Silly name but a few laughs

And this year's prize for stupidest name for a television show ... the envelope please ... goes to ... The Sports Hour All Fired Up (9.35pm, TV One).

Now I can understand The Sports Hour bit. It's about sport. It goes on for an hour. The Sports Hour seems a fair and accurate, if slightly dull, description of what viewers might expect from TV One's newest sports show.

But the All Fired Up bit? Well, it was only when the credits rolled at the end of last week's debut appearance that I was able to discern why this daft add-on had been added on: this is a Touchdown production.

Touchdown is not only the local home of what it likes to call unscripted television - what everyone else describes as reality TV - but of a terrific selection of daftly named TV shows including How Normal Are You?, Can You Hackett? and, of course, The Chair (oddly, its sequel, believed to have been called The Occasional Table, has never been made).

But hold on, why exactly is Touchdown making a sports show for TV One, a channel which actually has its own sports department and a host of sports reporters?

Well, that was a pretty easy one to answer 30 seconds into the first show: The Sports Hour is an entertainment show about sport, not a sports show at all.

Certainly, a radio sports guy, Andrew Saville, has been roped in to host. Certainly, the first show's panel included four ex-sporty types - rugby players Richard Turner and Peter Fitzsimons, cricketer Simon Doull and league player Matthew Ridge.

But the prevailing wind is blowing from the direction of Let's Have a Laugh.

Touchdown has had more than modest success in this genre. Game Of Two Halves is a TV One fixture, and for those with a taste for laddish laughs and sporting trivia it works very well indeed.

The Sports Hour's job is a little more complicated. The sports trivia is there in the shape of a for-dollars quiz, where a member of the public goes face-to-face with the irritating Martin Devlin. And I have long laughed at Ridge rather than with him.

But the show is claiming to offer informed, in-depth debate on sport as well. So naturally enough, last week's first topic of conversation - Daryl Tuffey - had me waiting expectantly for an informed, in-depth debate on an issue that had me, and still has me, rather confused.

Did we learn anything of how a New Zealand Cricket disciplinary inquiry works, how it's triggered and why Tuffey was being publicly paraded for an old, off-field incident? Well, no.

Instead we got this from Doull: "To my mind New Zealand Cricket are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is something that happened when Daryl wasn't part of the team ... the woman hasn't pressed any charges, there is [sic] no complaints from her. It's come from her boyfriend, who's a bit dark about it."

Well, I could have told you that and I knew bugger all.

I felt much the same about the panel's views on other topics, which included Jonny Wilkinson, the Warriors and David Tua.

Only Fitzsimons, who is a smart bloke for an ex-sportsman, offered anything of value. But then he always does.

Some of the liveliest so-called debate, rather predictably given a panel of ex-sportsmen and no referees, was on the subject of referees. Apparently they're not allowed to make mistakes like everyone else.

On the entertainment-o-meter, The Sports Hour did much better.

Fitzsimons and Ridge did a passable impression of hating each other's guts ("You're an egg, mate," said Ridge) and the scientific experiment involving cricket balls, speed and watermelons dressed like a Black Cap was inspired.

And Saville, though he needs to loosen up and go easy on the puns, is an affable enough bloke for a host.

Was I all fired up? No. But I'll be back for the laughs.