Kiwi journalist turned Netflix star David Farrier drawn to the weird

David Farrier spoke to a crowd of enthusiastic students and industry members on Friday at a Wintec Ramp talk.

Dark Tourist, a Netflix-original show about discovering the dark aspects of tourism, comes straight from Farrier’s off-beat personality.

“I’ve always been drawn to the weirder side of life. I’m interested in the mad, macabre, and morbid.”

David says the show’s premise is a simple one.

“It’s a global phenomenon where people instead head for holidays in war zones, disaster sites and other offbeat destinations.”

In Dark Tourist David journeys around the world, visiting nuclear sites, murder hotspots, occult gatherings and other morbid affairs, sampling the best of them for the show.

As New Zealand’s first Netflix-original production, an overwhelmingly positive reception of Dark Tourist overseas means that Farrier is optimistic about the future of the show and is eyeing up a second season with Netflix.

Farrier shared his optimism with the room.

“The Netflix thing kind of just came up, but I know I want to be sharing things I find interesting with other people. I find that really rewarding.”

Farrier began his career as a journalist in newsrooms across Mediaworks, but found his calling when he produced Tickled: a documentary on the world of competitive endurance tickling.

“That was just the perfect storm. It has a 20-year history of it, and there’s some current craziness going on now that I had special access to.

That kind of immersive, ‘you’re in it with me’ style can be applied to other things.”

Farrier used the success of Tickled to emphasise the importance to students of harnessing their natural curiosity and investigating things that “other people would skip over”.

“I was so confident in how good that story was, I realised that this was my chance. You have to be curious. Dig deeper and use that natural curiosity and see where it takes you.”