. Some of the show's characters living on the fringes, such as Haki, the "gangster kid" who's about to become a teenage father, are already vulnerable to heading down that path.

Haki does have some heartbreak ahead of him, reveals Morehu, who had a baby herself at the age of 16. "He could easily go either way, but there are adults in his life who could make the difference for him," she says. "A lot of us rangatahi Māori could have gone off the track if the adults in our lives hadn't given us the correct guidance at those key moments."

Each core character also represents a Māori archetype, a very different proposition from the Māori stereotypes typically portrayed in mainstream shows. Hemi was based on Tāne Mahuta, Haki on Māui the trickster. Geo evolved into Hine-nui-te-pō. "She literally burnt down the church that season," says Morehu. And here's a heads-up: a new character, Booms, is about to turn up at Te Pā. "She's a crack-up — I love her."

This year, rangatahi translators have been brought in to help keep it real with the subtitles. Scripted dialogue on the show moves effortlessly back and forth between te rēo and English, representing a young generation of Māori who've come through kura kaupapa, but Morehu says the idiomatic language means it's not always easy for some viewers to understand, even when the characters are "talking Pākehā".

Over the past four years, Ahikāroa has become a training ground for both actors and production crew. Whiti Tumai, whose mother is TV news anchor Oriini Kaipara, was studying to be an electrical engineer when he landed the role of Haki. Bella Rakete, who played Dylan, is a fine arts graduate and the daughter of another Māori broadcaster, Robert Rakete.

Ahikāroa's role as a training ground for young talent is epitomised by Mataara Stokes, who's worked on the show as a director, photographer, actor and wardrobe assistant (he's also Simba in the new te rēo film version of The Lion King).

The writers certainly aren't afraid to take risks. A sinister storyline in the most recent season delved into the spiritual realm and viewers can expect more to come. Whatever her own beliefs, Schmidt-Peke is comfortable with that. "The reality is when you're Māori and you live in te ao Māori, you walk with that world — with your tīpuna and those who have passed."

B ack at Te Pā, the cast is taking a breather while the cameras regroup for the next scene. In one of the trailers, someone is strumming a guitar. There's still some lemon meringue pie left over from lunch and a guy from the art department is handing around vitamin C tablets.

Brady Peeti, who plays House Mother, was up before dawn to make it on set in time after wrapping a dance film shoot late the night before. Her gauzy pink chiffon ensemble is sparkling with sequins.

"It's nice to act with people who look the same as you," she says. "It's very rare to have so many trans and non-binary in one space. Usually there's only space for one."

In the Te Pā kitchen, another character with impossibly long legs, wearing an impossibly short dress, kicks off her flats and pulls on a pair of lace-up ankle boots with impossibly high stiletto heels. Hemi is dishing up that cooked breakfast in the next scene, so Takuira-Mita pops on a pinny over his white singlet, leaving his tā moko arm sleeves on display. We'll see a more vulnerable side of Hemi this season, he says. "He has a huge heart and he means well but he messes up all the time. Everyone has a Hemi in their whānau."

Takuira-Mita, who's from Rotorua, went through Māori immersion school and came to acting through kapa haka (his Pākehā mother began learning the language when she was pregnant with him. "Te rēo is a superpower," he says). Tikanga is a natural part of the process on the Ahikāroa set, where each morning begins with a karakia.

His own whānau love the show — and take the storylines pretty seriously. When Hemi cheated on his partner in season two, he got a bollocking from one of his aunties. The only son in his family, alongside five sisters, Takuira-Mita was raised to respect strong women, and Ahikāroa has plenty of those. "Hard out, it was a nightmare growing up, I tell you!" he says with a laugh. "It's great to see wāhine stand up and be strong."

Like Geo, Schmidt-Peke is a city girl, born and bred in Henderson. She hopes the popularity of Ahikāroa leads to more drama spin-offs that reflect te ao Māori as the central narrative rather than a token side. "Geo is far from Turia but not from the Māori world they both live in."

After working on the new feature film Whina, co-ordinating extras behind the scenes, Schmidt-Peke was called back to fill a cameo role when the actor originally cast for the part had to pull out. She's known assistant director Mahia Nightingale-Pene since their school days and says there are lots of opportunities for young Māori and Pacific Islanders both on and off screen.

"There's a real movement happening with indigenous stories. It's cool to be brown now."

The first four seasons of Ahikāroa are available on demand through Whakaata Māori (maoritelevision.com), TVNZ+ or the show's official website (ahikaroa.nz).