Linda Herrick: TV chat comes naturally

There have been attempts in the past to produce a Kiwi chatshow, but they failed because they were limp imitations of American chatshows, like Letterman, complete with kitsch showband, laboured live audience and, in one case not so long ago, the host even slipped into a faux-American accent. Nasty.

No such trouble with The Tem Show, which is our Tem doing what comes naturally: modest, generous and perfectly at ease, which means his guests are perfectly at ease as well.

While he may call some of his guests cuz or bro, it's no down-home-at-the-marae effort, but anchored from a plush mansion.

The format is flexible, sliding from mansion-side conversations to Tem's forays into the showbiz worlds of Hollywood, London and, er, Central Otago.

Tem has obviously made a lot of good friends in the biz during the past 20-plus years and now he is calling in the favours. They seem more than happy to respond.

The usually reticent Sam Neill toured Tem around his Two Paddocks vineyard in beautiful Central Otago, which had Tem looking thoughtful about his own options. As they sat in Sam's backyard, chooks scuttling around their feet, Sam's assertion that this was where he belonged, not Hollywood, made perfect, tranquil sense.

No one but Tem could get our most private of actors singing Now Is the Hour - then Sam quietly said, "It means a lot to me that you're my friend". Aw shucks. Lovely.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Lee Tamahori ("another director I made famous", deadpanned Tem) was cutting action movie XXX2. He seemed clipped and tense, caught up in that Hollywood milieu of big bangs and bucks. The very example of all that Sam Neill abhors as a lifestyle.

Back in the mansion, Tem had an interesting chat with actor Joel Tobeck. They have known each other for 15 years and discussed some actorly things we usually never get to hear about. Tobeck is doing well in the larger world of movies but he's relaxed about it, and Tem placed him in the Buscemi/Dafoe milieu - destined to play baddies. It was a compliment.

In an earlier show, Tem interviewed young Martin Henderson, followed by a salute in te reo. He has gone canoeing with Cliff Curtis and shopping with Keisha Castle-Hughes. The careers of all the above are hot. Every now and then, he asks his guests if they can get him some work ...

Tem has been around for a long time, and so has Kirstie Alley, whose Fat Actress series follows immediately after his. What a contrast. Here is an actress who was a fine comedian before she ate herself out of work. Well, that's her excuse.

Now she is trying to claw back by making fun of herself as a fat actress who can't get work.

In this show, Alley is calling in the favours from friends as bizarrely diverse as John Travolta and Kid Rock but it is a one-note joke that quickly wears thin, so to speak.

Some might applaud Alley for trying to reignite her career, but Fat Actress is a charmless series of humiliations. But isn't that the way of so much TV at the moment?

Fat Actress is try-hard; The Tem Show is not. But it does make you wish someone would find a good film or TV role for him, something well-written and intimate.

In last week's show, Tem popped into the only-in-Hollywood hair salon of Giuseppe Franco, stylist to such luminaries as the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a telling moment, Franco said to Tem, "You're an actor?" Tem responded, "Sometimes".

Meanwhile, he's doing fine, just being himself. But we get the message that more work would be kapai too.