Greg Dixon: Host of problems with revamped talkshow

COMMENT

I've been to some tedious parties in my time. Indeed, I've thrown some tedious parties in my time. But I have neither been to nor been responsible for a bash that was nearly so bad or so boring as the one held at Mike King's place this week.

I have to say I didn't want to go. I'd already noticed he was back doing his damned talkshow thing again - between making homo jokes on Game Of Two Halves and selling pork sausages in the ad breaks - because I'd flicked across the show last week. This week, I thought I should like to avoid it all together. But I went back for a longer look all the same. After all this, apparently, is my job.

Big mistake. Right from the opening of Mike King - featuring a lame joke about Maori welcomes going on too long - I knew I'd made the wrong decision.

The guest list was actor Lance Henriksen, rapper Busta Rhymes and some beauty queen - and the host made this hour seem like one of the longest in my life.

King doesn't so much interview as machinegun his guests with what I assume he thinks are witty one-liners. And Henriksen, the first to arrive and there to talk about his new movie, Alien vs Predator, seemed either lost or bemused or both by the first burst of fire from King: "That's a hell of a voice you've got there," King said to him. "Do you ever stalk anybody on the phone with that voice?"

"Ah, I've tried."

"This Alien-Predator movie, the latest one, which one are you? The alien or the predator?"

"Are you going to be like this all night?"

Well, as it turned out, yes. He was going to be like that all night.

The unfortunate thing for Henriksen was, like us at home, he had to sit through the lot, which included a dopey series of requests for definitions of hip-hop lingo fielded by Busta Rhymes plus questions like: "What will you be rapping about in 30 years - your prostate?"

Much like most parties, the thing started to degenerate towards the end. This meant some juggler going head to head in a dumb challenge with the beauty queen, who was asked to drink a yard glass of pink liquid ("Oh, I'm going to spew," she said; "Well, I'll just think of the ratings if you do," King responded). It was at this point I left the party and went home to bed.

There seems to have been a fair amount of sackings since the first series of this show, when it was called Mike King Tonight. Among those to be pink-slipped are the house band featuring ex-Commodore Ron LaPread and the Asian guy, allegedly called Frankie Foo, who did execrable vox pops.

The cost-cutting exercise has also meant a change of digs. The thing is no longer held at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna in front of a large live audience but in a studio at TVNZ's network centre in the central city in front of a small one. Gone, too, is the set that was a copy of David Letterman's show.

But in remaking the show, the most important change has not been made: to find a better balance between King's (often dire) one-liners and asking good questions and allowing the guests to answer.

Is it too much to ask that there be some actual talk in this talkshow?