Rude Awakenings is a New Zealand comedy-drama television series, which originally aired on TV One on Friday evenings.
The series centres on two families who live next door to each other in a fashionable street in Ponsonby, a suburb of Auckland. The Rush family has just moved to their newly renovated house in Ponsonby from a lifestyle block in Kumeu. Dimity, the mother, is a human resources manager; Stuart, the father, is an anaesthetist, and Julian and Ollie are their sons. They immediately hit a wrong chord with their new neighbours, the Short family.