‘Fair Go’ looking sleek

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 7

‘Fair Go’ looking sleek

New season’s programming is arriving. “Fair Go” is looking plump and sleek as it settles back into a favoured primetime slot on Tuesday evenings on One. Old troupers like Philip Alpers and Kevin Milne are joined this year by two of the brightest and best from broadcasting documentary and news in New Zealand. “No need to introduce Brett Dumbleton,” croons Alpers. But it had been a bit of a shock to catch a first glimpse of him from a thigh-level perspective up under his typewriter keys. Where was his panoply of “power-interview-ing”? The black leather chair, low table and glass of water?

Is the inquisitor of the mighty now the investig-tor-guardian of the small people of this country?

And then there’s Kim Hill “from radio.” She’s the unforgettable voice who asks some of the most intelligent and well aimed questions in the interviewing business. It’s too early to know how the programme intends using talent of this stature. But as a panel the “talent” sends us very strong messages just by being there. It says, "Tune

Ruth Ranker on television

in for hard-hitting, investigative journalism.” This programme is taking itself very seriously.

So what stories were on the menu in this first programme? The headlines promised one big story, one medium story and, finally, an amusing tiddler for a sweet after-taste.

The big report was of the “you can’t keep a good scam down” variety. It certainly covered a lot of territory and had been a long time in the brewing

too, to judge from the snow in which the conned Canterbury couple were filmed. It contained the essential ingredients of a good cop drama — a cad, a con, some decent people hurt along the way, and a denouement of sorts. The cad, a seller of shaky franchises for building material, evolved from “yet another unpleasant fly-by-night operator” into a real crim, convicted for drugs and possession of a firearm.

The medium story made much of a car done up for a mere $50,000. Here there was no crim, no scam — just a gorgeous puce Pontiac (or something) and a cautionary tale to spin.

The tiddler saw a delighted computer firm rep using “Fair Go” for extended advertising space. In the past it’s been in the big stories about small people that “Fair Go” reporters have made their mark. Stories sent by us, about us, and then transformed into good telly by them for us. Their reporters have been the media midwives to stories which exist already out there. It’s as close to access telly as TVNZ will dare

let us get. They keep It neatly swept up and entertaining, spinning neatly from question to answer, shot to shot. But we star. Local stories. Local talent.

It’s designed for the information-addicts, real-ism-nuts and sticky-beaks among us and balances escapism on Two. Only time will tell if Brett Dumbleton and Kim Hill were enticed to work on "Fair Go” because it is going up in the world and exciting work may be done on juicy budgets and in comfortable time frames. On the other hand there lurks a horrid suspicion, is the market for first-class broadcast journalists in this country so dismal that “Fair Go” can land the best of them, whatever the rewards? Persuasive entertainment has been popping up in other interesting places as well. Take the new gas ad. It’s a beaut. Here’s a multi-purpose format: brilliant camera-work and editing, gorgeous, black-and-white moodiness intercut with seductive colour and eroticism. It sold sheepskin in Australia, the New Zealand version sells gas, but it could 5e11... anything.