The end of the Kiwi medal drought at the weekend has gone some way towards reviving an interest in the Olympics that was wilting under the non-user-friendly telly coverage.
In the first week all those empty seats in the Olympic sport stadiums were matched by uncontested places on the couch at home. At least in Athens, the Greeks have the excuse of the glaring sun.
But here, following the Games has required special effort. TV One keeps reminding us that the timing is unfortunate for New Zealand, that most of the action is happening overnight or at breakfast.
But that seems a poor reason for the lack of a really good highlights package every evening, an hour-long wrap-up of the best of the day that doesn't just focus on the competing Kiwis.
The Olympics is a chance to see sports seldom shown in a boringly rugby-obsessed country, such as athletics, and those with an aesthetic element and wow factor — gymnastics, diving — which just seem made for the cameras.
Trying to find them has been a challenge. A call to TVNZ couldn't tell me what time the women's gymnastics team competition would be on. Coverage of the battle between frontrunners Romania and the US for gold was skimpy, with hardly any of the highest-scoring performances featured. Talk about being stuck in the cheap seats.
When it comes to anything else that's on the telly through the Games marathon, the seats are even cheaper. Among the sad range of alternatives, however, TV2 has managed one glimmer of interest, in new drama Las Vegas.
America's Sin City has been such an obvious choice for movie-makers, now telly is catching on to it. Ostensibly an insider's look at a one-industry town, Las Vegas is pretty much the usual American effort at fast-paced, sexy drama, stuffed with high rollers, hunky good guys and more babes than the Olympics' beach volleyball.
You expect kitsch casino owner and reality TV star Donald Trump to come through the door with a blonde on each arm at any moment. But it poses an interesting question. What is a real actor such as James Caan (The Godfather, Misery) doing in a glam trash show like this? Well, Vegas is a gambling town.
Caan plays Big Ed Deline, chief of an elite surveillance team for a top resort and casino. Most of the rest of cast, however, look like graduates from Beverly Hills 90210 (in fact, one, Vanessa Marcil who plays foxy Sam, is). The show also has American telly dramas requisite British ice queen in pit boss Nessa (Marsha Thomason). And there's even an original Charlie's Angel in the cast, Cheryl Ladd, playing the wife and mother.
The show kicked off with Big Ed finding protege Danny, an ex-marine and Las Vegas native, in bed with his daughter whose name — Delinda Deline — sounds like a line from an inbred folksong.
It seems the script writers are struggling for something for the big guy to do, apart from threatening Danny with the family, giving the impression that casino security is to the Delines what waste management is to the Sopranos.
In the second episode the storylines have continued to pour forth from the department of cliches: Ed's CIA past came back to haunt him last week when he was blackmailed by a sleazy, right-wing senator.
Still, as a glam soap, Las Vegas reflects the obsessions of the moment: security, money, sex and voyeurism — sorry, surveillance. Yes, Big Ed and his men could teach the Olympics telly schedulers a thing or two about coverage.
<i>Frances Grant:</i> Kiwi medals help TV coverage
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