The basest baseline of television viewing

Press, 8 July 1986, Page 19

The basest baseline of television viewing

’Review

KEN STRONGMAN

Now and again, purely by chance, one sees a very special programme. Last Friday, wanning up the reviewing seat ready for “True Colours,” there suddenly was “Sons and Daughters” assailing this consciousness for the first time. The 1 grundy organisation has done it' again, and this time has produced a very useful series. It provides a baseline against which to judge all others. “Sons and Daughters” does not aspire to the heights of soap opera. The actors appear to have been dragged in unwillingly from the streets, but have all been taught to-lip-curl and snarl in the same way. Somewhere in Australia there is probably a school which specialises in it The extraordinary vulgarity of the characters and their conversations is matched only by the settings in which they cheat and lie their way to success. Much of last Friday’s episode was taken up with the detailed analysis of a chaste kiss on the cheek perpetrated by a young male on a young female. She did not much like it so, on and off for a day or so, he tried unsuccessfully to explain it As she flashed her pop-art earrings at him, so he charmed her with comments about her recent history, such as “Wayne had just dropped the bucket on you.”

This is television at its elemental crudest It is like a dramatised form of a cross between the worst

of the game shows and the worst of the chat shows, which is being run by a troup of decorticate wombats. Why did TVNZ buy it? Or perhaps it comes free with C.E.R. Then it was onto New Zealand’s very own pop programme, “True Colours,” to which the immediate reaction was come back “Radio with Pictures,” and can’t someone do something to get the videos back? Still, it keeps Phillippa Dann and Dick Driver in work. P. D. has matured a bit and now has black hair, legs and a sheriffs star. Driver is still the same old Dick and still says "wiv” wiv the same frequency. His first words were “Yea, nerds,” but later he did say “Let’s get into the Flying Nun habit”

The programme was full of remedial music: New Zealand pop is sometimes innovative, but is often absolutely bloody awful, crassly derivative and full of silly movements apart from sounds

of unsurpassing crude ness. And most of il seemed to be taking place sometime in the past

multi-coloured lights playing over everything like psychedelic searchlights. Purple heads on fluorescent green shirts did not make the music sound any better.

“True Colours” took the usual pop music programme form of bands interspersed with a selfcentred interview and some chat about the latest manoeuvres in this small, but fast-changing world. The members of the various bands appear to have a series of tiffs and spats, and break up, only to reform in new combinations and with a quick update to the hairstyle. Again, it has a faintly oldfashioned ring, like a musical chairs version of the swinging sixties. Any world has its own argot, but the language of this world seems peculiar in the extreme. “No Sneaky Feelings bracket would be complete without ...” Bracket. Why

bracket? “High energy live gigs” Yes, but why gigs? And why did band replace group? Not that it matters, except for the sneaking suspicion that the words and phrases are studiedly coined to make it all seem more exciting, vibrant and arcane than it really is.

Ms Dann and Mr Driver tried hard, but, as they would probably admit, it is a long uphill battle when they are stuck with only the local talent One hour per week of this is too much. Thirty minutes per fortnight would be nearer the mark. Not that it is all that bad, but when it is unrelieved by its American or English counterparts, there is just too much to take. But bereft of videos, they have to do something. Tailpiece. In smokefree week, there was something particularly tasteless about that advertisement for ashtrays. Perhaps it was accepted by whoever it was that bought "Sons and Daughters.”