Colin Hogg: Late night brekky all oafs, no fibre

Jason Hoyte, Leigh Hart and Jeremy Wells.

Anti-talk show might sound good on paper but fails to deliver, while Buck Shelford deserves a better time slot.

You could watch a show like Late Night Big Breakfast for a long time and still not know what it was about, except being further evidence that dear old TVNZ still doesn't quite know what's funny.

I actually didn't watch it for a long time, checking in only for the last episode of the local show's first series last Friday night, late on TV One.

Coming as it did on the eve of the political big day out, the show purported to be an election special. It also purported to be funny. At least, I think it did, though that also wasn't always entirely clear, as is often the way with the comedy of the deadpan.

Blokey, bedraggled, digressive and often incoherent, Late Night Big Breakfast is a sort-of chat show badly run by three men sitting on sofas in the leather and vinyl section of a large furniture store in Dominion Rd.

Possibly it was hilarious on paper - an anti-talk show, breakfast-style at night with befuddled frontmen and a string of guests to be variously insulted and misunderstood.

A bit like Top Gear but with no budget and furniture instead of cars.

Leigh Hart (most famous for his TV bacon ads), Jeremy Wells (the energy ads) and Jason Hoyte (no ads I know of) juggle the show between them - Hoyte showing the most promise with his infomercial spots, one of them an infomercial for infomercials.

Elsewhere, Late Night Big Breakfast was groansome viewing, though I have the strangest feeling it might work better translated into French.

On the subject of language, there's a surprisingly good new local series with a bilingual approach that started on Saturday on TV One at 3pm.

I say surprising because Death Threat is one of those do-good series - this one tackling the thorny issues of men's heath, specifically Maori men.

Which could be a bit niche and ho-hum for a wider audience, or even much of an audience at all - the programmer certainly thought so with this timeslot.

Except that this show transcends a brief that might have made it just a lesson with ad breaks. Fronted with a zesty level of testosterone by Buck Shelford, it comes at you on the energy of an action movie.

Buck arrives like Arnie Schwarzenegger shouting, "We are now the world's fattest nation ... and the laziest.

"Brothers, it's got to stop. I've been there. I've been the fat guy, the guy who got cancer", by which point he had my attention.

The show's format is zesty too - and entertaining enough to deserve a better slot. It involves Buck playing a slightly scary superhero of Maori men's health, called in to save a brother whose health is heading to hell.

In the first show, a worried wife called Buck about her chubby, snack-crazy hubby and his runaway cholesterol. Buck arrived and set about saving the day.

All of it done, as I said, with a great deal of style and a lovely easy drift between te reo and English.

Buck's a natural. If they ran the show in the right evening slot, it could be a smash. Silly buggers.

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