Radiation by Fiona Rae

A couple of wisdom teeth were forcibly removed from my upper jaw a couple of weeks back, which meant lying glassy-eyed on the couch in a drug-induced haze starring at a flickering screen. Not much different from usual then. If the Nurofen/Panadol combo didn’t work, then the Olympics coverage did the trick. Apart from the Kiwis, it got reasonably boring towards the end. You know it’s time to go to bed when you’re watching the sixth and seventh place games for handball.

But now that normal service has been resumed on the goggle box, it’s back to enjoying quality American programming, although it’s too early to make a judgment on Six Feet Under. It was certainly a very sombre start, but I must confess to enjoying Las Vegas, which is a perfect Friday night, don’t-bother-thinking, we’ll-do-the-explaining-for-you kind of show. It’s got those whizzy moments a la CSI, and James Caan, despite being shorter than the eye candy lead guy, has presence.

In fact, Las Vegas was named a guilty pleasure in a recent Entertainment Weekly – or, rather, Nikki Cox’s boobs were named the guilty pleasure. It’s true. Never in history have so many bosoms been on display for the commercial gain of so few. Boob jobs must be practically written into hopeful starlet’s contracts these days, although I suppose half the viewing audience isn’t complaining. Still, I’d rather have boobs than Bush. No, wait, that didn’t come out right.

Interesting little tiff that’s been reported about the NZ On Air money that went into NZ Idol. I was under the mistaken impression that NZ On Air had got its money back, simply because NZ Idol was so successful. I mean, if that didn’t make money, what does? I do think it was a legitimate programme to fund, though; thousands of people watched it, it’s spawned a genuine pop idol of our own with the possibility of going further, and it’s given Paul Ellis something to do.

It’s also very easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that it shouldn’t have been funded; but before it went to air, no-one knew how well it would do. After the True Bliss experience, success wasn’t a given, although the New Zealand music industry is a much changed beast since then. Speaking of that, did anyone see Cameron Bennett’s story. On. Sunday. About. The. Datsuns? Could he have overemphasised every word more? I think not. Quite rightly, Christian Datsun told him where to go as well when it came to questions about the money and their mums. Fair enough.

The Fall season is nearly upon US screens. Zap2it’s TV Gal gives a rundown here.

Marton Csokas and Karl Urban may be doing well in The Bourne Supremacy, but our other big local star, Beautiful Scenery, gets a good review in Without a Paddle, the Seth Green/Burt Reynolds movie that shot here recently (boy they pumped that out quick). Warning: even trailers come with ads nowadays. If you watch the trailer, there’s an ad first for Guess Who’s Coming to Decorate.

Here’s something interesting from Lindsay Vette, who find that when he tried to record overnight on Sky Digital, he got spam:

I found I had for the second time fallen victim to Sky's version of spam when wanting to record cycling. The first time was during the Tour de France. What is with Sky and my cycling?

Sky's spam consists of remotely switching your channel at midnight to the mosaic, with an advertising banner for some new and expensive service in the main window. That was what I recorded three hours of last night.

The first time this happened I complained to Sky only to be told it must have been a power surge that caused my decoder to reset to the mosaic. But no, an experiment shows that the decoder doesn't power back on at all after an outage.

IT'S SPAM!! And I am paying for it. I await their response to my latest complaint.

I didn’t know that. I did know that if you mute on Sky Digital and then record something, it gets recorded without sound. Yes. And when that something is Buffy, well. You might be forced to say a rude word.

Does it strike anyone as odd that Geoff Bryan has to present the Olympics from a studio in Auckland, while Tony Veitch has to read the New Zealand sports news from a balcony in Athens? Poor old Geoff, stuck in a TVNZ studio behind a fake high-tech grand piano clutching his One News mug when he should be sweating it in Greece.

