Change your mind
James Belfield finds two shows over the holidays that twist traditional formats and play with the idea of out with the old, and in with a new way of looking at the world.
There can be something terribly glib about TV’s non-stop retrospectives, tinsel and rehashed seasonal sitcom specials at this time of the year – which is why the odd programme that delves a little deeper tends to stand out like a tuxedo on a swimming beach.
Although the new year can also be an incentive for schedulers to pack programming with shows themed around changing lives, both Living Channel’s The Autistic Gardener and Prime’s School of Hard Knocks step away from tried and tested makeover formats to provide a more thoughtful approach.
Alan Gardner’s autism takes centre stage in the second series of his leftfield gardening show and, having ditched the apprentices which were the focus of his first series, he’s given far more airtime to help describe how he sees the world and why being able to harness being on the spectrum puts him in a unique creative space compared to what he calls “neurotypicals”.
Home makeover shows can be the very dregs of populist, formatted reality TV but Gardner’s language (he finds inspiration among “a deluge of colour and patterns” and waits for his “brain to tune into it”), artistry (he’s a silver medal winner at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show), and colourful character (when was the last time you saw a similar show presented by a heavily tattooed man with shocking pink hair and bright, perfectly painted nails?) make you want to know as much about the man and his world as about the folks whose borders he’s replanting.
The first episode’s couple looking for Gardner’s help are Pinky and Joe from Lancashire in the north of England and although they’re excited from the off about working with a maverick designer, there’s a fair amount of trepidation about what the heck’s happening in their back garden.
And when you end up shelling out more than $20,000, that’s no real surprise – especially when your landscaper starts talking about the shapes made by the intersecting blades of wind turbines, completely rubbishes your birdbath and then starts lugging in industrial concrete maintenance hole conduits.
Fortunately for the viewer, we get an inside view on how Gardner’s mind works, thanks to two new sections of the show in which he travels to New York to find, experience and describe successful city gardens, one of which makes him cry with joy while another has him discussing Brownian motion theory with a US garden designer who grew up among the likes of artists Marcel Duchamp and Mark Rothko.
By the time of the format’s staple crescendo – the grand reveal – the viewer isn’t just rooting for a good reaction from Pinky and Joe, we’re also hanging on Gardner’s explanation of just how he conceived his designs.
While The Autistic Gardener is as much about Gardner as gardening, so the second series of School of Hard Knocks also helps get inside the mindset of its main presenter, former All Black and mental health campaigner Sir John Kirwan.
The show’s main focus is the dozen or so young Kiwi men in their teens and early 20s who Kirwan describes as having either had “time to reflect behind bars” or “just little shits who could be heading that way and think that’s cool”. And, certainly, it’s compelling to watch staff including Highlanders hardman and Manu Samoa international captain Filipo Levi putting the “pupils” through their paces, hearing their stories and seeing them being trained to turn their lives around.
But perhaps even more compelling – at least in the initial episodes – is hearing the ever-honest Kirwan talk about his own failings in the first series (“I took them on face value without knowing their backgrounds”) and hoping to be inspired by this latest class to ditch his own inner “uncle lazy” and get fit again.
As ever with this kind of bootcamp format, there will be successes and failures but watching how JK copes with that and how he changes over the series is likely to be just as gripping, and – as is the case with watching Gardner’s garden makeovers – presents the viewer with an opportunity for deeper self-investigation around the new year, new you cliche.
The Autistic Gardener plays on Living Channel on Thursdays at 7.30pm from December 28. School of Hard Knocks starts on Sunday, December 31 at 2.30pm.