Bro, it's a real worry

By GREG DIXON

I'm trying to feel enthusiastic, really I am. I've had a stab at the positive thinking. I've attempted to gee-up my keenness quotient by avoiding all dwelling on past efforts.

I've even stopped watching Flatliners - sorry, Headliners - in the hope that I won't have used up my week's allowance of out-loud hysterics.

But none of it seems to be working. The prospect of yet more local comedy with TV3's animated sitcom Bro'Town , which starts on Wednesday, has me in a mild panic.

I'm worried, damned worried, that I just won't laugh.

It's a terrible thing to live in a country where home-made television comedy is something that generates fear rather than the expectation of damp underwear, to find yourself part of a nation which is better at unintentional laughs than premeditated ones.

The sad truth is that, on television, we're not so much Godzone as a gag-free zone.

It's not as though Bro'Town doesn't come with a pedigree, of course. It's written and performed by those involved in the successful comedy collective Naked Samoans - Oscar Kightley, Dave Fane, Shimpal Lelisi and Mario Gaoa.

The advanced publicity - a species of hype which, admittedly, is never to be believed - calls it cool, irreverent, subversive and funny.

If it is, it could be the first local comedy to achieve any or all of these things.

But the promos - which presumably contain the best bits - that TV3 has been running morning, noon and night suggest there'll be more of the sort of unsophisticated satire that has dogged New Zealand television for two decades.

Its not that I want jokes about Proust, you understand, just a comedy show that operates on a level somewhere above dumb fart jokes and is capable of poking a very sharp stick in the eye of institutions, sacred cows and the Establishment. Something like Absolute Power, in fact.

That venomous, tart, English comedy of the public relations industry (and the media, politics, football, television history programmes and religion) is a near-perfect blend of sharp observation and skewering satire of the most vicious kind.

And its one-liners are delicious. Last night, in the second episode, in which the wonderful pairing of Stephen Fry and John Bird attempted to sex-up the candidates for the job of Archbishop of Canterbury, contained the funniest zinger on television all year.

Just as one contender headed onto the stage of a live, debate-style TV show called, hilariously, Pope Idol, he was told by Bird to "only mention God if you have to, he scored very low in focus groups".

But that has just been the best of a large bunch of ripping lines in the first two episodes. Much like The Office, the sheer playful invention in Absolute Power is dazzling, its heart of nastiness and its nihilistic soul a revelation.

And with its excellent performances - Fry is brilliant - and its ability to come at everything from left-field, I can't help thinking genius was involved.

It is, of course, very English. And we are not very English.

But is it too much to ask that our networks consider making satire that is more than just blunt sketch comedy (a la the underwhelming, undemanding Facelift) or The Simpsons with brown faces?