KEY POINTS:
A certain amount of grit was required to sit through last night's start of the new adventures of Aussie suburban nightmares Kath & Kim (TV3, 7.30pm).
Its been a fair while since the crew from Fountain Lakes last graced our screens and it seemed they were determined to celebrate their return by giving the fans an eyeful. Their jaunt into subtropical climes was but the excuse for Kath & Kim, the swimsuit edition.
If you could have measured the acreage of the flesh on show it probably would have equalled one of the Lucky Country's more expansive states.
Comedienne Gina Riley, who plays Kim, has always been admirably shameless in mocking the skimpy fashions so beloved of teenage girls and many a woman who should know better.
Last night's excursion to a resort in Coolum gave her the necessary inch to show off a square mile. The bikini parade was hilarious in that way the show has always had of mocking the culture's obsession with the perfect bod.
"What do you think? Jessica Simpson?" Kim said, squeezing her magnificently un-buffed proportions into bikini top, cowboy boots and a micro-mini that created quite an overhang. "More like Homer," replied Kath.
Kim's excess of flesh was rivalled by Kel's sortie into that famous Aussie piece of swimwear, the budgie-smugglers. "Or cockatoo smugglers, in your case," said Kath. Yes, the show still revels in the fact that no one is too old for squirmingly awful innuendo.
But the mortification of the flesh was about as funny as it got in an episode which seemed to coast along without really trying. "I feel flat as a tack at the moment," Kath complained, splashing miserably through a champagne and bubble-bath with Kel. The feeling didn't go away. It's good to have the old gals back with their gormless blokes, and to see that Sharon is still hoovering up the left-overs out of the fridge, but this was not the most sparkling of episodes, packing them off to a Queensland resort where the laughs were at best predictable.
Creators Jane Turner and Riley merely seemed to be ticking off a list: Kim's piggery at the breakfast buffet, family getting on each other's nerves, fights over the loungers, Sharon's sports activity disasters and an orgy of tacky souvenir buying at the hotel gift shop. Even Brett's emergency run in a golf cart only brought to mind a much funnier original, that mobility scooter chase in Seinfeld.
There were still some good lines that proved while Kath might be a send-up of middle Australia consumer culture she does it in her own peculiar way. When Kel found a parrot earring he thought belonged to his lovely lady, she said: "It's not a parrot, it's a cassowary.
"I've never been able to wear cassowaries, I've got a square face."
The long-suffering Kath has always been the charm of the show, proving blood is always thicker than water, no matter how parasitical the offspring.
But despite her hilarious new achievement - speaking fluent Indonesian - the "foxy lady" still needs a few predicaments more worthy of her sterling character than any on offer last night.
Hopefully this Queensland excursion is just a warm-up, with better things to come now the family are back on their home astro-turf in Fountain Lakes.
