Jacinda Ardern’s diverse DNA revealed
I know DNA unlocks your past, but it would be great if it could predict your future.
In The DNA Detectives (TV One, Tuesdays) host, Richard O’brien, took ‘‘political bright spark’’ Jacinda Ardern around the world to meet some distant rellies. If DNA could forecast tomorrow, it would’ve told Jacinda that, within weeks, she’d become leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister.
We’d have no need of Winston Peters or an election.
Richard O’brien, looking like a benevolent Rocky Horror, has taken his inspiration from Charlie’s Angels. In the TV series, Charlie Townsend directs his angels over a speakerphone. Richard instructs them by cellphone.
Jacinda was told her forebears came from the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Scandinavia and Western and Eastern Europe, just about everywhere. They were busy. So it’s important she realises that when she renegotiates the TPP treaty.
Jacinda met Lana, her fourth cousin in Greece, visited the grave of a great uncle who fought in World War II, discovered another relative bombed German missile sites and was reunited with White Feather, a Canadian artist and technician, who worked with DNA.
The programme has encouraged me to trace my ancestry in case I’m related to Jacinda.
With my luck I’d probably discover Frank N. Furter is a second cousin. I’m told I’m distantly related to Boris Karloff.
NZ On Air has approved some shoddy programmes – Moving Out With Tamati is one of them – but The DNA Detectives is a winner. Part of the fascination was being on the journey as Jacinda discovered her ancestry.
Singer Stan Walker was the other subject and he ended up meeting a cousin in Las Vegas and another on Easter Island. He also viewed the monolithic human figures carved by Rapa Nui people more than 500 years ago. I thought of them when I viewed the line-up at APEC.
I imagine The DNA Detectives is an expensive programme to make, but it ticks many boxes.
So does Location, Location, Location (TV One, Wednesdays). While it’s set in England, the attraction is the haggling at the end of each episode. We all like to bargain.
When Kirsty and Phil find a suitable property, they then seek the best deal they can get for their clients. We’re voyeurs at the negotiation. It’s like being at an auction when you bid $2 for a sponge cake.
You feel good when you live in New Zealand as Kirsty and Phil show first home buyers a semidetached or Stalinist two bedroom apartment at outrageous prices.
Our interest was also semidetached, but the programme succeeds because of the well-oiled and witty rapport between the presenters and the wrangling at the end.
This is where Slice Of Paradise falls down. If there’s a further series, it should be re-packaged, reinvented and called The Haggle, and we’d all offer our properties for sale.
I viewed 20/20 (TV One, Wednesdays) featuring Harvey Weinstein with disgust. Like Married First Sight NZ, it was engrossing for all the wrong reasons. If the word gross originated from ‘‘engross’’ then that described Harvey - gross, sleazy and vile.
Harvey was not on the creative side of Hollywood. He was the moneyman with a shrewd sense of what worked. And he often used that authority for the wrong reasons. I hope he gets what he deserves, I hope those women he violated will recover, I hope current affairs will exhaust themselves of him and I hope we can move on. I just heard an oink above my roof.
Was Harvey worth a full programme on 20/20? No, of course not.
There was a delightful moment on Country Calendar (TV One, Sunday). The enduring series, that, like me, needs to be protected by the Historic Places Trust, featured a sheep, cattle, pig and cropping farm, run almost entirely by inmates from Christchurch Men’s Prison.
They’re picked up in the morning, work on the farm and are hopefully counted at night before they return to Her Majesty. She’d be pleased the work experience is equipping them for a new life once they’re released. Many have never been on a farm before but, if it has four legs and goes moo, it’s a cow.
We were taken to the repair and maintenance workshop where the supervisor spoke highly of an experience welder. Minds are funny things and I imagined him, in a previous life, with a safe and blow torch.