I heard National's Maori affairs spokesfellow Gerry Brownlee on National Radio over the weekend wondering whether the good programmes on Maori telly wouldn't be better on mainstream channels. If they were, he said, more people might watch them.
Surely not. Not when there is so much quality stuff to watch on the whitey channels. And not when so much of it is devoted to an exploration of the multicultural world we live in.
Indeed, some of it is devoted to cross-species understanding.
I watch it for the one-liners. This is called channel hopping and you do it with a remote which presumably means I could hop over to the Maori telly channel any time boredom set in. But there is only so much kapa haka one can take and you don't find many one-liners lurking there.
In any case, things are looking up in one-liner land — a game which, if not as ultimately satisfying as, say, something to watch, is quite good fun.
And it gives you plenty of scope for random wonderings. Such as: What would aliens make of some of the stuff on the box?
Some of the stuff I see, or rather hear, makes my jaw drop — and I was raised on the stuff.
On Footballers' Wives last week I heard one character say: "Man. Woman. Banana. I like sex."
And: "He's an [very rude term involving a bottom and a word more usually employed to describe a bunch of robbers] and a thief."
Footballers' Wives is multicultural television: it has a woman who plays a Bollywood actor. So that's all right then. It is also equal opportunity television: all the wives are scrubbers.
America's Next Top Model is also equal opportunity fare. It's hosted by a black woman with orange hair, and the wannabe models range from a part-Japanese girl to an All American white girl who is so white she looks as though she's been dipped in bleach.
I wonder what the aliens would make of the fat one (she's about a size six but compared to the others she's a tub of lard) who is some sort of Bible belt cliche and who goes around blessing the other girls' luggage with holy water before they travel.
This fruit loop, her name is Yoanna which tells you a lot, linked up with bitch girl Camille, who has since been sent packing despite her bizarre parody of goose-stepping. This was her signature walk and was the thing which would make her famous, she said.
She and Yoanna, who had fought all the way through the series, became best mates. Or "ebony and ivory," as ivory Yoanna put it. Camille didn't put out her eyes with a mascara wand then and there, but she did try to get her own back by hinting that Yoanna had an eating disorder.
That one backfired and Camille pouted her way out of the show. She got awfully sulky but she should count herself lucky.
It is on this show that you hear one-liners such as: "She looked like a walrus wearing chiffon." And this from a pig-ugly little man with a hideous little dog that he carried around like a baby.
This sort of stuff is public service television. It is far more worthy than anything that goes on over at Maori telly. Parents with a child with a longing for life in the modelling world should tie up their daughters and make 'em watch it. Of course they are already watching it and it's amazing what can pass for glamour.
If the aliens tuned in they'd probably turn to Maori telly pretty quickly. It might be in another language, but at least it's about normal people.
Herald Feature: Maori broadcasting
Maori TV website
<i>Michele Hewitson:</i> Searching for one-liners on Maori TV
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