Radiation by Fiona Rae

It seems that TVNZ has got so many British dramas on the go for this year that they’ve had to line a few up in a row over the holiday spell and set them free. NY-LON, Murphy’s Law, Trust, Serious and Organised, Family, Life Begins, Red Cap, Between the Sheets and the crime-busting gardeners, Rosemary and Thyme, which has an exact excitement factor of -0.06.

Some of these are quite good: I would recommend Murphy’s Law and Between the Sheets, although it’s probably too late to start with the latter. Things have long since turned to custard due to secrets, lies and lack of orgasms and Hazel has taken off her cross and finally had her Lady Chatterly’s moment in the garden with the bloke from the Parks Department. Brenda Blethyn, despite playing roughly the same woman on the verge all the time, is wonderful as Hazel, somehow getting away with dialogue along the lines of, “I’m just going to plait these daisies into my pubic hair.”

The trouble with having so many Britdramas on at one time is that they do tend to meld into one if you’re not watching closely enough. There’s a surfeit of Kemps as well, or maybe it’s all the same bloke. Family is the drama that Martin Kemp did after Serious and Organised, and Ross Kemp (no relation) is turning up soon in the very macho Ultimate Force, which is not to be confused with Red Cap, also set in the army and starring a former EastEnder (and Hazel’s son from Between the Sheets. There had to be a crossover somewhere). But frankly, after seeing 10 minutes of Embrace of the Vampire, which starred Martin Kemp and Alyssa Milano’s boobs, anything with a Kemp in it is tainted for me.

Coming up this year are also the new series of Spooks and a new, flashy crime-type drama featuring a bunch of con-artists, Hustle. But, if the TVNZ 2005 launch booklet is anything to go by, TV One will undergo a creeping American-isation in the form of Blind Justice, Rescue Me, Huff, Carnivale and the return of Six Feet Under and Cold Case. Do we care? Not particularly, but ma and pa older viewer might.

So. Wendy Petrie eh? Wendy. Petrie. Give that gal a medal. Or a raise. She’d still be earning less than one Judy Bailey. Not that I really care about Judy’s salary, but I hope she’s sponsoring more than one child in Africa. But the Petrie Dish has been super professional over the tsunami coverage and she copes slightly better with Tony Veitch as well. That’s gotta be worth something.

You may have noticed that, belatedly, TVNZ has announced some local drama, well after the 2005 launch. The first is Orange Roughies, a sort-of cops on the water series about a coastguard written by Greg McGee and made by ScreenWorks (Street Legal) and the other is a Romeo and Juliet-type series set in South Auckland and provisionally titled The Market. Also, a comedy called Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby is nearly finished. It features David McPhail as a politically incorrect teacher and is written by Tom Scott and Danny Mulheron. It sounds good, but you have to wonder why, in the minds of old comedy hounds, something has to be “politically incorrect” to be funny? What the hell does that mean anyway? It’s either funny or it ain’t.

According to the NZ On Air website, Orange Roughies got $3,118,592 and The Market $1,373,683, which makes me wonder what TVNZ is doing with its extra Charter money, although there is the soap that’s being developed. Meantime, Outrageous Fortune, which is an SPP production for TV3, received $5,330,000.

Here’s an interesting thoughtpiece from The Nation about Desperate Housewives.

So who else is along for the Firefly ride? I am so there, although the cowboy twang-thing isn’t always totally convincing. They’ve raved about Serenity on Ain’t It Cool News, but then they would. However, there is a review from a Firefly virgin who admits to being a Joss novice and he loves it too. Due September in the US, apparently, but I suppose straight to video here, unless by some miracle it’s like The Grudge and becomes a big hit.

A Radiation reader, John Campbell of Parnell, thought that somehow I’d gotten hold of the script for the first 7pm show on TV3 in my last blog. However, he points out a glaring omission:

I realised you’d missed the investigative feature on Orange Juice, Postcard Records, Edwyn Collins and the Sound of Young Scotland. It’s gonna be a cracker!!!

I guess that was missing from my sheaf of leaked documents …

“Good evening and haere mai, talofa lava, ni hao, welcome, welcome, welcome to Campbell’s Gamble, the show TV3 have given me to stop me going to TVNZ. On tonight’s show, Carol Hirschfeld continues her 99-part series about Ahmed Zaoui and it turns out there are ducks at the Dominican friars’ residence. Carol will be getting the ins and outs of those tonight and we have an exclusive with Ahmed’s dentist.

