Turn the page on this mag show
WHEN I’m feeling blah and in need of tube chill out I switch to the Living Channel hoping to catch Kirsty and Phil Shepherd, a couple into home ownership on Location Location Location, or watch the busty Sarah Beeny in Double Your House for Half the Money.
I mention Beeny’s bust because in interviews she disclosed that when she was at boarding school she and her friends would flash their bosoms at the local builders, and that she doesn’t mind the fact that male viewers apparently watch her shows to gawp at her rack.
(Incidentally, did you know that Beeny has also created a highly successful singles dating company?)
So, my weakness for home interior and exterior shows had me really looking forward to Kiwi Living (TV One, Friday, 7.30pm), but after a few weeks of grazing in that soggy paddock I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a dog and I don’t mean Purina Pound Pups where the main host of Kiwi Living, Miriama Kamo has made a recent appearance seeking assistance for her errant pooch.
Two hosts are more than enough for any show and having so many specialists littering the couches in the opening wide shot is biting off more than the viewer can chew, and why employ Kamo who’s already fronting Sunday to be the main cheerleader?
In this hour-long cheesy magazine show the hosts come with fixed smiles as they labour to be ‘lite’, dispensing tips on how to aspirate (as in aspirational) your home (eg, knocking up the kind of non-functional, unnecessary DIY bric-a-brac that makes a house look cluttered and strange.).
There’s a chef, an interior designer, travel, fashion and gardening experts, and a fitness instructor all hands to the pump to impart their knowledge, but the feel of the show is forced and cheerless, the lifestyle tips about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Friday evening is such a dead loss of a night for television viewing, apart from the charming and clever Jane the Virgin (Prime, 9.30pm), and this is a missed opportunity because there is a real audience out there who would love to take a peek at sheer unadulterated local house porn.
How nice to see the return of Jonathan Creek to Prime TV on Thursday night in a three-part series where we mourn the loss of the magician’s signature duffel coat and cringe at the addition of Polly, Jonathan’s hard-faced glamorous wife.
She has no time for his whimsical crime problem-solvings and has made him hang up his magician’s assistant wand to become a boring suit working as an advertising executive.
At least the long curly locks, now shot through with grey, miraculously remain at the same length bouncing just above the collar.
Polly’s father has died and the Creeks are living in an expensive country pile where there are ghostly happenings in the village and a music hall star is murdered in a locked room.
Try as he might Jonathan becomes involved and has to take a witless protege under his wing.
The lad has major Sherlock Holmes tickets on himself coming up with bizarre explanations of the murder that are a total stretch even for old Johnny Creek.
The funniest scene had to be the preamble to marital sex with Jonathan who epitomises androgyny lying in bed emitting the sexual heat of an impatient Grandma Moses as Polly, in alluring black lingerie, lies on the floor doing a series of comically grotesque exercises with a rope in order to limber up her muscles for the conjugals.
It was a hilarious sight gag and so in keeping with the offbeat humour that makes Jonathan Creek such an enduring watch.
Did you realise this supernatural mystery comedy (so many crossover genres here) has been going since 1997?
Imagine the plethora of duffel coats used over that passage of time and what’s happened to them all now. No doubt they’ve been flogged off at charity auctions. Hopefully, the first has been embalmed and sent to the Victoria & Albert to become the museum object that it is.
The feel of the show is forced and cheerless, the lifestyle tips about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.