Compulsive TV watching for traffickers
After watching Border Security: America’s Frontline (Prime, Wednesdays), I want to contribute to the marijuana debate.
A motorist, caught with wacky baccy in his pocket, tried to turn left and leave America. He was stopped at the US border attempting to enter Canada by mistake.
Now, I’m not sure how many marijuana motorists leave the Ngauranga Gorge and drive into Wellington harbour on their way to the South Island, but it might be an interesting statistic. It could be what’s in their pocket.
Besides the driver who didn’t know his left from right, Border Security could have been recorded anywhere in the world. Customs and border protection officers face the same problems of contraband, drugs, visitors without a work permit and suspicious food entering a country.
In this episode, customs officials at JFK airport swooped on backpackers. They caught one colourful passenger with cocaine hidden in the lining of his backpack. More accurately, the lining seemed to be hidden in the cocaine in his backpack.
Border Security is entertaining and must be compulsive viewing for traffickers. By watching episodes they’ll learn how to successfully conceal drugs when entering a country. Just don’t wear yellow trousers.
The Profit (TV One, Tuesdays) is a more boring version of The Hotel Inspector. When he’s not running his own empire, Marcus Lemonis, invests in struggling small businesses and sorts them out.
This week Marcus confronted slightly crazed Howard Nourieli who acted like Kim Jong Un without his finger on the nuclear button. Howard runs a kitchen supply store in Manhattan with his estranged wife, Robyn.
Howie is a law unto himself and deserves to go under with his hundreds of kitchen knives, but Robyn would suffer along with customers who love his gadgets. So Marcus has a liquidation sale, brings order and signage to the shop and teaches Howard to respect his wife and seek her opinion. That was probably the most important lesson. He’s into marriage guidance on the side.
Marcus also invests $350,000 in the business and takes a 33 per cent share. There’s profit in Howie’s knives.
It’s not often a long running series ends and nobody knows. It says volumes about it.
Praise Be (TV One, Sundays) had been on life support for years when it was chopped last year. Now we’re seeing repeats of repeats, elderly congregations from decades ago singing stuffy hymns.
But it sometimes brings unexpected pleasure. My Aunty Enid, who now sings from a celestial songbook, reappeared in a narrow screen episode from Timaru. It’s probably too late to encourage the Praise Be team to watch Hymns Of Praise (Shine, Sundays) to see how it’s done.
It takes brave programming to introduce a new TV series at the height of weekend rugby internationals. The Coroner (Prime, tonight) has been reassigned to Saturdays. It’s a soap with substance. Jane Kennedy (Claire Goose) is coroner in a small English community and seems to be as much involved in the cause of life as the cause of death.
Each episode is a separate story but with quirky characters who connect the dots. Una Drake is the intimidating mayor of the fictional coastal town, a provincial Maggie Thatcher.
What she does to Punch and Judy, she’ll do to the rest of South Devon.
However, Una has a background in bondage. She’s Peter Plumley Walker in drag. So, after playing bouncy castles at the Grand Hotel with its resident crooner, Danny Boyle, Una suffers an anaphylactic shock and is finished off with a bottle to the brain.
Both were administered by long–suffering family members. With enemies like that, who needs friends? However, through clever scripting, Jane Kennedy and DS Davey Higgins solve the crime and trace the culprits back to former husband, Gavin Drake. He might be Judy on the outside, but inwardly he’s Mr Punch.
It’s scary to know what causes people to seek public office, even benefit fraud.