TV Review: Rivers

Craig Potton hosts <i>Rivers</i>. Prime, Sunday 7.30pm. Photo / Supplied

When I first heard I was reviewing Rivers I thought it might be a celeb-soaked show on bitchy comedienne Joan Rivers. Alas, no: it's a new doco series tonight on New Zealand's watery arteries.

Don't nod off just yet, though. Surely we want to get a squiz at spots we'd never see on the usual holiday trail and find out more about our own backyard? That's what Craig Potton is counting on, anyway.

One of New Zealand's leading landscape photographers and a veteran conservationist, Potton and his beanie are all set to travel five of the rivers he's spent 40 years snapping.

You can't help but like him. Earnest. A nice bloke. Weathered face. He looks a lot like TV3's Bob McNeil and sounds a lot like celebrity chef Richard Till, whose command to "Shop smarter New Zealand!" reverberates in my eardrums long after I've fled the supermarket.

Like Till, Potton has a habit of emphasising random WORDS for no apparent REASON, except, perhaps to break up the monotone.

First up is the Clutha, "New Zild's" largest river (if not its longest). At first I was worried this would be a landscape homage-meets-science lesson, but it's more of a potted history through the prism of the river.

Maori came for greenstone, Europeans for gold. Plenty of modern-day characters pop up too, half of whom seem to be longtime buddies of Potton. Most of them, the Contact Energy guy aside, are getting a platform to rail against the exploitation of our rivers, especially when it comes to nasty power companies and their dams. More are proposed.

All this isn't to say Potton and his ilk are anti-power. But, as a smilingly irate Forest And Bird woman points out, water is renewable but the ecosystem you destroy is not. Enter Potton the philosopher. "We've protected all our forests. It's probably time we thought about protecting all that's left of our wild rivers."

He will put this same reproach about 17 different ways by the end of the episode - and he's got a fair point - but really, we got it the first time. Ditto with the diatribe about the Clutha being host to human dreams.

To his credit, Potton leaves no stone unturned. He goes goldpanning, walks on water (well, a floating bog), crosses the river on a free ferry that's been going since 1896, checks out an oenophile's cave cellar, and reveals the legend of the taniwha whose cremation started the fire that burned the great hole of Lake Wakatipu.

And, of course, he takes a tour of the Clyde Dam that caused such a storm of protest in the 80s. Despite Potton's attempt to compare the dam's interior to The Lord of the Rings movies, on which he served as a stills photographer, the technical details left me yawning.

This kind of show always has to end on an optimistic note. You know: we've damaged the Clutha but it has a future. One local is even proposing a walkway/bikeway that would extend the Clutha's length. Are you listening, John Key?

Rivers has the makings of a hit series like South or Off The Rails. But it's the presenter who carries these sorts of docos, infusing the material with their idiosyncrasies and quirks. And Potton doesn't have Marcus Lush's presence, unpredictability, zing or enigma.

He's so earnest and, like Rivers, a little dull.

*Rivers, Sunday 7.30pm on Prime

-Herald On Sunday / View