A quick spin around the docs

Lights, camera, action ... GREG DIXON records the rush to get an episode of local telly satire Spin Doctors on air.

It's 3.30 on a Monday afternoon and I'm about to become a television star.

All around me, in the corridor on the sixth floor of this uptown Auckland City building, terribly efficient people are preparing for my command debut. Some are adjusting lights, others moving cameras into position and all are talking ten times ten to the dozen as they set up for scene six of the third episode of TV One's new comedy, Spin Doctors.

As they bustle and I wait, my mind wanders ... perhaps I'll make the cover of TV Guide or maybe get a grovelling interview on Today Live ... no, must concentrate, breathe deeply, put myself in the zone.

Finally, when the dozens of people and pieces of equipment are in place and primed, a stillness replaces the frenetic toiling. The crew is ready, I am ready.

"And action," calls someone, and I'm on.

"Dame Edna Everage says she was born with the gift of laughing at the misfortunes of others," roars satirist Tom Scott across the lunch table, "and we like to think we are blessed with the same."

His fellow-writers hoot and giggle at the very thought. It's Friday afternoon - day one of the mad five-day rush to write, shoot and edit this episode of the current affairs satire - and the show's 10-member brains trust appear in a fine mood indeed.

Two episodes in, the word of mouth is good. The reviews, while mixed, have mostly praised and Television New Zealand, the newly public-spirited state broadcaster, is apparently happy with this latest, seven-part addition to its lineup.

As for the ratings? Well no one at this lunch table seems to know what they are. Spin Doctors' producer and director Tony Holden, the bloke who helmed the ratings-driven Shortland Street for five years, comes over all sanguine at the very mention of them.

"To be honest I'm not actually worried about [ratings]. This is the charter, this is the future," he says, smiling.

It turns out, on investigation, that the ratings show only a modest success with the punters thus far. Spin Doctors' first two episodes attracted an average of 124,000 viewers from TV One's 25 to 54-year-old target market. But the percentage of over-30s and over-40s watching (10.5 per cent and 12.8 per cent, respectively) suggests that the older you are the more likely you are to tune in to find out which public figures are getting a pasting this week from the show's fictional public relations spinners, O'Connor & Associates.

Apparently such news is of little interest this Friday lunchtime. Holden and his fellow-writers and contributors wouldn't have the time to ponder it.

Fridays are when Holden's hit squad decide who's in for a drubbing the following Tuesday. There's work to be done, the clock is ticking.

T ODAY Holden, his principal wordsmiths - Scott and playwrights Roger Hall and James Griffen - and his contributing writers (they include Listener editor Finlay McDonald and political columnist Jane Clifton) gather at the boardroom table of O'Connor & Associates, a room which is a real boardroom in a real Auckland tower block; for added realism Holden and co have rented a floor of the building as the set for the show.

With a whiteboard up front and pages of photocopied research in front of them - oddly it looks more like a sales meeting than gag-writing workshop - the team spend the day sifting through the detritus of the country's news week for comedic gems.

The targets, they say, should be obvious though they're up for debate according to Holden. "It should be the same things that people are talking about at home or work," Scott says.

If it makes them laugh, they figure it will make us laugh. "I think," Griffen adds, "that we're fairly representative of the upper end of the Mensa market. Of course Roger brings it back down."

Holden: "The objective is topical satire. It's not really a sitcom because it doesn't have a laugh track or anything. The desire was to try to make these people real but by the same token have them saying things that are funny. It's internal laughter, it's not great haw-haw-ha-ha American sitcom. I hope people will just have a bit of a giggle."

And what's got them giggling this particular Friday is All Black memoirs and that fine example of political correctness gone bonkers, the Aoraki National Park Management Plan. They're also keen to develop their characters a little more in this episode.

Tomorrow, Saturday, Scott, Hall and Griffen will each bang out scenes for the 30-minute show from the work done today.

Sundays are when Holden pulls what they've produced into a draft script for some high-priced lawyers to have a look at - defamation has always been satire's bete noire - before the final script is completed, printed and delivered to the Spin Doctors' ensemble cast early in the evening. The actors will have just that night to familiarise themselves with their lines before shooting begins at 7 sharp on Monday morning.

It's the kind of production line Henry Ford would have been proud of, and New Zealand television has never done anything quite like it. You'd imagine then, given the tight timeframe and local television comedy's mixed fortunes in the past, that the pressure must really be on them.

You'd imagine too that this "very talented team", as Holden calls them, might have thought twice about getting involved in what might easily have become an unfortunate experiment. Apparently not.

