Hiding In Plain Sight

They camped-up our TV screens in a repressed era, but Hudson and Halls kept a lid on more than just their sexual orientation, a new book reveals.

- Clare De Lore

Keeping secrets was already second nature to Peter Hudson by the time he and partner David Halls – best known for their eponymous TV show Hudson and Halls – cooked their way, sizzling, bickering and hooting with laughter, into the affections of New Zealand TV audiences.

When they went to air in 1975, it would still be another 10 years until the Homosexual Law Reform Act would finally sweep away the fear of prosecution. In a sense, Hudson and Halls were hiding in plain sight on national television.

And it wasn’t the only secret, as writer Joanne Drayton reveals in her new book Hudson & Halls: The Food of Love. Drayton is the New York Times best-selling author of The Search for Anne Perry, about the convicted murderer originally known as Juliet Hulme, who became a successful crime author after moving to Britain.

Drayton’s latest work is first and foremost a story of two men who fell in love at first sight, a flamboyant couple who found fame in New Zealand at a time when, she writes, sexism and racism were the norm, abortion illegal and homosexuality was “an abomination”. Laws specified lengthy jail terms for “bestiality” and “buggery” and international medical literature branded homosexuality as a psychiatric illness.