3 TV politics
Sean Plunket’s political show made hard, dull work of an important question, but this week might be better
Colin Hogg review: “Television seems to be a little in love with politics, which shouldn’t be a bad thing in a run-up to an election, unless it’s dull, of course. On TV these days, dullness is a sort of death. And I have to say I felt a shiver of deathly dullness watching the latest new local political show, Prime Time With Sean Plunket, which launched last Friday night on — you guessed it — Prime.”
seemed to know what they were talking about, one from the Salvation Army.
Plunket kept asking people for their “narrative” while Bennett and Turei spouted numbers like maths teachers at exam time. Of course, nothing was solved, never mind very much being learned.
Things did get a bit shouty at times, but not in the entertaining way they can on other shows like TV3’s
I’m afraid. Though this Friday’s episode of
might just feature a bit of the old biffo, with the promised appearance of two firstclass fighters, National’s Steven Joyce and Labour’s Grant Robertson, who put on quite a wrestling bout on The
a couple of weeks back. On a slightly lighter note, TV One’s locally made comedy series
its second run last Thursday night with the show’s hapless star declaring: “I don’t know who I am.”
A viewer might have been forgiven for thinking that, after all those episodes, she might know — or even feel she should have found out who she was ages ago, perhaps even at the end of the first series.
But that’s the trick — or is it the rub? — with which is one of those knot-in-the-stomach comedies of awkwardness where the central character is painted in broad strokes and the laughs aren’t the out-loud sort, but rather groans.
There are some good lines, as when teenage daughter Bella, leaving solo mother and home to move in with her boyfriend, says: “I’m 16. It’s legal. He cooks.”
But the near terminal effervescence of Robyn Malcolm’s Anna and her misadventures in the world of real estate remain slightly unloveable. But never mind. I’m sure I’ll get a third chance.