TV Review
Secrets and lies
by Diana Wichtel
Doco series Undercover is a tale of two New Zealands.
Undercover laid it on with a trowel, from the lurid opening titles to the gritty re-enactments of New Zealand as seen through a haze of marijuana smoke. Which is, I guess, what real life has to do these days to compete with all the fictional, primetime crime porn.
TV1’s three-part doco series, which finishes on March 26, was an unauthorised history – the police declined to take part – of the New Zealand undercover programme. The first episode, “Going Under”, took us back to where it began, in the 60s and 70s. Warning: graphic scenes of plaid flares and third-degree sideburns may disturb sensitive viewers. Former agent Graham Brown recalled his fashion crimes with professional precision and what sounded like a touch of nostalgia: “I wore a red leather jacket … a pink grandaddy singlet … jeans and suede cowboy boots and a braided belt I’d made myself.”
If the style was elaborate, the training was minimal. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” said agent Patrick O’Brien, who had been a prefect and a member of the 1st XV. “The word ‘simulated’ was used. I’d never heard the word ‘simulated’ before.”
Simulation turned out to be useless when someone scary and sceptical handed you a joint.
“I remember thinking, ‘Why is this against the law?’” mused O’Brien. “It was quite a nice feeling.”
He proved excellent at drug culture. Soon the day job consumed his life.
“I was supposed to be the good guy, but I was a nasty little prick.”
For all the grimness, the series has its lighter moments. Former police chief and MP Rana Waitai told of playing a client at Flora McKenzie’s famous Auckland brothel, waiting for his mates to make a bust: “The lady’s sprawled on the bed wondering why I’m so long taking my socks off.”
There’s even a hitherto unexplored link between the seedy underworld and that middle-New Zealand icon It’s in the Bag. While Selwyn Toogood was bellowing “Good evening, Oamaru!”, young agent Tony Bouchier was holed up watching television in a motel, waiting to glimpse his sister, Tineke, in her fetching blue kaftan.
A tale of two New Zealands. You can understand why the police might want to distance themselves. There was the story of the agent who discovered the town he was assigned to didn’t have much of a drug scene. He set about developing one, then had everyone arrested.
The producers could really have dispensed with the theatrical effects. This talent is so good that the talking heads are the best parts. There was the sordid glamour. “Unlimited access to drugs, hanging out with pretty girls, going to all the ‘in’ parties, being seen with all the flash boys in town … ” It was, said O’Brien, like living a Cheech & Chong movie.
Apart from the constant threat of grievous bodily harm, it doesn’t sound that different from 21st-century celebrity culture. Until the day of reckoning. Several agents recalled their discomfort at befriending people they would betray. “It was a seduction … a con.”
This viewer felt uneasy, too, as some of the former agents described their descent into the moral abyss. There was the agent who joined in the beating of a fellow narc for fear of revealing himself. He later discovered the guy he kicked had been about to dob him in for the same reason. Another found himself at a gang rape. He didn’t try to stop it. The moral ambiguities of undercover work are revealed to be positively Byzantine.
One of the more public casualties was Wayne Haussmann. Before he went undercover he was a Sunday School teacher. He nearly didn’t get into the programme. “They felt I was a bit straight,” he says. Before very long he was importing heroin.
But the most terrible moment goes to O’Brien. He talked about the day at a beach when he didn’t go to the assistance of some distraught parents who were attempting to revive their drowned daughter. Trying to save her might have blown his cover.
“It was kind of cold and calculating …,” he said, clearly still haunted. “That was what I had become.” It felt like eavesdropping at a confessional.
Episode three features an agent who loves his work and considers whether the ends justify the thrilling, potentially corrupting, sometimes addictive means. To O’Brien, the answer is clear. “It’s like what they did in the First World War. Losing lives to gain five yards of mud.” Fascinating, troubling viewing.
