KEY POINTS:
Television current affairs thrives on bad things happening to good people. By those standards, last night's Real Life: Under Investigation (TV One, 9.30) looked like the equivalent of a sizeable Lotto win - although it came with the suspicion that the elusive cheque was still somewhere in the mail.
The programme featured a young scientist getting through her day's work, as an intelligent and functioning human being, one keen on salsa dancing in her spare time.
Then in March 2005, something went horrendously wrong. By the time Jeannette Adu-Bobie flew home to Britain, she had contracted meningococcal B, was a triple amputee, and minus the fingers from her remaining arm. She could also look forward to New Zealand hospitals sending bills tallying some $300,000.
Rob Harley, a veteran television journalist, set out to establish whether it was poor practices at the Government department Environmental Science and Research's Wellington laboratory where Adu-Bobie worked that caused this, or whether she was infected by someone in the community, and thus by chance.
"By chance" was the Government position. Harley attacked this, establishing that Adu-Bobie was the only one of several Wellington people with the disease to have contracted the specific strain worked on at the laboratory.
His investigation did not take long to become a search for justice, including gratuitously tapping our apprehension over medical procedures with a close-up look at the saw used for amputations.
We got a lot of Harley staring moodily at the screen, and anxiously poring over official-looking documents.
Indeed, until the show got to England and the hospital where Adu-Bobie battles through a long rehabilitation, all we had were breathless declarations that Harley would have the truth.
While this ramped up the drama, it exposed the weakness in television investigations. In what is essentially a "they did" and "we didn't" story, the reporter needs the principals on screen.
For them, that is an alien environment. Not helping are well-founded allegations that the technology and the experience of the interviewer will put the subject at a significant disadvantage.
Harley made it clear that it took hard work and persuasion to get Adu-Bobie on screen. It is not known whether gaining her co-operation included outlining a tack favourable to her position.
Against that, the manager supervising Adu-Bobie's workplace refused to appear on camera. Harley had to settle for a terse telephone exchange, one reinforcing the "they did" and "we didn't' divide.
Harley had to admit by programme's end he was not going to bridge that with a big finish revealing the truth.
With Harley established as a staunch advocate for Adu-Bobie, it might have been interesting to range slightly wider.
For instance, we did not have an answer to what seemed fundamental questions. Was Adu-Bobie the only one doing the specific work?
If not, and the practices and procedures were below standard, exposing staff to risk, we needed to know if any other people at the laboratory were affected.
