Inside story not so much
Just when I settled down to watch Swipe Right For Murder, I got Harvey Weinstein instead. Unannounced Weinstein: The Inside Story (TV3, Wednesday) replaced an engrossing series on the evils of computer dating. Instead, we got the evils of Weinstein. He could never be described as unannounced. He was there in your face, especially the faces of starlets and models.
It wasn’t a good TV expose, but it was the first. It was the ‘‘hot off the press’’ doco made before anyone else could write a script and assemble a cast. It wasn’t released, it escaped.
Entitled Weinstein: The Inside Story, it wasn’t. It was the outside story. The inside story has yet to be told and won’t be until Weinstein’s army of ‘‘cover-up’’ people lose their grip on his bathrobe.
Let’s go back a bit. Weinstein was a sleaze and movie producer who lived the life of a 1930s Hollywood mogul. He had a casting couch that extended from his lounge, twice round his mansion and ended up at his king-size bed.
He enticed young hopefuls to his hotel suite and allegedly groped and sexually violated them. He’d disappear, return in his bathrobe and expose his generous johnson, then ask for a massage.
Finally, enough women, scarred by their experience, exposed him. The BBC gathered the fringe players. Now, I don’t imply their experience with Weinstein was anything less than horrific. But the A-listers have yet to front up in a doco and tell their story.
Weinstein: The Inside Story gave a brief history of Weinstein and his company, Miramax. It interviewed some unknowns, but never addressed his shadowy support team or his lickspittles who melted away when his apparatus grew bigger than his brain.
Then there was brother Bob, who sacked Weinstein from the family business when he knew about it. Sorry Bob, what else did you know? Why are you silent as a grave? No, not a grave, the whole cemetery.
There’ll be more docos to come. They’ll be better and they’ll lasso many of the others who were complicit. It’ll be bigger than a space probe. I’m waiting for them.
Two reality series where contestants compete for cash are also competing against each other for ratings.
I prefer Australian Spartan (TV2, Sundays) to The Wall (TV One, Tuesdays).
In Spartan, three team members lift, hump, splash, pull, climb and leap their way through a series of challenges to the semifinals. The obstacles, such as the water gauntlet and human ladder, offer the sort of torture that makes me wake up at 3am in a cold sweat. Am I in solitary again granny for not finishing my prunes?
Last Sunday, three rural Kiwis made it look like a day out on the farm. They’re through to the next round, along with some musclebounds from Oz.
The Wall is great entertainment and ticks most of the boxes, except one. If you don’t like the contestants, you’re out of luck. Turn off your set.
On Tuesday, Jane, a shrill, OTT contestant who loved to show off her armpits, partnered Alan, a solo father of five.
Although the audience had sympathy for him, Alan ended up in isolation, answering the questions and destroying the contract while Jane strutted the stage.
Collectively, they earned zip and so did the episode.
The Chase has it right – an amiable host, eccentric chasers like The Beast and Frosty Knickers, and four contestants. If you don’t like one, pray they’ll get beaten and support the others.
It would be great if you could sympathise with a grieving father in his quest to expose the competency of a surgeon who couldn’t save his injured son. In Trauma (TV One, tomorrow), Dan Bowker gets up your orifice as he plans revenge on dignified Dr John Allerton.
Bowker shows little compassion for his wife and family as he seeks to harass the surgeon. And he may be right. Allerton was celebrating his birthday when called to the hospital.
That’s the dilemma posed in this intriguing three-part drama.
Bowker’s a pain in the bum, but the world needs people with haemorrhoidal problems from time to time.
Society is full of pain and not enough bottoms to share it.
Weinstein was a sleaze and movie producer who lived the life of a 1930s Hollywood mogul. He had a casting couch that extended from his lounge, twice round his mansion and ended up at his king-size bed.