“Later, coverage of the campaign to have Zaoui declared a saint. Toni Marsh reports from Rome, where a small but dedicated group of Zaoui disciples continue their efforts, despite the fact that Ahmed Zaoui is a Muslim – discrimination, they say.

“But first continuing On the John, a personal journey about my Flying Nun years. Tonight, the hands of time swing back to 1984, when a young – some would say too young – naïve – some would say too naïve – university student had a life-changing experience at the Captain Cook in Dunedin.

“The bitter Dunedin winter was nipping at our very marrows and the only comfort was to be had in the heady, smoky, booze-laden and, dare I say it, dope-laden atmosphere of the only pub in town that actually welcomed unscrubbed oiks like myself. It was the night The Verlaines played a blinder, and The Chills gave us chills that had nothing to do with the cold. It was the night I decided I wanted to be a television presenter on a Holmes-like programme and save the world or at least set a standard for journalism that all others could only try to attain. It was, in short, bloody marvellous.”

Meanwhile, on another TV station …

“Welcome, welcome, welcome, haere mai and good evening to Up Close on Holmes @ 7. Tonight on the programme: the media, and why are they so obsessed with me? Hardly a day, indeed an hour, goes by without a story in the papers or in a magazine or on the radio or even on the telly about myself. Why? We ask Emmy award-winning media expert Suzy Aiken about just how valuable I am to hackery in this country. And we look behind the scenes of Up Close on Holmes @ 7 and ask, “can our little show work?” I’m picking it can and Alison Mau’s career is counting on it.”

And on yet another TV station …

“Kia ora and welcome, welcome, welcome to Close up @ 7 with Susan Wood and Mark Sainsbury: A New Beginning. Tonight, a tragedy that quickly became a farce and finally turned to redemption for one Auckland family and their pet guinea pig. This one will send a shiver down your spine and right back up again and it may even give you goosebumps as well. Then, and this one will make you so happy, I’m sure; I’ll be talking to local legend and music icon Neil Finn. We laughed, we cried; it was an emotional interview, I know you’ll agree.

“But first, Sudan. Starvation, war, famine and disease. We have shocking pictures. And should our government be doing more? Express your view with our phone poll: call 0900 DO MORE if you think the government should send aid, or 0900 DONT CARE if you think we should stand idly by.”

Later …

“And that’s our show for tonight; tomorrow, Carol’s seen the littlest room of Ahmed Zaoui’s house, and I’ll be revisiting the record store where I bought “Pink Frost”. It’s been a joy, an absolute pleasure, haere ra, haere ra, haere ra and goodnight.”

And …

“Tomorrow night, behind the scenes of my new album and I’ll be asking, “can I really sing?” We ask music expert Andy Shaw. That was Up Close on Holmes @ 7; those were my people on my show tonight.”

Then …

“That’s our show; tomorrow, the tragedy of two old friends who missed each other by just minutes: we have shocking pictures. And the Sainser will be looking back on a childhood filled with laughter and tears. I have a tear in my eye just thinking about it. Until then, goodnight.”

I like a good romance as much as the next gal. Pride and Prejudice: yes, please. Buffy and Angel: I am so there. Trouble is, romance could quite possibly be the most difficult genre of all. Even crap action movies have action, but what does a bad romance movie have? And when you add the c-word – comedy – that’s even harder to pull off.

How many good rom coms are there? When Harry Met Sally? Ugh – Meg Ryan. Bridget Jones? Ugh – Renée Zellweger, slightly ameliorated by a dash of Colin Firth. Television-wise, I’d count Sex and the City as a rom com. Good puns, lots of slapstick, funny gay friends.

So I was up for NY-LON, the short-lived British series, even though it had so-so reviews: Mark Lawson in The Guardian pointed out that the only obstacle in the lovers’ way is distance and: “Even 400 years ago, when Shakespeare pitched that script to the Globe, the money men encouraged him to include some stuff about confusing potions and a blood-feud between the two families.”

Quite right. Even Mills & Boon writers know the secret to fleshing out the plot until the inevitable kiss in the garden/on the bow of a boat/in the grand hall of his lordship’s country estate. Obstacles. And lots of them. Usually it’s terrible past relationships that have put the protagonists off, or maybe an accident, perhaps involving his wife (he’s scarred emotionally and physically), or perhaps he’s under some mistaken impression of her, or he’s just a rude prick. She’ll have to prove herself, possibly by saving the life of his first-born by his aforementioned dead wife; he’ll have to open up. Yada, yada, yada. Kiss.