I did catch Bjork’s performance at the Olympics opening ceremony – possibly Iceland’s only entry – with her typically eccentric song Oceania, but it was the athletes I felt really sorry for, having to endure two-and-a-half-hours plus of that Eurotrancetrash crap courtesy of some super Eurotrancetrash DJ. Jesus, it’s a wonder they had the will to live after that, let alone compete.

But the Olympics are so eye candy, except for stupid sports like dressage and water polo.They are so fit and they know it, and we haven’t even got to the women’s volleyball – or The Cuteness riding at the velodrome they didn’t have time to put sides on. I do think TV One is rubbing salt on the wounds of Coronation Street fans with their “Revenge is Street” promos though.

Here’s a US critic’s view of the Olympic coverage so far.

On a completely different issue, I’m beginning to think that the no. 8 wire ethos has to apply to New Zealand comedy before it’s funny. For example -- Eating Media Lunch, eight half-hour episodes, made for $349,557: very funny. Facelift -- seven half-hour episodes, made for $1,240,000: not very funny. I rest my case.

Maybe frugality is the mother of frippery; it’s not like you need a lot of money to be droll. I’m betting that the $281,378 that NZ On Air has stumped up for Great Southern Television – who make Eating Media Lunch – to produce a comedy called the Unauthorised History of New Zealand will be money well spent too.

The reverse is true for drama, probably. The Insiders Guide cost $4,823,000 and worth every penny, although I neglected to tape the final ep and the repeat isn’t until this Sunday.

Meanwhile, Chris Bell has more pressing issues on his mind, like whatever happened to TVSN:

Not that it was ever really worth watching, I hasten to add -- their programming was always insane and never tallied with the Sky TV guide, making it an almost-useless service.

I did have fun betting with my evening visitors that they'd be showcasing crappy "Diamonesque" jewellery if we tried zapping to Channel 45 ... I won every time. I've tried googling TVSN, but can't find anything resembling news. Perhaps you or your readers can shed some light on TVSN's demise.

Actually what I’d like to know is does anyone know anyone at all who uses G-codes, especially on the Sky channels? With most Sky connections being digital, there must be about three people in the whole country who use them to tape sport or that soft porn they have on Sky 1 after midnight.

This is a bit old, but Onfilm has an interview with Caterina De Nave, Michael Galvin, Karl Burnett and Harriet Crampton to mark Shortland Street’s 3000th episode in June. And E! Online has this interview with Seth Green about making Without a Paddle in New Zealand.

A correction to the Letterman list came from Prime: on Monday, David Spade is a guest and Jack White and Loretta Lynn perform. Cool. And here’s the latest from the Whedonverse: Joss is thinking about spin-off movies, something James Marsters mentioned when he was recently on Rove Live – which is worth watching, btw, last Friday Wing was on, singing a selection of Carpenters and Andrew Lloyd Webber numbers. Fantastic.

Good old Melanie Lynskey, going where Angela Dotchin couldn’t – into a regular Hollywood gig. Lynskey’s turn in Two and a Half Men was supposed to be short term, but she tested well and they decided to keep her on, earning praise from Entertainment Weekly in the process, which said she managed to make insanity sweet, or some such.

And Two and a Half Men actually made me laugh on Wednesday, although TV2 playing two episodes at once was a bit much. After the frenetic-ness of some of the US sitcoms (quick, get that joke out before someone switches to another channel!) I like the way Charlie Sheen doesn’t rush his lines, although he veers dangerously close to the so-laid-back-he’s-almost-asleep school of joke delivery.

But it seems as if Hollywood has been a tougher nut to crack for female Kiwi actors than for male ones, unless you win an Oscar or something like Anna Paquin. Even Lucy Lawless hasn’t found (hasn’t pursued?) anything much, especially since Tarzan stiffed after only eight weeks. But there’s a few of our guys over there now – both Karl Urban and Marton Csokas are in The Bourne Supremacy, Martin Henderson and Daniel Gillies, after Torque and Spider-Man 2, are both in Bride and Prejudice. Kevin Smith was about to do a movie with Bruce Willis, for god’s sake, before he died. Do we need to mention Russell Crowe? I think not.

