KEY POINTS:
TVNZ launched its 2007 season last week, offering the attending journos a notebook and pen, instead of the usual glossy brochure, before ushering them into a presentation - in a darkened theatre. Quite how one takes notes in the dark is a skill not yet taught at journalism
school but perhaps it was a cunning ploy to, ah, keep us in the dark over the upcoming fare.
One's hopes are not especially high, if a statement by outgoing TV One programmer Annemarie Duff is anything to go by. She rated One's Sunday Theatre as needing rebranding for being not accessible ... making One feel old and conservative. We had to sort of move away from that.
One's recent fresher branding and more edgy programmes on Sunday nights had rated well, said Duff. More edgy programmes? Sunday nights on One have become movie nights, safe movies that have been around the block already on Sky, like About Schmidt, Calendar Girls and The Girl With the Pearl Earring. That's as edgy as a cuddle with a kitten.
Jeremy Wells and the Eating Media Lunch crew know how to do edgy - and rude and relentless. Friday's debut of the new EML season started out as they hopefully mean to continue. Repackaging the shock news of the year, Wells swept through an array of plonker-celebs, including Dancing With the Stars' Candy Lane and her embarrassing scripted inanities.
He fast-forwarded through Charlotte Dawson's six-page press release about her battle with her hair stylist, and exposed Winston Peters' Basic Instinct moments allegedly staring at the gap between Condoleeza Rice's legs.
Poor Paul Holmes, of whom Wells declaimed the falling tree is still shocking even if no one's watching. You could see why, when EML flashed back to some Holmes highlights - sex confessions from Lucy Lawless, and Hugh Hefner and those blank-eyed Bunnies. And Lisa Chappell singing a cowgirl song a capella? A perfect expose of ego combined with shocking mediocrity.
Best of all was an EML study of the 20/20 documentary, so-called, about Nicky Watson, interviewed by the lip-smacking Haydn Jones. Wells claimed the show had achieved international success, even screening in Iran last week, and he interviewed an Iranian radio journalist who denounced Jones' lizardly behaviour. "But did the programme's nudity cause offence in Iran?" asked Wells. "Did it provide evidence that there was even more reason to hate the West?" "No," replied the Iranian journo. "It was evidence of the death of current affairs."
Moving along, the video recorder is whirring away late at night at least twice a week, thanks - but really, no thanks - to TV3 moving 24 to Saturday at 10.30pm. I've already had a moan about that.
But I also remain faithful to The Shield, buried on TV2 on Thursdays. The misadventures of Vic Macky and his crew of maligned Los Angeles police buddies have been augmented by the arrival of their new captain, played by Glenn Close.
This is a nasty, nasty programme: brutality, corruption, murder, sex abuse, drugs ... and that's just in the police department. The Shield has no humour, and Vic isn't seeing anything funny about his seedy pal Shane, who is being blackmailed to murder him.
It's hard to work out whether The Shield is deeply cynical or an exaggerated portrayal of the mean streets of LA. Probably more the latter, even though it was based on a real-life crime fighting unit. But it's still an engaging drama amid schedules awash with generic CSI clones and British law firm bores. You could call it, I suppose, edgy.