So what possible obstacles could there be for NY-LON’s young and attractive Michael and Edie? The writers seem to be trying just a leetle too hard with this. There’s a hint of familial obligation on his part (his sister dumps her son on him regularly); needy exes are presenting themselves as speed bumps on the road to Happy Ever Afterville; there’s that annoying Atlantic ocean.

NY-LON has also gone for quite a bit of flash over substance too. If you can keep up with the times flipping over at the bottom of the screen, good luck to you. For a New Yorker, you’d think she’d know not to put down her bag on a park bench and turn away, as well. And did he really say “I sell dreams” by way of explanation of his job shifting money from one place to the other in The City? It certainly lacks flow and that’s not necessarily the fault of the disordered time and split screens.

But sometimes you watch a romance a) for the moments that do work, and if they do, you can forgive the rest, or b) to see why it’s not working. I’ve watched Notting Hill thinking, why exactly is this rubbish? What is wrong with this picture? Is it the complete and utter lack of chemistry between Hugh and Julia? Rotten pacing? Rhys Ifans stealing the show? All of the above? But at this stage, at only episode one, I’m willing to give NY-LON’s writers, for whom this was a (somewhat) true story, the benefit of the doubt. Just in case.

Good news from the Whedonverse everyone: Firefly, Joss Whedon’s space western (with a whore), will finally play on TV3 in a couple of week’s time, once season six of Buffy finishes. It seems Serenity, the movie based on the series, is almost finished, but won’t be released until September next year.

Here’s something interesting from E Online’s gossip columnist Kristin about the merging of scripted drama and reality, now that new drama shows in the US are performing so well and some reality shows are big fat flops.

Love this study, as reported in the NY Times. Jeez, makes you wonder why they spend so much money on these studies – they could have given me a call and I could have told them that. Like the study where they found out that you can’t go to sleep if your feet are cold. Well, duh. Researchers, ring me now.

Was anyone else waiting for the angels to arrive on Angels in America? I’m so glad they’re here at last. I found it a bit exasperating at first, but several eps in it’s really taking shape. You knew Al Pacino would have the actor-o-meter set on 10, but the rest of the cast are fantastic, especially Jeffrey Wright, who plays Belize.

Some quite good things on the Letterman list:
Monday 6th: Tyra Banks and Lyle Lovett
Tuesday 7th: Racing star Alex Zanardi, comedian Kevin Nealon
Wednesday 8th: Renée Zellweger (ugh!)
Thursday 9th: Tom Hanks, Nelly
Friday 10th: Salma Hayek, Jimmy Eat World
Monday 13th: Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Oliver
Tuesday 14th: John Travolta, Pearl Jam
Wednesday 15th: Jim Carrey, Ashanti
Thursday 16th: Cate Blanchett and The Pixies
Friday 17th: Adam Sandler

Condolences to Graham and his family.

How many complaints do you think the Broadcasting Standards Authority will receive about this week’s episode of Eating Media Lunch? A good solid two? Maybe three? On the other hand, I wonder how many phone calls EML and R18 producer Steve Crow have had from porndogs wanting to get hold of Anal Mana? A good hard 20?

Someone took it seriously, though. Jeez, if that guy in the piupiu is a porn star, I'm a starfish. EML is so the highlight of the week, what with summer programming getting underway and TV One pulling out British dramas starring Robson Green and Gary Kemp (ew!).

Another local show in a state of glorious tumescence is Shortland Street, which is about to send suds exploding all over the screen with the end of the evil Dom. I was under the impression the big bang was this week, that’s the way the promos looked anyway, but we’ll have to wait til next week for the body in the lake and the gas can in the shed. Such fun, and I was getting a bit tired of Maia making the pouty face over her dad’s illness, so I’m glad that’s over. You may already know about Streettalk – go now and vote for who you think will be tied up in the shed.

There was a brief flurry of media about the lack of local drama planned by TVNZ for next year, I hear National Radio’s What’s Going On covered it and Russell did an interesting interview on Mediawatch last week with the chair of NZ On Air, Don Hunn, in which he said that TVNZ was finding less of an appetite by viewers for long-running local series. In other words, they don’t rate. However, it begs the question: If TVNZ wanted mini-series and short drama series instead of 20-parters, why hasn’t it commissioned some?

The Screen Directors Guild and the Writers Guild both issued statements about the lack of drama, but neglected to put them online.

You can see recent funding decisions on the NZ On Air website, if you look back to June, the only grants for drama are for Outrageous Fortune ($5.3m for 13 one-hour eps) and Doves of War (additional funding of $450,000 for six one-hour eps). In both cases the broadcaster is TV3. In June, a production company called Colonial Encounters won $450,000 for a two-hour drama called No. 2, to be screened on TV2. That’s it.