Did anyone see Animal Games on Friday? It was a particularly bizarro slice of CGI nonsense made by the same guy who did Weird Nature and Supersense in which animals were scaled to human size to compete in Olympic events. My kids loved it. We got the British version, of course (it screens there on 11 August), but it’s just shown in the US and this reviewer thought the makers must have been smokin’ something. Notice how the British commentary by John Motson was whipped off and the show was revoiced for the Americans.

Good old Kiefer as well, getting his kit off in Kiwiland, then winging home to a new girlfriend on 24. Maybe that’s what will keep 24 fresh – like ER, a revolving cast of characters. Kief got an Emmy nom for lead actor, and the series is nominated too, although that’s a long way from The Sopranos’ 20 nominations. The Emmys are on September 19, in case you’re interested.

News comes out all the time about the new season of The Simpsons: 50 Cent is in one episode, there’ll be gay characters etc, but Harry Shearer isn’t happy about the last three seasons. The last season we saw (15) had its moments, like the episode where Mr Burns took over all the media outlets in town, but hardly kid-friendly.

Future of reality television alert: it apparently lies with spelling bees, according to this story. Who knew?

I wonder if we’ll ever get Da Ali G Show here, the American one that is. He’s in his second season in the US, and interviews Noam Chomsky in one ep. He chatted with Pat Buchanan about whether he thinks Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, “or as they is called, BLTs.” When Entertainment Weekly asked him how the US is different to the UK he answered: “Well, dere’s a lot a lot more gun crime in de US, crack iz more havailable, and de porn is a lot more hardcore. But dere iz also some fings about it dat me don’t like.”

Slightly sad old time on the telly at the moment, with several good things gone, or about to go. Loving the slow burn of The Sopranos though, its focus on the minutiae of family relationships and the way each episode starts small and seems like an epic by the end. If you look closely, I’m sure there’s a kitchen sink in there every week.

It’s a long time between drinks for us Sopranos fans (and who isn’t?), though. The next series won’t be made until 2006.

Also loving Explorers, which is sadly (for us) only four parts, although I suspect for Peter Elliot, four was enough. They spent a lot of money on helicopters for the series and it was worth every penny: beautiful, beautiful, beautiful West Coast scenery. And Elliot is good company, too, not too funny or unfunny, kind of wry and at times just managing to keeping his spirits up. The fact that he is doing the journeys of some of the early explorers with all the right high-tech gear only emphasises how hard it was for them.

But ER’s gone, as has Angel, the brief and glorious State of Play and Insiders Guide is about to shuffle off this mortal coil, or wherever it is that Buddhists go, possibly into empty urns. Sadly, their replacements seem to be either cop shows (yawn) or reality shows (double yawn). I don’t hate cop shows as much as reality shows, but I do find them mostly offensive. Murder as entertainment. Every week the bodies of young women are offered up as sacrifices to the great god of ratings. I’m sure that in the US especially they serve to make people more fearful: everyone always thinks crime is higher than it really is. And really, why you would watch SVU, a show about rape?

To be fair, CSI etc have the fun of all that technology, although the LA Times reports that it’s influencing jurors, who expect all the same flashy forensic evidence when they get to a trial.

Do you think Sven might have been watching too many episodes of Footballers’ Wives? I’m just saying. Besides, he probably doesn’t have the time.

In other quality US television news, I’m sorry to say there are bad reviews in the US for Six Feet Under, but we’ll get to decide ourselves after the Olympics have done their dash next month (August 14-29, sports fans). I can tell you that Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn from Buffy) is appearing eventually as a pop princess called Celeste (whom Keith the bodyguard guards), who likes to frolic with boys, but swears to remain a virgin until marriage. Heh.

