Hey bro, is this where I get off?

By GREG DIXON

You can always tell by the bus stops. As soon as you notice that one of the television networks has been snapping up the advertising spaces on the bus stops of Auckland for the promotion of some show, you know said network's executives are eager - no, desperate - for you to watch what's being hawked.

I've lost count of the number of roadside ads I've seen over the past few weeks for New Zealand's first adult animated series, bro'Town (8pm, TV3). But the quantity suggests that the anxiety level at TV3 is high.

And it's pretty easy to work out why. New Zealand television comedy has more than a patchy track record, not least on TV3, the network that gave us Melody Rules.

Then there is the reported investment in bro'Town: $1.45 million by New Zealand On Air, an unknown sum by private investors and TV3, plus the cash raised using the bizarre (but not new) technique of product placement on the show.

So has all this cash and signage been worth it? Well, after last week's first episode of this six-part series, you have to say it's doubtful.

The premiere of this comedy of five scruffy school kids - four Pacific Islanders and one Maori - created by the stand-up comedy ensemble Naked Samoans, was heavy on the dumb and light on the witty.

The episode, titled The Weakest Link, was plotted around the not unfunny device of one of the kids, Valea I think, getting run over by a bus, going from stupid to genius thanks to the blow on the head and then helping the gang to win a national high-school TV quiz for the first time in their school's history.

This set-up was bookended with God (a tattooed Pacific Islander) philosophising to Sir Ernest Rutherford and a dope-smokin' Bob Marley as they play Trivial Pursuit.

So far, not bad. However, as the characters and the dialogue played out it became clear that the show's comedy is mainly built around only one thing: incredibly blunt, incredibly predictable stereotypes.

Valea's father Pepelo is, for example, a lazy, stupid, gambling PI. The old white guys who run the quiz show are racists - "those taro-eaters have one degree of separation from apes" - and speak, oddly, with English accents. The Indian dairy owner has an unpronounceable name and hates the gang because he believes they thieve.

Then there were the endless celebrity cameos, including John Campbell, Carol Hirschfeld and Scribe. If you have to run the name on the celebrity along the bottom of the screen - as they did with Robert Rakete - you know you're in trouble.

For some it will be enough that bro'Town involves brown faces, hip-hop references, John and Carol, dope jokes, and that they recognise the stereotypes. They will think it is cool because of this and, therefore, that it equals edgy and funny.

But actually, despite TV3, the writers and producers talking it up, there is nothing particularly subversive going on here.

There's a bit of light swearing. Big deal.

There are a few references to drugs. Big deal.

There are jokes about gays and ugly women. Big deal.

Political incorrectness has now become fashionable among the formerly political correct. But even keeping that in mind, I can only but marvel that this is supposed to be for adults.

I don't know any who laugh at the repetition of poos and wees - which the kids chanted in one flashback sequence - though I know a few children who might.

Indeed, bro'Town does not even come close to achieving the same clever tightrope act The Simpsons has managed to maintain over its long run: to have two equally good levels of humour running concurrently, one for the kids and one for the adults.

And the jokes that are intended for adults - like last week's cheeky darkie reference and the masonic lodge-style sight gag - either feel dated or pointless.

And there's nothing particularly original going on here, either. The idea of a gang of kids is ripped straight from South Park, the stupid father from The Simpsons, and the endless celebrity guest spots from both. Creative and Kiwi as? Well, only if repainting the Mona Lisa wearing an All Black jersey is.

The book ending of the first episode with God offered an even more worrying element, one familiar from the worst of American sitcom: the secular homily.

"Life is like a quiz game," God told us, "lots of people arguing and trying to show off how clever they are - but you can't always be right ... it's just a matter of what knowledge you think is important."

Putting aside that this would seem to be an argument, in this age of moral relativity, for indulging in the same thing for knowledge, this five-cent philosophy seemed totally at odds with the dumb humour we were about to see.

The one real positive from the first episode was the animation, which while hardly anything new, is clean and simple. But all that money and all that time - each episode has taken months to put together - should have bought more than that.

The show may get better in the next five episodes. But I'm not picking many more laughs. Perhaps like Marley in last week's opener, you need to be really, really stoned to get it, eh bro?