TV Review
Diana Wichtel
Smiley Welsh comedian Griff Rhys Jones was first in Auckland in 1985. He arrived on a Saturday. “Auckland was shut,” he told TVNZ’s Europe correspondent, Joy Reid, last year. “It had half-day closing.”
I remember his visit. I was meant to interview Jones and his Alas Smith and Jones comedy partner, Mel Smith, here for a show. On the appointed afternoon, I duly sat in the foyer of the then Sheraton Hotel and waited. After about an hour, I saw the two of them go sailing by. To the bar? For a nap? Then a PR person came and told me the interview was off. They evidently had halfday closing as well.
Never mind. Now Jones has reinvented himself as a television travel host, as have so many mostly male television comedians from Michael Palin to Billy Connolly, Paul Merton, Karl Pilkington and Ricky Gervais …
He’s done rivers, mountains, Wales, Africa. In Griff’s Great Kiwi Road Trip, he gets to travel New Zealand in search of our quintessential Kiwiness or something. If many of our blokier commentators are correct, that would mean stumbling across some combination of Fred Dagg, Sir Edmund Hillary and Steve Hansen.
Instead, in the first episode, Jones had to content himself with a fairly cursory tour of the north of the North Island. He started off at Cape Reinga and had to be restrained from heading out to sea during a drive along 90 Mile Beach. He went sandboarding down a Hokianga dune. “My six-year-old mentality meets my 65-year-old reality,” he winced, noting bumps and bruises “in the groin area”.
He speaks, as to a very young child, in that exaggerated British presenter stage whisper and relies a lot on his groin area for laughs. He’s pleased to find the gear he’s given “protected a vital part of my …” when he goes fishing for yellowtail kingfish (he catches a snapper they throw back). He fiddles with the vital region again when kitted out to go for a high-tech sail.
Atrip to a Northland marae was the only item on the itinerary to put a cork in the jovial polished patter. The welcome had him fully alert, very much on the cultural back foot, not phoning it in. The Welsh native clearly related to a tradition of ritual, language and singing. Yet when it came time for him to produce a waiata, he sang God Save the Queen. The locals saved him by joining in a gorgeous rendition of the anthem, but still. When Palin did New Zealand as part of his Full Circle series back in the 90s and visited a marae, he sang his old public-school song in Latin to his underwhelmedlooking hosts. As an exploration of New Zealand, these shows tend to tell you a lot about Britishness.
Jones went to Pakatoa Island for the sole purpose of making a joke about buying it. There was beach cricket on Devonport’s Cheltenham Beach. Apparently, we do nice fish and chips. Good to know.
The episode left him perched on the outside of the Sky Tower (sigh). In an earlier interview, he’d bagged Auckland. “The centre, certainly around the area of Sky Tower, is actually horrible,” he said. “I would say, Auckland needs somebody in charge of it to work out how to make it into a decent city. I really do. And that’s that. So you can quote me on that.” Okay, boomer. Though maybe if he said what he really thinks on screen a bit more, there would be less of a sense of being trapped on a tour bus with a remorselessly twinkly-eyed, slightly bored British tourist.
Still, apparently he’s going to risk his groin area again by bungy jumping in the South Island. I might tune in if I can stay awake. GRIFF’S GREAT KIWI ROAD TRIP, Prime, Sunday, 7.30pm.
As an exploration of New Zealand, these shows tend to tell you a lot about Britishness.