TV review
Send in the clowns
by Olivia Kember
We just can’t help it. There must be some eternal human urge to make graven images of our heroes – anything from Phidias’ sculptures to Madame Tussaud’s waxes. In the Kiwi version, we celebrate New Zealand’s greatest – or at least most recognisable on the telly, which in this debased age is the same thing – in rubber. I don’t mean to disparage rubber. It might seem a vulgar medium in which to pay homage, but it’s also most appropriate for New Zealand celebrities – being cheap, plentiful and pliable.
Facelift (TV1, Friday, 9.30pm) features the gruesomely familiar rubber visages of our most overexposed locals (though not including, as yet, Oliver Driver) in a series of supposedly satirical sketches. Its first outing was unsatisfying. The masks looked hideous enough. Our people tonight, ie, politicians and TV presenters, seemed to be recovering from slash wounds – less candidates for Extreme Makeover than post-ops of Mediadog’s Extreme F---over – especially Trevor Mallard, whose surgeon had used a chainsaw. Why? Sure he collects enemies like Air Points, but it made him unidentifiable – something the producers must have realised. (Note to the Gibson Group: if you put him behind a little nameplate that says “Trevor Mallard”, we know that you know that we don’t know who the hell he is.)
Regardless of such deformations, the scripts took a tone so mild that it became a confused sort of veneration, not parody. And, given the talk of our national pastime, I was expecting tall poppies to be gleefully lopped, hacked and triumphantly danced on, but instead they were treated with a strange degree of respect.
This was particularly obvious in the TV presenter sketches, where the imitation bordered on flattery. Kim Hill was portrayed as a sort of totemic Bird Goddess, with threatening feathers and claws that whooshed impressively when she raked the air in front of her victims. Clearly, she was either considering removing an eye or casting a spell, and it was very effective. Perhaps the real Hill should get a boa and grow her nails – but, then, surely one shouldn’t be able to take tips from one’s caricature. “3 News with the delightful John Campbell” pointed out that the divine J C says “marvellous” a lot. Unbelievable. The next day, the real Campbell was quoted in the New Zealand Herald as describing his Canwest bosses as “miserable buggers”. The amusing thing about the nicest man in television is that he’s actually got a foul mouth.
Paul Holmes also got off lightly. Two nights earlier, he had been called, to his face, “Frodo all grown up in an Armani suit” and “that quirky little Kiwi sheepshagger”, by Craig Parker and Rebecca Hobbs on The Great Debate. Incidentally, this event also featured Oliver Driver in a black frock, so perhaps Facelift thought he had trumped them. Facelift’s Rubber Paul only suffered the indignity of a wig made from judges’ pubic hair.
I did like their Kate Hawkesby. They didn’t change much: her hair only slightly more rampant than usual, her costume only mildly sillier than her standard Tonight outfits; and her great, red rubber nose only a little … er … okay, that nose was extreme. But the sudden switches from ditzy to demanding, they were right on, and her “Tell me about Carlos Spencer’s legs” line was delivered with authentic menace. What could Tana Umaga do but oblige? “For sure, for sure,” he said obediently. “They’re tight and muscly, really firm and really well-defined, and sometimes they glisten when he’s wet.”
Not bad, but again, hardly satire. How do you mock farce? That’s going to be a tricky question for the scriptwriters. Can the format support characters more absurd than the real thing? Where can you go when you have a PM who snuggles up to sheep (Holmes’s explanation on The Great Debate: “Shrek had a very sweet face”) and a Leader of the Opposition who has just been upstaged by a dancing pig (Don Rash, in case you missed the latest animal of national importance)?
Is it more ridiculous for the Minister of Sport to fret about more convicted killers on the Olympic team or to say he wants to stick Heinekens in the International Rugby Board chief’s “particularly uncomfortable places”? And how can “Winston, that’s a total abuse of paua” (Ba-da-BOOM) ever compare to “No one’s more modest than I am, in my opinion”?
Maybe the scriptwriters need more time. Although the process – 25 writers, scripts on spec, one day of filming per episode – suggests that topicality rules, the stories based on current issues were the most clunky. Civil unions, check; Soulan Pownceby, check; groan. Why not sacrifice a little timeliness for more adventurous stories? If they find the Shortland Street groove, it will come true soon enough, anyway.
Which has disturbing implications for a couple of the more bizarre political skits. Bill Clinton’s fantasy about Jenny Shipley was merely weird, but then there was the one where Clark and Brash bonded by
the recycling bin. Cue: Brash leans rakishly over the piles of waste paper and says, “Power is a great aphrodisiac … Helen”, and she guffaws girlishly and replies, “Yes, I was telling my husband it’s more fun on top”, and then he moves closer and murmurs, “It sure beats working in a bank” … Aarrgh.
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