Veteran broadcaster Dale Husband emerges from behind a stack of multi-coloured pallets on a wharf in Port Chalmers. He wears a khaki sports jacket with the World Forklift League logo stitched on the left breast.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announces, breaking into a halfhearted boogie, "this is the forklift shuffle".
This is so good. Maori TV's World Forklift League (Thursdays, 8pm) feels like a throwback to the golden era of TV, when shows like Clash of the Codes and Tux Wonder Dogs were prime time staples.
Here, five professional drivers from stores and factories around New Zealand go head-to-head over four rounds every week, all competing to claim a trophy made out of a die-cast toy forklift.
The forklift shuffle is one of those four rounds - a race to sort out a teetering tower of pallets into a tidy stack matching the colour of the driver's safety vest. It's a good challenge, for sure, but it's no forklift golf.
This is the one event that will endure in the memory long after the show has ended: drivers swiftly maneuvering swiss balls, spraypainted to look like golf balls, off of upturned road cones and positioning them carefully on giant tees, which I'm pretty sure are repurposed dog bowls.
Forklift golf is a clear and instant classic. One of the most exciting things to happen in the Octagon in years, maybe ever.
With each event filmed at a different Dunedin location - there's also 'Shifting Gears' at the Gasworks museum and 'Great Wall' at the Chinese Garden - one big question was: how much of a factor does 'home advantage' play in forklifting? On the evidence so far, it would seem very little.
Tony Rowe from Placemakers Dunedin did look to be the early favourite after week one, but some sloppy performances in recent weeks have seen him fade to be mid-pack at the halfway stage. In retrospect I may have been too easily swayed by the sight of his battered old Placemakers cap, all faded and sweat-stained like Steve Waugh's baggy green.
A scene from the World Forklift League held at the Chinese Gardens, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Fellow Dunedinite Penny Yurjevic (Cadbury) on the other hand started with a pair of tough losses, but has clawed her way back with a steely determination which is hard not to admire. Penny could in fact be the most intense woman in all New Zealand sports. When a box toppled off her forks during one round of Great Wall, effectively dashing her hopes of a win, she went to painstaking lengths to flip it over and complete the task while her opponent celebrated at the finish line. That's class.
Fonterra driver by day, ceroc dancer by night, Tauranga's Eli Martin is easily the most charismatic of the pack. At the halfway mark he is anchored to the bottom of the leaderboard - the upside of which has been some useful lessons in te reo from his sister - phrases like "auē te pāpouri" ("how depressing").
Another Fonterra employee, Christchurch-based Kane Te Kooro-Lawrence is the youngest driver in the field. At just 23 he's still just a rising star of forklifting, but is holding his own admirably against drivers like Nikora Mahima, who has probably been behind the forks since before Kane was born.
The man they've started calling "the Kaumātua," Nikora currently sits atop the leaderboard - but Kane, Penny and Tony are hot on his heels. The Rotorua man appears to derive a lot of his power from the hi-viz WFL beanie he always wears. It's an extremely strong look, but he risks jinxing himself if he changes anything about it at this stage.
Comedian and former forklift driver Mike King presents the show loosely but not irreverently - he knows and respects good forksmanship when he sees it. Meanwhile Dale Husband's commentary skills - honed over years of rugby league broadcasting - are really coming to the fore as the series wears on.
A typical Husband deadpan piece to camera, this time after Tony pipped Kane in a photo finish to win their round of Great Wall: "So Tony Rowe the bro from Placemakers shows he knows how to place 'em, and for Kane from Fonterra - well I suppose he'll be crying over spilled milk." Incredible, and genuinely quite hard to tell if he's a comic genius or a real-life Maori Alan Partridge.
With each episode a tidy half-hour package, nicely tied together by slick graphics and talking heads from the drivers and their support crews (forklift purists can watch uncut versions on the WFL website), the World Forklift League is a reminder of just how far a little ingenuity and positive spirit can go in the world of TV.
Such a grandiose title might sound more at home somewhere like ESPN - but for all their budget and resources, it's unlikely they could come up with a more enjoyable product than this.
