KEY POINTS:
If there's a high road and a low road to exploring New Zealand's vibrant, multicultural history, then last night's new twist on the old Heartland-style documentary series, Here To Stay (TV One, 7.30pm), bumped and bounced down the latter.
You didn't have to be cross-eyed, or have a
brain that likes its information delivered only in soundbites, to extract the maximum enjoyment out of presenter Jackie Clarke's romp through the country's Scottish heritage, but it would have helped.
Much of the time Clarke spent leaping in and out of the computer animation graphics - some rather bonny, it should be noted - when she wasn't proclaiming in the desolate, snowy high country or clowning around with marching girls as she whizzed around the country in a non-stop, high-energy celebration of all things Caledonian.
There was barely a straight camera angle in the piece, a reflection perhaps of the mad, whisky-soaked Scottish worldview, as espoused by the Otago University Celtic Society, or maybe just someone mistaking a bit of local history screening on TV One for an MTV music video.
One poor historian seemed to spend the entire programme perched halfway up the stairs of his august institution, stranded - if one might risk an English simile in such a Scots setting - like the Grand Old Duke of York, neither up nor down. Why didn't they just let the poor laddie sit down?
While a lot of fun was no doubt had in the editing suite, the overall effect for those of us susceptible to wooziness was rather like the morning after a particularly enthusiastic Hogmanay.
Those expecting some kind of comprehensive overview would have been disappointed.
Constructed mainly of snatches of interviews and wild, highland fling-like leaps from place to place and talking head to talking head, Here To Stay was history lite. The programme did capture, in its disjointed way, the two sides to the Scottish character, the dour protestants with a taste for bleak, cold hills and granite, and the education-loving reformers, who brought their bitter experiences of Culloden and the clearances and transformed them into social enlightenment in a new land.
There is apparently much for which we have our Scottish forebears to thank: sheep dogs, Dunedin, Cornwall Park, Waipu, moonshine and marching girls, perhaps the Kiwi taste for, as one of my tramping companions describes the pastime, "walking up hills carrying heavy bags in the cold rain".
Then there's that Scottish willingness to mix and mingle, as represented on this programme by the Scottish-Maori Winston Peters. And, indeed, there was the exotic Samoan-Scott hybrid Jackie Clarke, who made a personable host and kept her naturally high levels of exuberance in check when it counted.
But Here To Stay is not history designed to surprise us or teach us something new. Among the cliches, we learned the Scots might well be responsible for the Kiwi inclination to give a person a fair go, along with its dark flipside, the tall poppy syndrome. Well possibly, but these things are rather hard to quantify.
Next week we look at the Germans in New Zealand. Going by the Scottish episode's penchant for confirming cultural stereotypes, might we expect this to be no laughing matter?
