Rachel forgets to invite you in
At one level, Tour of Beauty (TV One, Wednesday) is fascinating. Rachel Hunter allows you to tag along while she revisits New York, where she began her modelling career 30 years ago.
At another level it’s an indulgence. You’re a fashion fly on the wall as Rachel visits her old haunts, talks to some movers and shakers from the 80s, has a quick photo shoot and tries out the latest botty treatment. But she never invites you in.
Rachel is at ease in front of the camera and her linking dialogue is consummate, the envy of any TV journalist who’s ever tried to get the better of Winston Peters. But, in the opening episode of the new series, she doesn’t connect with her Kiwi viewers.
When she has a butt facial, Rachel forgets to list the requirements, so we can try. Does our botty have to resemble the eclipse of the sun, can it shimmer like a Hansell’s jelly and what happens if there’s too much overhang?
‘‘It hurts, but in a pleasant ‘don’t stop’ kind of way,’’ Rachel explains. The downside is that you have to return twice a week for 10 weeks. It would take your ‘‘bottom’’ dollar.
Rachel meets Carol, a model who’s discovered the raw diet. Now, Neanderthal Man probably found it first before he lit fires and barbecued breast of brontosaurus with sauropod sauce. Rachel tries a raw sandwich, which inspires her to paint her face with vegan makeup.
If there’s a point to Tour of Beauty, it’s that all body sizes can make a big impression. There’s no longer a shape that’s hot and one that’s not. If your botty resembles the continent of Australia minus Tasmania and the Great Barrier Reef, then that’s perfectly all right. You can still make it as a model even if your butt is too spacial for a facial.
Rachel’s a natural but she needs to relate to Aunty Mina from Mangaweka.
Home Made (TV One, Wednesdays) is another welcome addition. Any programme that renovates part of a house and section for free and leaves the owner better off is an asset. It’s better still if someone writes in on behalf of a deserving family, as in 60 Minute Makeover.
In saying that Vanessa, Ross and family lived in a shabby house with an equally shabby section until Goran and his team arrived. The kitchen was no bigger than Donald Trump’s cufflink drawer, so the team completely renovates it and installs new appliances.
Outside, there is enough mud for two hippos to play beach volleyball, but Goran’s crew still build a vege box with compartments, plant some potatoes and cover it all with pea straw. The mud will have to wait until global warming.
Home Made was too rushed. It deserves a full hour or an extra day to add some real creativity to the property. It was Mucking In, but without humanity.
If Home Made had downfalls, then Unreal Estate (TV One, Tuesdays) had falldowns and plenty of them. We saw Australian TV hosts gushing about millionaire mansions on the South Pacific coast that cobbled together French Riviera, Mediterranean and kitsch.
On one $20 million property on Airlie Beach, the owners were so exclusive they refused to appear. They were probably hiding behind a bottle of 1951 Penfold Grange Hermitage. In another, in Sydney, Kevin, a singer, dancer, cabaret performer and chiropractor, touched up his toupe, blackened his eyebrows and showed viewers a house full of bizarre Victorian bling. It was enough to scare away the Village People. It scared me.
Top Of The Lake: China Girl (UKTV, Tuesdays) was gross, like Kevin’s bedroom where he’d suffered three broken relationships. It missed the culvert and went straight to the sewer.
Jane Campion’s new BBC drama series took an hour to go nowhere. If it finally does arrive, it will focus on Detective Senior Constable Robin Griffin’s investigation of an Asian body washed up in a suitcase and how it connects to Mary, a schoolgirl, her German boyfriend who teaches ‘‘dirty English’’ to prostitutes, Mary’s misfit dad and lesbian mother.
Nicole Kidman plays the lesbian mum convincingly, but the rest was too grubby for me. The Replacement (TV One, tomorrow) is equally deadly and meandering, but it’s been cleaned up for a Sunday night audience.
Ellen is taking three months’ leave to have her baby, but is suspicious of her replacement, Paula. When she’s about to confide in Kay, her boss, Kay falls from the floor above. She can be visited in wards 3, 8, 16 and 29. Ellen is left entirely alone.
The three-part series about architects is entitled The Replacement. It should be called Evil Designs.