Cameras in the bedroom outrage critic

For the second week in a row, goddamnit, I have managed to miss Planes That Never Flew. This is something of a tragedy because I consider this documentary on the History Channel to have the best name of any telly programme, ever.

It is a name which rather defies you to watch the thing, which is possibly the reason I intend never to watch it. They might as well have called it Television That Will Never Be Watched.

There is quite a bit of this sort of television on now, as ever. Sitcoms that Never Made Anyone Laugh. Dramas Featuring Actors Who Could Never Act. Documentaries That Never Had Anything Of Any Interest To Say. Reality Shows That Never Had A Point. Well, that's all of them.

Just when I thought we were coming to the end of production houses' love affair with reality telly — cheap to make, no stars to pay, loaded with sponsorship — comes news that Britain's Channel 4 is screening something called The Sex Inspectors.

Six couples allow cameras into their bedrooms so the sex inspectors — relationship guru Tracey Cox and gay "agony uncle" Michael Alvear — can help the couples to untangle the bedsheets, as it were.

This show has, predictably, caused a lot of outrage because, if you squint a bit, you can sort of watch people doing it. Sort of, because particularly graphic acts are filmed using thermal imaging, which turns on-screen bonking into squiggly coloured blotches.

Quite how this differs from Big Brother is beyond me, except that Big Brother didn't pretend it was anything but television for the prurient. And nobody watched after a while because watching wriggling bedclothes is dull.

But the point, or excuse, for this nonsense (writes Outraged Telly Critic of Auckland) is that the couples are doing it wrong, and that the sex doctors are there to help. So it's worthy telly.

Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right, according to Woody Allen. Using that calculation, this show will start out not dirty but will become very dirty indeed.

No doubt it will turn up here sometime soon and there will be outrage and some poor television critic will have to review the thing. Bags not because it will be more of the same:  a makeover show with nipples and panting instead of herbaceous borders and pruning.

Ho hum.

God knows, it's bad enough watching actors on the telly pretending to have sex without having to watch real people having sex while we're watching them on the telly.

Now you don't get any of that carry-on on Coro, although it is getting awfully sexy. In Coro you don't get to see too much wriggling about under the sheets but you do get to see plenty of cleavage.

The reason for mentioning the cleavage is that today is a big day for New Zealand's Coro fans. Queen of the telly cleavage Karen McDonald (Suranne Jones) is in Auckland, making what will surely be larger-than-life appearances at shopping malls, such is the life of a small-screen slapper turned goddess, in Coro terms, at least.

Because eg goes to press early in the week, I am writing this before I go to meet her. But honestly, every bloke I know who has ever spent an evening staring at Karen's best acting assets (and unlike some on the cobbles, she really can act) offered to come along. To help, apparently. They could, they said hopefully, carry my notebook, take the pictures ...

Filthy buggers. They're likely the sort who will be tuned into The Sex Inspectors should it turn up here.

So there is sex on Coro. You just don't have to squint at funny coloured blobs to see it.