The Letterman list is thus: Monday 2nd: Natalie Portman, and Ambulance Ltd (they sound crap don’t they?); Tuesday 3rd: Rosie Perez and Greg Giraldo; Wednesday 4th: Pamela Anderson and Al Franken (what d’you think they’ll talk about in the green room?); Thursday 5th: director Chris Kentis (no idea); Friday 6th: Tom Cruise and Natalie Merchant; Monday 9th: Jada Pinkett and Dax Sheppard; Tuesday 10th: General Tommy Franks and Jessica Simpson; and Wednesday 11th: Will Smith and Jet.

Lastly, apologies for my blogging tardiness; I’m now a wage slave, an office drone, an (almost) nine-to-fiver on account of having crossed over to the Listener – that’s my name in the new-look issue, which I know you’ll all rush out and buy immediately. It’s not a bad life, really.

On the one hand, it seems playing video games might actually be good for your kids (phew!) as this story and this story reveal, but on the other, they’re going to need specs to play them, which should at least keep one sector of the market happy: opticians.

In a strange bit of synchronicity (or is synchronicity always strange?), number one son recently failed an eye test at school and is now the wearer of a new pair of cool, lightweight, blue-framed specs. Which means, of course, that his myopia is another thing that is my fault. Bad parent. Although there is another theory, which I prefer, that’s it’s all just a conspiracy to make parents feel guilty. Yes. That’s more like it.

The Angelverse shrinks to almost nothing after tonight’s season four final, which I’m looking forward to and not looking forward to. It means no more new Angel for a while, as TV3 has replaced it with season six of Buffy. Why? I don’t know. But could I do with seeing the musical episode again? Absolutely.

Another series that ends soon is 24, which has been pretty darn good in its final few hours. They did it by emotionally compromising as many characters as possible. It’s like State of Origin: This is Personal! You’ve gotta love Chloe (nicknamed Potato Face by Television Without Pity. Kim Bauer is Spawn, as in Hell Spawn), who is so tactless she’s hilarious. Teevee.org’s Nathan Alderman has some interesting thoughts on the women of 24, who he thinks are treated badly. I dunno, I don’t think anyone comes off all that well. No one is innocent. Jack Bauer’s a murdering bastard really, all in the name of national security.

Can’t get enough of The Donald? He plans to launch a magazine. I guess it worked for America's first black woman billionaire.

There’s been quite a bit of critical frothing going on in the US about Deadwood, a western on HBO that stars, among others, Ian McShane who, in a previous incarnation, was granny fave Lovejoy. The main reason for the publicity is that Deadwood is loaded with cussin’. Someone I know has seen a couple of eps and says it’s more profane than The Sopranos.

I’d tune in for a John McEnroe-fronted interview show. Who wouldn't?

The Secret Life of Us versus The Insiders Guide to Happiness debate continues with Shaun who comments:

I think it should be taken into account that The Secret Life of Us is in its third (?) season now and has had a longer time to grow into itself, develop characters etc etc. I remember watching the first series and thinking, “an Australian friends but a bit edgier” once again proving that Australia is little more than a USA with training wheels. The Insiders Guide I consider good TV, not just good local TV, a great use of the medium, well scripted and very well shot, it never lets you get too comfortable.

Thank you Shaun, I agree. I really like the way Insiders is filmed, and good music, too. I like the way it came full circle a couple of weeks back when they went back in time to the accident. Dunno if they’re doing another series yet, though, and there is a air of conclusion about the series. It’s going somewhere and there will be an ending. Speaking of good music, Secret Life used a Datsuns song last week again – although no-one was wanking this time.

A schoolkid has written asking for an address to write to David Beckham, which is not as easy as I thought it would be. Any ideas anyone?

Lastly, the Letterman list looks like this: Kristin Davis and Ali G tonight (14th); Will Smith and Jet 15th; Hillary Duff and Jonathan Ames 16th; Cedric the Entertainer and surfer Laird Hamilton 19th; Julianna Marguiles and Ashlee Simpson 20th; Denzel Washington 21st; Halle Berry 22nd; Sharon Stone and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs 23rd; Matt Damon and The Hives 26th; and Brittany Murphy and comedian Paula Poundstone 27th.