9 posts tagged “tv2”

Torchwood finally premières on TV2, 10.30 p.m. tonight. So how many years behind the British are we? And has anyone seen a single promo for this show?

Dabysan has a few interesting observations about Moment of Truth, the game show airing on a Murdoch Press network in the US and, God help us, TV2 in New Zealand.
   The good news is that this show has reached the end of its run in New Zealand as of this Friday and let’s hope it doesn’t return.
   It’s basically a game show that paints a highly negative image of United States and the decline in taste and responsibility of New Zealand television programmers. The cancellation may be a sign that the Kiwis have found some sense again (as is the return of Life on Mars and the airing of Jekyll). The only reason it ever aired, as far as I can tell, is that it must be dirt, dirt cheap.
   Dabysan wrote: ‘The show is a sure sign of the coming of the apocalypse.’ How right that is.
   On Dabysan’s blog is a clip of one of the episodes:

   That is the sum total of the show but somehow through “editing” (which means using the same footage over and over again, and having really long and repetitive previews telling TV audiences to come back after the break) it lasts the full 46 minutes (i.e. a commercial television hour).
   If it were shown in this shortened format I might not think so ill of it, but for it to occupy an hour of some viewers’ lives is daft.
   I wrote in the comments:

I can’t see the entertainment value in Moment of Truth. The contestant knows what questions will be asked so she should not be surprised. She was obviously not ashamed to reveal his or her answers to a total stranger, so why should millions of strangers be a problem? As for their loved ones, the contestant obviously has no shame to have engaged in embarrassing conduct so she shouldn’t be ashamed now. If she is potentially ashamed, she should not have gone on. I am glad this show is getting killed off after this Friday’s episode in New Zealand after a very short run.

   What I did not write is that this sort of show, displaying the lax morals of certain US citizens, is an insult to decent Americans—but it has a secondary effect. There is a very real danger that all Americans are grouped in our minds as being like those idiots on the show.
   When you see this and news about how many sexual partners a typical New York woman has had or that one in one hundred adult Americans are in jail, you begin to form a very negative image indeed: sleep around, cheat, lie, dis your parents, be unfaithful, commit crimes. Meanwhile, the American newsmedia, as broadcast internationally, play down things such as Sen. John McCain’s military record or provide us with exemplary behaviours (exceptions of US shows that do include the little-watched Real Life Heroes).
   The blogs are good in that they give voice to some normal folks—but most people are still influenced by the stereotypes and the sensationalism caused by biased editing in the old media.
   It is the same effect as the casting of Middle Eastern actors as terrorists in US shows, which groups them into a negative bunch and propagates a false stereotype.
   A second danger is that young people watching this show—I forget what time it airs in New Zealand but it is not that late—might think that such behaviour is acceptable.
   The message is: you can engage in any behaviour, from sexual deviancy to outright deception, and be rewarded for it if you have no sense of shame.
   I can think of a few people already who act this way and am delighted at the distance I have from them.
   It is not dissimilar to some reality TV shows which show that connivance and arrogance are the keys to winning major cash prizes.
   The world simply does not work this way, and if it ever came to that, then civilization is in deep, deep crap.
   When some people point out conspiracy theories about Communists seizing the media, promoting a value-destroying ideology and showing that emotionally harmful behaviours are normal, it’s easy to laugh at them. Then you see just what the media are propagating and you have to really think: jeez, they have a point, regardless of what Snopes might say.
   It might not be Commies doing the dirty work, as some citizens are quite happy to go down a destructive path, exhibiting behaviours that every experience tells them is bad. There are enough of us whose lives have been rendered so valueless by our own governments or corporations that Schadenfreude pushes us to enjoy seeing others’ shame and controversy.
   A good society, a decent, honest, progressive one, would never have the time or inclination to indulge in shows such as Moment of Truth or, for that matter, gossip tabloids that depend on a declining society for their success.

Finally, Jekyll began in New Zealand, a year after the UK, though it’s on after 11 p.m. on TV One on Mondays. Come on, TVNZ—put these decent programmes on at a normal hour, and stick the commodity American stuff later!

   Also, the excellent Day Break, one of the best American shows in the last few years other than Journeyman, is being rerun on Thursday nights on TV2, but again late, at 10.30 p.m.
   There are shows they just want to kill, aren’t there? Certainly with the Brit shows they can say, ‘No one watches them,’ and buy fewer and fewer of them—a trend that has been happening with the state-owned networks for years. Even a friend who stars on local TV says they do this to domestic shows in favour of US ones, for cost reasons.

