Heather du Plessis-Allen and Duncan Garner host Story on TV3.
Heather du Plessis-Allen and Duncan Garner host Story on TV3.
How did Duncan Garner and Heather du Plessis-Allan fare in their first week? Paul Casserly takes a closer look at a week's worth of Story.
The drama that had already transpired had created a fertile bed for Story to grow in.
There was that secret assignation at the Bolton Hotel in Wellington when Heather was being turned from being a TVNZ loyalist by the black ops of TV3's news and current affairs. It was like something out of The Americans, without the wigs.
The new weekly show is also the latest recipient of the most infamous hospital pass of our televisual history. First it was Road Cops that copped it for occupying the ground zero left behind by Campbell Live, then Come Dine With Me NZ stumbled into the smoldering hole.
But just a few nights into Story, the four-nightly current affairs show hosted by Duncan Garner and Heather du Plessis-Allan (HDPA), and it finally feels like the dust has begun to settle. Ratings wise, Seven Sharp will always be a tough bastard to knock off, but Story already has the makings of something worthy of the time-slot.
Living up to what came before will be a tougher task. You certainly sense that nothing long-winded will be allowed to exist in this pacey half hour. Things move quickly here. That's both a plus and a minus, as getting to the heart of any particular story will lose out in favour of tabloid tropes and sensational hidden camera capers, both of which have been in play for the first week.
Here's what I made of a week's worth of Story.
Monday
Graphics alert. Obvious word-play alarm. Place your head between you knees and breathe. I could nit-pick my way through the set, music and other packaging trivia, but let's bypass that pointless exercise and get stuck into the hosts.
Both are young thrusters who have come down the road marked Parliamentary Press Gallery, like past notables, Campbell, Ralston and Lord Sainsbury. Garner's DNA contains some of that Ralston mongrel which has also recently emerged in Patrick Gower.
Luckily Garner has also started to collect some 'man of the people' status points, aka some Sainsbury, via his radio show, where his enthusiasm, bluster and some regional road trips have made great use of the space between the ads.
Heather has a solid track record too, and also has a bit of mongrel along with her assassin smile. Most refreshingly, she is not here to play second fiddle, and wastes no time getting stuck into some real-estate agents for her first trick. One of them resigns as a result, which is known as a 'scalp' in the industry. As much as I find real-estate folk grating, I can't celebrate someone losing their job, so that's a bum note for me.
As tabloid fodder, it's harder to fault. Though, it seemed to me that the errant agents of the piece were guilty of something closer to a 'thought crime' rather than actual wrongdoing. But Story is in too much of a hurry for any of those grey areas.
In short, it seems Duncan and Heather are pretty good picks for the job, but perhaps a more apt title would be Headline, rather than Story.
At my Mum's for dinner. She used to be glued to TV One, mostly for the weather. A big fan of Jim Hickey, though she's warmed to the new guy and quite frankly that map on TV3 is "the wrong way around". She concedes, upon prompting, that Ingrid "seems" very nice.
"What do you think of this?" I asked in regard to Story. She has long bemoaned "that giggling Gertie" aka Toni Street, who sits next to that "constipated man", aka Mike Hosking, over on TV One. She'd become a staunch Campbell Live viewer as the show entered the hospice phase.
Well, that one (HDPA) is "wearing too much make-up for a start". Garner was more of a mystery to her, I think she was hoping for Ali Ikram, whom she really took a shine to, and had seemingly never laid eyes on Duncan before. His makeup was not remarked upon though she did think he'd be a dab hand calling "a quick-fire raffle, or "calling the horses".
Wednesday
Seven Sharp hosts Mike Hosking and Toni Street.
The show seems to be cracking along as if it's been here for weeks. I note a growing slide towards a Seven Sharp style of babble and flannel but we were dreaming if we thought that wasn't coming. By comparison Seven Sharp is the slicker beast, and the double act of Mike and Toni, is way more theatrical, but the difference is smaller than I expected. But by god, it really helps to have a bigger studio, with good lighting; poor old Story looks as if it came up from the Southern Institute of Technology in comparison. That aside, it's impressive how quickly Story feels like part of the furniture, they are off and running and I'm not sure that ratings website Throng will be able to feast on their viewing figures in the weeks ahead.
Thursday
I find myself looking closely at Heather's makeup, it seems normal (for TV) to me.
But just as I sidle up to the plasma for a closer look there's a tussle for the remote as apparently the "shit is about to get real" over on Shortland Street. Goodbye Heather, hello Pania. Two women you do not want to see turn up on your doorstep.
A text comes in from a friend who often offers withering accounts of local shows. "Story is retarded" starts the text, "enuf with the silhouette/vocoder interviews!" which is actually quite tame compared to his hilarious, though unrepeatable, reaction to TV One's wartime pantomime, When We Go To War, earlier in the year.
Other classics have included "DUMB DOWN WITH ME: 5 fish in a barrel, narrated by a warm up guy" and, "Pebbles Hooper on Paul Henry's panel commenting on the Charleston shooting ... someone shoot me."
And speaking of shooting, I'm out of here. This is my last weekly rant for the nzherald.co.nz. Thanks for indulging my obsessions and observations. I'd like to thank the good people at the Herald for giving me the opportunity to rabbit on about TV and radio for the past three years. Cheerio.
