TV Review: The best & worst of 2013

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The worst NZ TV show of 2013

January/February: Paul Holmes gets a rush job investiture of his pity knighthood at his country mansion and promptly dies amid much undeserved acclaim for his ego-driven combination of saccharine populist wallowing and acerbic white middle class bigotry.

March: Seven Sharp was the dry bonfire erected atop the ashes of Close Up – the Holmes Show replacement. As widely predicted, including in this column, it burnt. They were written off for good reason. The show failed and it failed crucially because the three front bunnies didn’t enjoy each others company and neither did the audience. Critically flawed as either current affairs or light entertainment the Seven Sharp trio of presenters couldn’t fill the vacuum between marketing-driven formulaic pap pieces and they were forced to compete for attention with the intrusive on-air social media presence. Of the three originals only one will be there next year. The personalities are getting weaker rather than stronger as TVNZ plays it safe all the way into an inevitable shit-canning. News that Mike (Mr Perfect) Hosking will come on board in the new season signals everyone else is going over board – they will be alpha-maled into relegation.

April: Operation Yew Tree in the UK had uncovered evidence of under-age sexual offending by British celebrities that threatened to take down dozens of male entertainers and tarnish forever the image of many childhood favourites. People were all horrified, how could this be? They wouldn’t hurt a fly, there must be some conspiracy the fans say. The predatory tactics of the 60s and 70s were no longer tolerated and now, at long last, the victims are speaking out. So no more Royal Command performances from Rolph Harris, no more Street with Ken Barlow and that other guy. There is an infamous TV interview on British TV with a punk band and one of the members objects when the male interviewer (could have been Terry Wogan) tries a sleazy move on the female member in one of the rare moments in the 70s where this pervasive patriarchal public demeaning of women was challenged directly.

May: Aaron Gilmore was successfully hounded from office as a National MP for being an obnoxious git at a restaurant. It turned out he had been an obnoxious git all along by what transpired at a series of press conferences that followed. The press gallery sharks had sensed blood and he was Paddy-bait thereafter. The media scrum and their pack hunt got his scalp in the end, or at least that’s how it looked to them, and this emboldened them for the rest of the year.

June: The Vote on TV3 was a popular format, but no-one seemed to have watched it despite the thousands of votes across platforms. As an old fashioned debate it was recognisable, but there was still a veritable calculus of compulsory social media interaction to get through and the fast pace was bordering on hyperactive. The pairing of Espiner with Garner and having Linda Clarke moderate was masterful, yielding some profound, but many comedic moments in the series. The best was probably later on with the housing debate where passions were raw, positions clear and sentiment polarised.

July: The X Factor was a major success. That would have happened without the NZ On Air funding. Jacqui, Tom, Whenua, Cassie and Benny are representative talent from across the country and are now, deservedly, household names and images. The judges, tartan pants and pink hair have become familiar fixtures. The amount of leverage the show provides in this relatively small market has been phenomenal. Not bad for standing in a queue for a while for an open audition. Not bad either for the careers of the judges if the flurry of activity surrounding and after the show was anything to go by.

August: John Key took on John Campbell and won. The GCSB, the spying, Kim Dotcom… at every turn Key out-Campbelled Campbell in gosh, gee, shucks, well niceness. Campbell was left wound up in his own exasperation and teflon John was bullet-proof: cool and in control. Simon Bridges attempt to wrestle Campbell a la the PM a few weeks later however would fail dismally as Bridges was so belligerent and ranting he did not need any goading at all to come across as a raving, pushy prick.

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September: It took Emirates Team New Zealand ages, but they finally lost the America’s Cup to the Aussie-skippered hydrofoil. The loss was worth it just to see the propagandised peasants of New Zealand living out their nationalism through the state-subsidised ultimate rich man’s sport having their assured, presumptious, swaggering certainty implode in a legendary choke. The unbareable hurry up and win was accompanied by ever more desperation from the partisan NZ commentators. Classic. The yacht racing itself largely lived up to what they thought the audience demanded: big and fast with the stunning Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop. It was a distracting little drama NZ taxpayers will be forking out for again.

October: Len Brown’s Ngati Whatua Room down trou was devastating. TV had nothing but Slater and his shit-eating grin to run with as Len took some time out to be less of an arsehole, he called this ‘working on my marriage’. He had to show for TV eventually and he front-footed via his old mate, John Campbell. He would understand, he would give him an easy ride. The dentist was necessary, but this was the gosh, golly, nicest dentist he could find for the job. And he did a job with maximum padding and maximum anaesthetic. John just screwed up his face in angst and bewilderment a few times, remained mystified and sceptical at the end lof it. But it was done. They repeated the same exercise, with the same result, a few weeks later when the Mayor again pledged to carry on regardless. Excruciating viewing.

November: The total porn-kill that is the ‘roast busters’ rape club was exposed on TV3 news. The Waitemata detectives of the NZ Police had sanctioned it and their online exploits and exploitations. The Commissioner even said he knew the police officer father of one of the accused, he said no further action was necessary on the case because he was expecting no charges to be laid, and yet he insisted he expects all police staff to be found to have done nothing wrong and expects a full vindication from the unprecedented police conduct authority investigation underway at the request of both the police minister and the opposition. Unfortunately not even the power of television can resolve this untenable situation alone.

December: Nelson Mandela died. The white news presenters in New Zealand kept asking people in South Africa when unspecified unrest would occur. The white New Zealanders evidently think a 95 year old man passing away peacefully and met with the somber reverence of every sort of South African is the basis for a race war to break out. Because black people are angry and violent and Mandela was the only thing holding them back from their primitive barbarism – it’s all so obvious to the average European New Zealander. They seemed quite disappointed to learn no such violence was comprehensible to the greiving nation. The funeral was a who’s who of world leaders, although John Key went unrecognised by American media amid the tight Anglosphere cluster of white guys at the top of the rostrum. Obama gave a conventional funeral speech, delivered in a rush and with his trademark mechanical overuse of his favourite devices like ‘not only’ – which was received as if Malcolm X and MLK had just come down from heaven and preached together. News that the sign language man on stage next to the leaders was (something like) a traffic warden with a mental disorder – who it transpires was just randomly flailing his arms about for five hours – was a mischievous lark that Mandela would have appreciated. December also marked the end of television as we know it, the end of the analogue transmission, and ironically, a costly conversion to ‘freeview’ for the digital stragglers.

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