Can’t get no TV satisfaction
What do Maui’s dolphin, the knobbled weevil, Chesterfield skink and free-to-air TV drama have in common?
They’re all endangered species. Quality TV drama is very close to extinction on free-to-air tele. It’s only scheduled for owls and insomniacs late at night and sometimes on Sunday. There are a few generic dramas such as NCIS: Los Angeles, but the originals lost their virginity years ago.
I don’t believe we’re out of stories or storytellers. Reality TV is simply cheaper. It’s so easy to take a series about survival, cooking, property or animals and give it a twist. For example, exploring the prehistoric origins of canines could become Jurassic Bark.
This week I studied popular viewing times and found almost only reality. I started with The Taste USA (3 Life Mondays). Here was a programme that claimed to be ‘‘the coolest competition unlike any other’’.
It wasn’t cool, it was hot. Twenty-nine cooks offered up a dish that was tasted blind. Four celebrity chefs received the food on a tasting spoon, not knowing whether a professional chef or Harold the giraffe prepared it. That meant smaller portions were presented and less food was wasted.
Anthony Bourdain, now supervising the celestial kitchen, claimed Adam’s dish was ‘‘genuinely revolting and a rollercoaster to nowhere’’, but the other three, including Nigella Lawson, were kinder.
She described the acerbic Anthony as the ‘‘Mick Jagger of food’’. I can only presume he could get no satisfaction. The episode bounced along with most contestants receiving the reject button.
Renatta’s chicken and mashed potato had a grease and oil change before serving, but Nigella loved it. It was something her grandmother would have cooked, she said. Bourdain claimed ‘‘the mustard hates me and the feeling is mutual’’.
One of the few contestants who received a green light was Khristianne, from West Hollywood. She was Charlie Sheen’s personal chef. While she couldn’t spell, she could cook and her seared scallops with corn puree had great flavours. Judge Ludo Lefebvre, wanted her recipe.
The Taste USA was purely about the taste and not the baggage that accompanies other cooking programmes. The judges’ egos sometimes got in the way, but they couldn’t spoil that vital epiphany when fame and fortune depended on one spoonful of food.
Sheen doesn’t rank with Martin Luther King for oratory but, when he said, ‘‘Life comes down to a few moments. This is one of them,’’ he was so right.
Missing Pieces (TV3, Tuesdays) and Long Lost Family (Sky 17, Fridays) are two of the more heartfelt and satisfying reality series. In Missing Pieces, David Lomas meets people wanting reconnection with family members who left home and took the first turning to nowhere. He then flies around New Zealand and overseas looking for them.
Some are adopted at birth, others are estranged and sometimes dad goes to the corner dairy for bread and milk and loses his way home.
This week Iona bought a oneway ticket to Perth 25 years ago, leaving her 9-year-old daughter with mum and dad. Her sister Angela always felt there was ‘‘one family member missing’’.
Using his laptop, phone and a ‘‘mate in Oz’’, David contacted Iona and her partner Wassa, in Darwin. ‘‘You must have thought about them?’’ he asked. ‘‘Bloody oath,’’ Iona replied, wearing dreads. The New Zealand family regained a sister, mother and a hairbrush. Well done, David.
When you find a TV drama, it can be enjoyable. Nestled between America’s Got Talent and early morning rugby is The Coroner (Prime, Saturdays). What it’s doing there is a mystery.
Jane Kennedy (Claire Goose) is a busybody coroner who helps police solve the crime, then delivers the verdict.
Penrith locals believe a large panther has escaped from a wildlife park and is prowling the moors. Journalist Ben Fairhead sets out to prove the theory. Instead, he’s found dead with deep scratches along his body. The trouble was he stumbled across a cannabis farm and Gemma, his former partner, attacked him with a pitchfork.
The coroner determined that Ben’s mother and Gemma’s dad made whoopie years earlier and the couple discovered they were more than kissing cousins. Why he was attacked was never explained.
This is one family reunion you leave alone, David Lomas. Meanwhile, there are still growling noises out on the moors. With a name like Claire Goose, I wouldn’t take a gander.