Grand old dame of TV
Ithink Fair Go (TV One, Mondays) should receive a Queen’s Birthday Honour. It’s time the sword tapped the shoulders of Pippa and Haydn, and for them to take a selfie with the Governor General.
But the award must be for services rendered, not what it’s achieving today.
After 42 years it’s the grand old dame of television. But grand old dames end up in pantomime and Fair Go is too good for that.
I’ve watched it over the years, mostly when the grim face of Kevin Milne stared back at me, making me uncomfortable. Had the mobile library closed because I forgot to return the book? In those days
Fair Go was robust, the equivalent of
Cowboy Builders.
This week it reappeared for the first time, featuring several personal grievances but the fire in its belly has turned to indigestion.
It needs more than Gaviscon. Yes, it helped to repair a leak in an elderly woman’s porch, it resolved a fishing licence and Tanya had her voucher redeemed, but is that enough?
It’s time to give Fair Go more financial muscle and resources to investigate the Ron Ratbags of our business world.
It could start with investigating the speed it’s taking to construct a new highway through the Manawatu¯ Gorge.
We’ve heard of snail mail, Auckland congestion and Jami-lee Ross back in Parliament. Could there really be anything worse?
Manifest (TV One, Mondays) claims there is.
Passengers on Flight 828 left the Caribbean on April 7, 2013 and mysteriously landed in New York on November 4, 2018.
That’s five and a half years later. They flew out with Obama and in with Trump. They’d probably want a return ticket.
Strangely none have aged, they’re still the same but they’ve been missing for longer than Meghan Markle’s wedding dress.
The world has moved on, so have relationships. While scientists try to solve the riddle, the 20 passengers get on with their lives.
It’s not easy for the cast of Manifest. Ben and Micaela’s mum has died; Micaela’s fiance has married her best friend; Grace, Ben’s wife, is in a relationship and there’s a five year gap between their twins.
It sounds like a supernatural soap and, for most of the time, it is, but just as I’m about to surf the channels, the aircraft explodes and one of the passengers is murdered.
What manifests itself about Manifest is what’s in its manifest.
There’s very little of value to report about the wasted lives of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt, except he hit her once too often and she cut off his manhood.
But 20/20 (TV One, Tuesday) was determined to revisit them 25 years on.
Twenty-five years later Lorena has moved on and married.
However John Wayne Bobbitt was still as loathsome and in denial as ever. If this is current affairs, it can’t get worse.
Kate vs Meghan: Princesses At War (TV One, Wednesday) was also a waste of oxygen. When the intrigue, rumour and innuendo dried up about a haemorrhage of hissy fits between them, there was nothing left to say.