TV review: Docu-drama a timely reminder of darker days

Life's A Riot captures the highs and terrible lows of an unforgettable era. Photo / Supplied

We would like to see a few banking chiefs in sackcloth and ashes, but so far our 21st-century global economic turmoil has not pushed us into sugar bags and work relief camps.

For what a big bad depression looks like, there was a stirring reminder in last night's Life's A Riot (TV One, 8.30), a home-grown docu-drama about Jim Edwards, the man blamed for the infamous 1932 Queen St riot and sentenced to two years' hard labour.

Edwards, we learned, was an impressive soap-box orator and champion of the unemployed but this was no piece of unadulterated hero worship. Based on the memories of his son James, 14 at the time, its focus was as much on the effect his father's character and choices had on the family as on his activism.

Edwards' domestic shortcomings were manifold - a man who would much rather be planning revolution in the pub over a few pints than worrying too much about how he would feed the family, ever confident in his ability to sweet-talk his wife and kids.

On the other hand, this was a man who could turn a meal of bread and dripping into a feast and hold the family spellbound with his reading of his literary hero, Charles Dickens.

Docu-dramas always have a half and half quality about them, especially when intercutting real footage and news photos with re-enactments. The real images are so mesmerising that it's hard for the dramatised bits, especially scenes of Edwards stirring the crowd, to capture the scale and passion. No matter how good the special effects, and pleasing as it is to see the likes of Elizabeth McRae and Geraldine Brophy doing great hatchet-face in the protesting crowd, you can always see the seams. And it was hard not to be distracted by the limitations of the budget in recreating 1930s Auckland - here comes that shot of the dark railway line again! Perhaps that is unfair, given how few of the city's older buildings survived that other orgy of capitalism before a nasty crash, the 1980s.

But the bonus here was the contemporary interviews with James Edwards, interspersed throughout the action. There's nothing like hearing it straight from the horse's mouth.

Actor Andrew Grainger was most convincing on the home front, as the domestic charmer, rather than as the soap-box performer who could stop a street. But here again, that was probably as much caused by the small-scale, highly staged feel of those scenes as flawed acting.

Alison Bruce always a class act, was superb as the long-suffering wife and mother who, far from being ground down by having father ever away on Communist Party business, was more than capable of staging a riot or two of her own.

There were lighter touches with some scenes, such as the piano repossession, bordering on farce, and the police, batons at the ready, often verged on Keystone Cops.

But this certainly captured the highs and terrible lows of an unforgettable era, a timely reminder, too, of what the social welfare safety net is all about. Even more fascinating was its revelation that there was a time when Ponsonby and poor starving Oliver Twist could be mentioned in the same breath.