Michele Hewitson: Unreal in any language

When I asked Maori Television if it could, please, send me some tapes of Te Iwi Kohatu, I was told sure, of course and, aah, I did know that it was all in Maori, sans subtitles, didn't I?

Actually, this sounded rather restful. Because Te Iwi Kohatu is a reality show, of sorts, in which a Maori family go to live on a pa and try to live as their ancestors did. And as anyone who has ever watched a reality show knows, nothing of any consequence is said.

Also I thought this would be a chance to find out just how rusty my Te Reo was. I soon found out that it was as rusty as an old can opener. So rusty that I no longer know what the words for old can opener are, although it is conceivable that I never did.

Anyway you didn't really need Te Reo to figure out what was happening. I watched one episode in which some visitors were coming to the pa for tea. There was preparation of kumara and spuds and I heard a sentence in which the words "flash restaurants" was used. So I figured, rather cleverly, I thought, that the narrator was telling us that there were no flash restaurants back in the olden days.

Maori Television's website told me that Te Iwi Kohatu differed from other reality shows. "We are not seeking who can survive man-made obstacles in an artificial environment. We figure that as Maori we are doing that on a daily basis anyway."

That is a little lofty. I figure I also survive man-made obstacles in an artificial environment every day: reality TV programmes.

It is true that most reality TV doesn't have dream sequences. On Te Iwi Kohatu I saw people running through forests in slow motion, a maiden dreamily picking wildflowers. I think other reality telly should include such sequences in their shows. On Celebrity Treasure Island I'd like to see Louise Wallace dreaming about what she'd really like to do to those whinging loser chicks. I'd also really like to see the whinging loser chicks dreaming about what they'd like to do to Wallace.

You wouldn't need to know the language to get that sequence.

As it turned out, I understood more of Te Iwi Kohatu than I did of another episode of a series I watched on Saturday night. This was a rugby game and it is, I think, only the second time I've watched an entire rugby game on the telly.

I had made a pact with myself that I wouldn't say anything stupid. I had little choice in this matter: I had been banned from talking. I had also been banned from serving dinner, despite the fact that we had a couple of people over. What a lot of rules there are when it comes to rugby.

After the game when one of the players came on and said a lot of things, and afterwards the male visitor said: "Did you understand a word of that?"'

I said, "no, not a word".

Apparently I broke my pact and said a lot of stupid things during the game, but in between saying stupid things I had plenty of time to observe that men say a lot of stupid things during the game. Our visitor said this was "a good day at the office", which was patently ridiculous. Anyone could see that this was not The Office at all, but some other programme featuring a bungling boss and a lot of really good practical pranks, like dislocating somebody's shoulder and biting another bloke.

It was jolly good fun and it didn't matter a jot that it was all in a foreign language.