WHAT’S THE STORY?

How TV3’s new show measures up

TV3’S new current affairs show Story kicked off going straight to the heart of the matter – the housing market – with an undercover actor posing as a property developer.

The thespian’s headless form revealed in more than one negotiation with a real estate agent that a dodgy deal between the agent and the developer can undermine the value of an auction.

We watched host Heather du Plessis-Allan in charge of this yarn do the classic doorknock with the fuzzy mike thingee, only to get the door slammed in her face – always good television – as she pursued errant agents and later put the Ray White Real Estate boss through his paces.

It was a reasonable start as Duncan Garner, in his customary talkback vernacular, stated the obvious out of the corner of his mouth to his feisty offsider: ‘‘They didn’t like you very much, did they?’’

The energy might have been pumped, but the music was downright funereal, something you’d get etherised to pre-op, and the set looked like an abstract painting of a raspberry fool.

With the trope of doorknocking out of the way, it was time for the next cliche – an interview with a blacked-out man who wanted his identity hidden as we heard a voice that sounded as if he was speaking from the gravelled bottom of a fish tank.

Garner interviewed the whistle-blowing security guard who worked for a private security firm and ascertained that his cohorts’ minimum wage of $14.75 made them ripe for bribes by manipulative violent criminals.

The taxpaying public ‘‘needed to know’’, as we witnessed how easy it was to cut off an ankle bracelet with $2 scissors and $3.60 pliers (the devil’s in the pricing details, apparently).

Then the aptly named Corrections spokesman – one Jeremy Lightfoot (a satirist couldn’t have named him better) – appeared maintaining he had full confidence in electronic bracelets and the present system as Garner, obviously having trouble controlling his innuendo, repeated witheringly ‘‘full confidence . . .’’ as the recent drama of sex offender Daniel Livingstone’s escape was revisited.

A dull piece of entertainment ‘‘lite’’ on online gaming followed, with the show ending with a modicum of banter as opposed to the extended editorialising waffle of Seven Sharp. Sure, no new journalistic frontiers were forged, but the knitting was stuck to and the yarns were briskly executed, and the hosts looked well oiled, in the nicest possible way of course.