First there was Kath & Kim, the US version, for NBC. Now, ABC brings you … from the maker of Veronica Mars … the American version of Outrageous Fortune!
   I can see OF work in the US though no doubt the hard-out Kiwi fans of the show will join all the Brits (who have had their fair share of American remakes), and moan. We will say what an inferior version the American one is and how it misses all our Newzild subtexts.
   The American Outrageous Fortune will join the American Life on Mars and the American Kath & Kim on American TV screens this autumn, I mean the American version of autumn, which is called fall. 
   We are certainly not immune from taking someone else’s concept and running with it, what with the New Zealand version of two British shows, Strictly Come Dancing and Pop Idol, and a Danish show that is now called Sensing Murder here. It’s only notable because aside from Popstars, New Zealand shows have not made it hugely overseas in licensed format.
   And the Dutch can get angry about the British versions of some of their shows like Big Brother and The Generation Game.
   Actually, I welcome our trans-Pacific transplanting and I hope the creators of Outrageous Fortune can bring in some useful royalty income into New Zealand.
   The irony is that this is probably the sort of show TV2 would air here in an effort to beat TV3, which shows the original OF.
   If we are all licensing each other’s shows, then how about a local version of Alarm für Cobra 11 but with a Māori guy and a white guy?

Why is it that when I watch Alias in New Zealand on TV2, Jennifer Garner and the rest of the cast are really, really fat?
   I am serious. The programme airs with the wrong proportions for the TV screen almost every week, for between, say, 10 seconds to the first 10 minutes. Everything is stretched so wide it’s basically unwatchable. It’s like the computers stretch everything at TVNZ and then someone figures out that some button hasn’t been pressed and shrink Garner, Garber and everyone back to size after the ad break.
   I’m not an Alias fan but still, this isn’t good enough.

Ride with the Devil gets two snaps from me: a good series première, nice pace, darned good acting (from even the cast members that I do not know) and a multicultural cast that resembles something you might see on the rice burner scene.
   Down side: the thing is over in half an hour, just when you are getting in to it. ‘Next week’ comes up far too early and surprisingly. And need I mention the time slot? Grrr. Even Throng thinks it’s too late.
   At least the Listener had the good sense to call Andy Wong ‘Chinese’ rather than ‘Asian’.

The Irish newspaper, The New Zealand Herald, has finally posted a preview of the new series Ride with the Devil, premièring Tuesday, TV2, at 11 p.m. Its star, Andy Wong, put it on to the show’s Facebook group.
   Though it gets me all the time: what are ‘Asians’? I saw this term all over the article.
   Kazakhs are Asians. Indians are Asians. Eastern Russians are Asians. If they mean ‘Chinese’, then they should say it. We’re not ashamed of our heritage.
   What are New Zealanders? Shall we say ‘Australasians’ from now on?

[Cross-posted] During my last trip to Auckland, I was telling a lot of people this: Ride with the Devil, premières TV2, September 4, 11 p.m.
   This is a new TV show that stars my friend Caleigh Cheung, an occasional correspondent with Lucire. It’s her first major role in a networked drama, I believe, but with this desire of New Zealanders to see themselves on screen in decent locally made dramas, why the heck is this scheduled at 11 p.m.? And what is on in prime time? My House My Castle? Fear Factor?
   I am finally allowed to talk about the show and it is very indicative of modern New Zealand. Directly from the release (please excuse the strange capitalization of the title that seems to vary):

Ride With The Devil, (screening Tuesday nights, 11pm on TV2 from Sep 4th) is based around new-Asian youth Lin Jin (Andy Wong, Shortland Street) and the friendship he forms with bad-boy racer Kurt Williams (Xavier Horan, The Market). Written and directed by Murray Keane (Shortland Street, Outrageous Fortune) and produced by Rachel Jean (The Market) for Isola Productions, Ride with the Devil was made with money from the New Zealand On Air Innovation Initiative.

   From a race point of view, it is the first time that Chinese New Zealanders have been shown as regular Kiwis in principal roles. Even the United States has not managed to give the Chinese people that—the nearest it got was Margaret Cho’s sitcom about being Korean–American. The only other way Korean–Americans can get in to US media with any regularity is when a judge sues them for losing his pants.
   There is some adult material, which does explain the later timeslot, but I understand that even 7 p.m. soaps like Shortland Street shows characters in sex scenes now. So why not 9 p.m. or 9.30 p.m.? Perhaps TVNZ will care to explain, but as an outsider (phew) I can say that it is once again symptomatic of the lazy and unimaginative management that is driving this country on to the rocks. Hang on—that was from another car thing.
   Keane promises verisimilitude and that the stories have been taken from real life. Caleigh had shown me some of the pics taken on set (including her stuntmen—yes, men) and it does show they have the rice burners properly souped up.
   It also sees the return of Shortland Street’s Angela Bloomfield.
   I do hope this gets renewed for a second season even if it sounds like it mixes suburban Auckland with The Fast and the Furious, for it really does seem like a drama that will strike a chord in New Zealand. And my radar with trends is seldom wrong. I just tend to be ahead.
   And if that still doesn’t work in getting viewers, I think the men and some women in this country will be rather impressed with our Cal, who tells me her character is rather chameleon-like. That is an euphemism for sexy.

For Shortland Street fans, watch out for Lucire Auckland correspondent Caleigh Cheung in her prime-time début tonight as nurse Lily Choi. And no, that is not her real accent.