"It's actually one of the conditions of my parole," Scott deadpans to shotgun blasts of laughter from the rest at the lunch table. "Actually I thought it was a stunningly good idea. People are so starved for laughter ... and people are so ill-served by the comedy they're receiving. We've got a long way to go but we can close up some of that gap. And it's just nice to be able to make fun of people and mock and humiliate and hurt and defame ... "



I T MUST surely be against the natural order of things to try comedy at 7 am. It's a bit like drinking at breakfast. But this - the comedy, not the drinking - is what Holden has asked his cast and 35-person crew to do every Monday morning for the past month and for three weeks to come.

Two of his principal cast members - Michelle Langstone, who plays office junior Melissa, and Elizabeth Hawthorne, whose character is the boozy old trout Liz - had to be in wardrobe at 5.55 am this particular Monday. Criminal.

By the time I arrive on the set at 10 the production line is running at full tilt with eight of this episode's 27 scenes already in the can. Apparently comedy can be made at ungodly hours - and because it's fast turnaround it has to be.

The cast and crew have just a day and a half to shoot what amounts to about 22 minutes - a commercial half-hour - of television. If that sounds like a doddle, let me assure you it is not.

A scene that lasts for a couple of minutes on screen can take up to an hour to produce. Lights and cameras must be set in place, props supplied, lines learned and rehearsals run through before the actual business of shooting begins.

While two cameras are used for most scenes - they call it a "cross shoot" - a scene is usually shot several times before the requisite number of close-ups and wide shots have been put on video tape. Once a scene is completed the tape is rushed to Holden's editors. He has two who work through the day and night to have Spin Doctors ready for air on Tuesday afternoon. A tape of the first 10 minutes of the show will be delivered to Holden's home around 8 on Monday night and another 10 at 5 the following morning.

For the actors, too, the sprint from Sunday night (when they get their scripts) through to Tuesday afternoon (when shooting finishes) is a near 24-hour affair.

"You take it you're not going to sleep until Tuesday," says Patrick Wilson, who plays Ron "Rooter" Baylis, O'Connor & Associates' senior partner and ex-All Black.

Watching the actors and crew work - actually standing on the set behind the camera while they film - is a slightly dislocating experience.

If you're rational, you know what's on television is not real (news and sport excluded, though not always) but just how unreal television is becomes plain when you hang around and watch it being made.

Scenes are shot completely out of order, lights stand just a few feet away from actors acting, microphones are held mere centimetres above talking heads that fluff lines and have makeup covering spots. More disconcerting still is that nobody laughs at the gags.

It's hot, too, a positive sweatshop. One of the restrictions and difficulties of shooting on location in this building is that the air-conditioning has to be turned off because it will leave a humming noise on the soundtrack.

So this emperor has rather sweaty new clothes. That said, the lunch room has a nice selection of drinks and rather delicious cheese and crackers.

There is certainly a buzz, a real excitement on the set of Spin Doctors. Pushing the envelope and the clock can be thrilling, it would seem.

John Sumner, who plays Giles O'Connor, says he certainly feels it. But after hours of shooting this day, he seems more wired than excited. As the agency's boss and the show's anchor character, Sumner is often faced with large chunks of speech which have to be learned in a hot minute. His character, which continues to evolve, has to take care of itself on the day.

"Often what happens to me is I'll do scenes back to back to back so that there are six scenes in a row. By number six I'm like ... [he flaps his mouth like a tongue-tied fish].

"But the character is quite well-defined by the words. The writers are very good so they've defined what it is. Then I rely on Tony a lot, perhaps even more than I would a director under normal circumstances where I've got more time."

Indeed, while all on the set are utter professionals, Holden does seem to be the rather calm, commanding centre in the midst of all the frenetic talking, sweating and acting.

H OLDEN may be the Little General with a million bucks of New Zealand On Air money in his back pocket, a half-hour of television that has to be written, shot and edited at breakneck speed every week and have 40-plus people under his command, but he appears positively Zen about the whole thing. The maker of the nastiest bit of local satire to pop up on the box in ages is positively affable under the pressure.

He's also a crafty fellow. Holden might make television, but apparently a heart of pure PR is beating inside his chest. He knows exactly how to deal with nosy reporters hanging around his set and eating his cheese and crackers.

"Get the journo in this scene," he orders, and they do.

So did you see me on Spin Doctors the other night? Come on, I was that fine-looking fellow walking past Rooter's office? No? Well, I didn't see me either.

My television debut was so brief, I had to run the tape back and push the slow-motion button to spot my unmistakable sliver of a figure sauntering down the hall. Fleeting? Call it a 15th of a second of fame.

That, however, worries me not one jot. I'm confident Spin Doctors is only the beginning: Lynda Topp once told me that you only have to appear once on television in New Zealand and you're famous.

If she's right, and I'm sure she is, my phone should start ringing itself to bits very, very soon.