Tone magazine’s December issue has a story about Sky’s PVR, which will be launched next year. It's not online unfortunately, although here’s another from Scoop. The box doubles as a decoder and a PVR, so viewers won’t have to add another item to the rack – unlike, say, a TiVo unit. It’s got 160GB hard disk, and contains two tuners, which seems to imply that you’ll be able to record one digital channel while watching another, or record two at once. If you want to burn DVDs, you’d have to connect a DVD recorder.

There’s another new TV blog in town: feel free to send your conspiracy theories, insider goss, grumps, groans etc to Reinventing TVNZ.

Patricia asks what I thought of Paul Henry on Intrepid Journeys:

I was most disappointed at his obsessing about himself all the time and his seemingly indifferent approach to the local people he encountered. He never gave any real information except complaint with a superior attitude. I have a real objection for this type of programming and promotion of so called ‘celebs’ by tax payers contributions.

I have for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed these programmes and the ‘quirky’ but very respectful approach the other presenters have taken – Peta Mathais the exception!

I think you said it all, Patricia; I got about 10 minutes in, couldn’t stand the whining and quit. And really, if you knew you were going a journey where you needed to climb a mountain, wouldn’t you try to get a little bit fitter before you left? Paul Henry puffing and panting: not pretty.

The Herald is reporting that a decision on the new Holmes show will be announced within two weeks: Susan Wood is the frontrunner and I think she’s been running a reasonably lively show. She’s prone to overdoing it a bit though, her Erebus over-emoting was gagworthy. I can’t point you to the story, because it appears the Herald site has had a redesign and the search facility is gone. Bah.

I caught Colin Farrell on Letterman this week, the guy is a lunatic. The list for next week:
Monday the 29: Actress Natalie Portman; John Mayer
Tuesday Nov 30: Actress Jessica Biel
Wednesday Dec 1: George Clooney; Lance Armstrong
Thursday Dec 2: Guest TBA
Friday Dec 3: Actor Noah Wyle, musical guests Sum 41
Monday Dec 6: Tyra Banks; musical guest Lyle Lovett
Tuesday Dec 7: Racing star Alex Zanardi; comedian Kevin Nealon

I arrived fashionably late at TVNZ’s launch of its 2005 season programmes, which is just a euphemism for a) I went to the wrong place first (note to self: read invitations before setting out); and b) parking about a mile away from the Maidment Theatre, where the launch was actually taking place.

I did arrive in time to see Matthew Ridge popping out the side door and a TVNZ lackey, afraid he’d do a runner – possibly from his debts – saying to a security guard, “Can you make sure Matthew doesn’t go awol?”

They wheeled out a few celebs for the launch – who better to sell the new season to the agencies than The Domness himself – but frankly they would have needed the wattage of George Clooney to make what’s passing for local programming next year seem even vaguely worth looking up from your cocoa.

Sure, there’s a couple of things: major series Frontier of Dreams is a history of New Zealand, five years in the making, according to the publicity. But really, would you watch something called How Clean Is Your House? or Is It Safe to Eat?; the producers apparently so unsure of their programmes that they had to use a question for their titles.

And there’s no polite way of saying this: where the f**k is the local drama? There was virtually none mentioned, just a kids’ series called Holly’s Heroes, and an Australian co-production called Last Man Standing that has, like, oh at least one Kiwi in it. Honourable mention goes to the new series of Mataku, but there was no mention on Tuesday of the reported Insiders Guide spin-off The Insiders Guide to Love.

Having canned Mercy Peak and decided against a second series of Serial Killers, shouldn’t TVNZ have commissioned something new? Why isn’t some of the extra Charter money being used for drama? TVNZ also has another $11 million to play with. What the f**k is going on?

The good news is that there are some big fun shows on the way: Desperate Housewives and Lost, which I mentioned in the previous blog; daft BBC series Hustle; the Denis Leary vehicle Rescue Me, which Entertainment Weekly just loves; and a couple of Aussie dramas, The Alice and Blackjack which looked good, but then they would on a showreel, wouldn’t they? There’s another Aussie drama from the producers of The Secret Life of Us called Love My Way.

But when Newsboy (btw, his and Paul Casserly’s Unauthorised History of New Zealand is a wee bright light in all the murk) said on the showreel, “TVNZ’s 2005 season; hopefully, it’ll be all right,” it didn’t sound so ironic. Not for local producers anyway.