Cheap and nasty TV
Once upon a time there was a city council that allowed a rundown neighbourhood to get so neglected it didn’t know what to do. So a bright Osram on the council said let’s sell each derelict house on the estate for a pound each. It’ll save us millions.
We won’t need to upgrade them and, if the new owners can’t meet our tough conditions, we’ll take the house back once they’ve done the hard work. All those in favour? And the Liverpool City Council agreed, thumped their tables and had an extra sausage roll.
About then Channel 4 arrived to tell the story. The One Pound Houses: Britain’s Cheapest Street (TV One, Tuesdays) showed the disgraceful state of the delinquent houses and filmed desperate people, wanting their own homes, meeting council officials.
For a pound they bought a property ‘‘sight unseen’’ – it was Married At First Sight, but with rotting floorboards. They didn’t know about the bullet found in the street, the criminal gangs and marijuana dumped in the street. Wavertree was a suburb gone to pot.
Sure, the episode was compulsive viewing as innocent people started renovating. The homes were as negligent as the tactics used by the Hurricanes last Saturday. What concerned me was the indifference shown by the city council. Once you paid your quid the responsibility was yours.
Mayor Joe Anderson was a blister. He showed up after the work was done. He attended the first house warming, ate the lamingtons and claimed it was winwin for everyone. It looked like loss-loss. I hope next episode the documentary starts asking questions.
Strangely, the first piece of advice I received as a young journalist was to ask direct questions. If you ask direct questions you get direct answers. Corin Dann must have missed that class. In Qanda (TV One, Sunday evenings) he made statements and strung up to three questions together before referring them.
Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer were bemused. Which question should I answer before I answer the question before the other question, or should I correct the statement, they thought, and didn’t reply to any.
I was looking forward to Q and A, but learned little other than Jacinda Ardern would return last Thursday night once Winston supped his first bubbles on Air Force One. I also learned that Donald Trump sent his own tweets. By the time Winston meets Secretary of State Mike Pompeo he’ll know how to reinvent history.
Qanda had the opportunity to improve itself in its new evening timeslot. It didn’t. It might be better to start upgrading the questions or even the questioner.
The new series, Cold Case, (TV One Sundays) slotted in before Q and A. It wasn’t a fun night. A group of Cold Case specialists reexamined the tragic disappearance of Mona Blades more than 40 years ago. They decided the final sighting of Mona getting into an orange Datsun was a red herring, or an orange one.
Mona had bikie connections, the friend of a friend kind. The authorities speculated that she came across several gang members while hitchhiking. Sadly, there was a hitch to her hiking in Taupo¯ and she was never seen alive again.
There’s someone who knows what happened back in 1975 and the authorities appealed to that person. Forty-three years can only seem like yesterday if you were involved. So come forward, help solve the crime, give closure to the family and make Cold Case work.
Code Black (TV One, Wednesdays) has made A and E more dangerous than Beirut on Friday night. It’s full of doctors, nurses, patients, bosses, orderlies and disorderlies all shouting, treating, medicating, arguing, threatening, operating and stitching. Suture self.
This week when Elizabeth, the pilot of a light plane, collapses, Dr Leanne explains to her daughter how to assemble a primitive defibrillator and revive mum in time to crash land the plane. Meanwhile, Dr Ethan and Rox, at gunpoint, save the life of an injured woman who robbed a medical marijuana shop. They also disarm her crazed male partner.
Is there no boring surgery for tonsils or ingrown toenails carried out? I’d love just one patient to suffer from terminal flatulence. But not at Angel Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. It’s on steroids from the opening credit. The bill for ketchup must be huge. No wonder Code Black was cancelled.
In 2014, Angelina Jolie directed a creditable movie about Louis Zamperini, Olympic athlete and a member of a ditched World War II bomber crew who survived 47 days in an inflatable raft. He was then captured and tortured by the Japanese. Unbroken ends with his rescue.
But The Real Story Of Louis Zamperini (Sky 73, Sunday), which tells the rest of his life, is even more amazing. He’s able to return to the POW camp and forgive his captors. That’s powerful. It’s akin to displaced children at the Mexican border forgiving Donald Trump.