TV Eye: Diaz and Cruise's risky business

On the other end of the TV spectrum is the The Secret Lives of Dancers featuring real dancers from across the world. Photo / Supplied

I'm not hooked on Top Gear - but that's because I'm not interested in cars. Nevertheless, I'm always amused by the "Reasonably Priced Car" bit when celebrities drive like the clappers around the treacherous lap and swear a lot.

To achieve a lap in anything less than one minute, 50 seconds is good. Anything longer, pretty average. Surprisingly, Rupert Harry Potter Grint was, until recently, the top RPC driver.

I say recently because on Sunday's first episode of the new series (Prime, 7.30pm), host Jeremy Clarkson boomed, "Cameron Diaz in a Reasonably Priced Car! I repeat, Cameron Diaz!"

But first we had the competitive bloke stuff, like Richard "XT" Hammond racing a souped-up VW in the Arctic Circle against two snowmobilers. (I wonder if his phone was within range?) He won - but what was the point of the exercise?

To balance all that fossil-fuel burning, Clarkson announced a breakthrough - a car that ran on fish 'n' chips, cutting to Hammond and a Porsche covered in tinfoil. True enough, it ran on fish 'n' chips, with Hammond, who'd eaten fish 'n' chips the night before, pedalling it around the lap, which is the kind of thing TG does do well - ingenious, silly, funny.

James May burnt off more fuel, reaching 417km/h in a test drive of a new Bugatti. Clarkson, who belittles May at every opportunity, was incredulous at the thought of him being the fastest man in the world - but the Bugatti test driver did "better", at 431km/h. The amount of fuel wastage was, again, mind-boggling.

Eventually, on came Diaz and, at her insistence, Tom Cruise, in town to promote their rubbish new movie, Knight and Day. It was extraordinary: Top Gear's poky, dark set was suddenly all lit up by two pairs of dazzling teeth. After a bit of chit-chat - sheesh, Cruise is boring - we finally got to the laps, on which both disported themselves with stunt-veteran alacrity, Cruise even rounding a bend on two wheels by accident.

As Clarkson pointed out, he could have been killed on Top Gear, but at one minute, 44.2 seconds he came out as the new top gun of the RPC chart - a better result than Knight and Day's critical reception.

Who knew that the lives of ballet dancers could be so brutal? TV3's new series The Secret Lives of Dancers (Tuesday, 8pm) opened by revealing the very tough process of auditioning for the Royal NZ Ballet, where young wannabes from all over the world flew into Wellington, at their own expense, to dance a class under the uber-critical eye of artistic director Gary Harris who'd rejected every hopeful over the past three years because they weren't good enough.

Harris, a right old bitch, warned them at the start, "If I don't grab you after class, that means so-or-ry." He wasn't sorry at all. His campy asides as the dancers worked their butts off were deliciously awful: "Ew. Ew. Stop, make it stop!" Then he called out three names and "for the rest of you, that's it".

Only two made the cut, including Yang, a "neat and tidy" girl from Beijing who could barely speak English. At least she can't understand Gazza - although the language of dance lies in the body and, as he threatened, they'd have to communicate via mime. How do you mime "can't do a double pirouette"? We'll see how she progresses on Boot Camp Gary over the next few weeks.