TV review: The Paul Henry treatment

Next year TV3 has threatened to run Paul Henry five days a week. This programme is being billed as The Paul Henry show and will screen late night. The latitude afforded by moving north of the 8:30pm adult viewing threshold – if it eventuates – will have more to do with lawyers than it will with scheduling considerations.

As for the question: where is this all heading?; the short answer is probably still going to be the Broadcasting Standards Authority, Private Bag Wellington. At this early stage the network most likely also have no clue what Paul Henry is going to be doing, and nor does he. I was once at a TV3 meeting with the editor of this blogsite when he pitched his idea of making the Howard Beale Show (from the movie
Network) – which was received warmly and with interest and much enthusiasm by the network executives at which point I figured they were either creative visionaries or mad mercenary anarchists. My jaw was dropping as it got closer to a green light. Surely not. It was only when he told them it would be the Howard Beale Show that it suddenly became no. Anything goes, anything is possible – in the right package – and that will work for Henry as TV3 affords more scope than TVNZ ever could. If Mr Bradbury could make a solid case for the Howard Beale Show then Mr Henry should have no trouble pitching the Simbionese Liberation Front’s bank robberies and live assassination. His show could end up being anything at all – or like Seven Sharp – nothing at all.

If programmes based around such unlikely things as eating gross things until you vomit, being stranded on an island of desperately competitive Americans, and morbidly obese people in lycra trying to loose weight can all be in their tenth or more seasons then why not try a new unlikely and repellant combination? With this sort of
populist, vulgar mentality in programmimg the Paul Henry show could be a nadir. It has all the potential to be one of those shows Kerry Packer used to have dumped from his channel by ringing up in a filthy rage and pulling it off the air in the middle of the show. It is doubtful the Mediaworks receivers and the new shareholders, and new Director and reality TV guru Julie Christie, would have the social or situational awareness to perceive when Henry has put his Dikshit in it again.

All we know, and all he knows, is he’s booked to be an utter arse every weekday on TV3, as opposed to being booked as a part-time utter arse as may have otherwise been the case. He’s written a book on being an utter arse as well which he wrote inbetween being an utter arse in Australia which ended successfully when he was fired. This was after he was fired in NZ for being an utter arse which he did himself after receiving arseholes about a ‘dick in shit’ brain fart. If this story sounds like a load of old arse it is because he is. And five days a week will be a lot a shit for that old arse to get through. It is the recipe for some weak shit.

Paul Henry is an entertaining, comic, personality, but not an endearing one, certainly not an empathetic one. He enjoys diminishing the value of those most under-valued which makes him a bully. In the presence of his class enemies he is an insult looking for an excuse. Such assured prejudice and bemused bigotry may once have been dismissed as contrarian wit, the fiobles of an enfant terrible or an impish gadfly, even forgiven as a flourish of artistic temperament, nowadays we merely refer to such a person as a prick.

Having been beaten by a transexual Maori Labour candidate in a traditional blue-ribbon provincial electorate when he stood for National in the 1990s means it is far from the first time a constituency has rejected his waspish schtick. It won’t be the last. Henry’s sneering, snorting, guffawing character is more suited to a
puppet – a manic puppet – than a person. It would certainly make what he says slightly less offensive if it was a muppet in a suit three sizes too small and dashed off every minute or so to fuck the opening of the petrol tank of his sports car while he caresses it and tells it ‘you’re the only one who understands me’. The viewer would better see the extremist idiocy for what it was if it were conducted by a puppet.

Not that Henry is an idiot exactly. Henry can be every measure the professional in interviews and presentation – which coupled with his institutionally compatible conservative and right wing views – is why TVNZ indulged his personality quirks in the relatively frivolous Breakfast slot… until it turned to Dikshit. That would teach TVNZ for relaxing their ban on personalities.

The comic moments Henry provided were enhanced because the official setting was the state broadcaster and Peter Williams was an ideal straight man juxtaposed to dramatise Henry’s rogue sensibilities. How all this translates to TV3 where that liberty is taken for granted and where there is no official context could put him on a spectrum anywhere from Graham Norton to to Mike King.

With all the self-awareness of Ron Burgundy (from the Anchorman movie) or Ted (from the Mary Tyler Moore show), Henry’s performance is something of an unconscious parody. He is really the last person any responsible broadcaster would have ad libbing live to air. The anticipation of the verbal car wreck is the main attraction. Will it be the only attraction?