Michele Hewitson: Rough and tumble on the borders

The opening scenes of Orange Roughies (last night, TV One, 9pm) had the crack customs team in orange jumpsuits. This, presumably, was to let us know that the nickname of said crack customs team is Orange Roughies.

The jumpsuits are terribly unflattering and customs/cop shows are supposed to be sexy, so nobody stayed in orange for long.

Thereafter it was a black leather jacket and jeans for the chief customs chick, Jane Durant, a costume designed to show that she is tough but sexy.

Jane has a masters degree in criminal psychology and will also prove that she's no slouch in the slugging department. There was a scene with an Asian baddy babe. This was sexy: chick fights are always sexy.

The blokes mostly wore tight T-shirts and jeans, designed to show that they are tough but sexy.

Roughies is determined to be sexy but in an innovative way. Which is, again presumably, why there's a scene in a sex shop called, titter titter, Mr Softies, in which coppers wave very large dildos around in a very threatening way.

There is also a sex scene in a car, in which sexy Zack Wiki gives his wife one when she drops him off at work.

This is tastefully done: we see the car rocking. This is because they are on a schedule to have a baby. This doesn't stop his colleagues bashing on the car.

"So, did you finish off or ... " This was not sexy, it was the sort of information you don't need to think about even in a cutting edge customs/cop drama.

I know it's cutting edge because of the sex toy scene, which was so quirky they did another scene using two of them in case you missed it the first time around.

It has its lighter moments. Actually, its lightest moment was a scene in a whorehouse involving the funniest discipline scene seen on New Zealand telly since Mr Gormsby's threats to do nasty things to boys.

Poor old Zack was the one getting it. As if it's not bad enough having to do it in a car outside work because of the schedule, he found himself being given a gift of an underage girl because he'd gone undercover to expose some very bad people.

He did what any undercover copper would do: Whipped off his belt and asked for a whipping.

Nice welts. Nice dialogue.

Underage: "You like zis?"

Undercover: "Yeah baby, give it to me baby."

Girl: "You are sick man."

Other than that, there was no mucking about: it was straight into the action.

A car was blown up early on, which isn't bad going in a drama about customs officers.

It makes good sense to have the crack customs team link up with a crack cop team. This way you can have cars blowing up.

They did a pretty good job of introducing the characters. We know Jane: smart, single, stroppy. Detective Sergeant Danny: smart, stroppy. Single, kid, dead wife.

There's chemistry: argy bargy on first meeting. These two are the main characters.

They're Aussies which you wouldn't give a goanna's bum about if they were noticeably better than any of the Kiwi cast. They're not.

Roughies is not noticeably any worse than anything of the genre seen in recent times.

Now that we've got the difficult - and longer than a stakeout - pilot out of the way it might even be quite good. Although what on earth they're going to do for stereotypical baddies is hard to imagine.

We've already had the Triads and the kiddie smugglers and the sleazy white guy with the greasy hair and the cheesy TV ad for cheap mortgages.

Still, it has proved itself to be as imaginative as a drug smuggler. How to slow down a suspect when the team are in his house bugging it?

Get the cop following him to attack a Squeegee Man at the lights, pinch his cleaning gear and start cleaning the Asian suspect's windscreen. Then have him say, "You'll be able to eat noodles off this by the time I'm done".

That was genuinely funny. More of that, more of Zack (Mark Ruka) because he's easily the best character and looks cute when he's being whipped and is not An Aussie, and less of the try-hard boiled cop speak, and we could get to quite like zis.