Year of the bro

TV3's Bro Town

1. Bro'Town, the Southpark-style cartoon about a bunch of Polynesian and Maori schoolkids in Auckland did the nigh on impossible for a TV3 show which isn't CSI and rated through the roof.

The DVD of the first series is selling likewise. Created by irreverent stage troupe, Naked Samoans, bro'Town was as politically incorrect as only animation can be. It also lured a stellar cast of voices. Highlights included Lucy Lawless' safe-sex lesson, a merciless send-up of the movie Whale Rider and the scariest mum on telly since Livia Soprano.

Yep, rethink the demographics. Auckland's getting browner and younger. The future just happened.

2. Poor Adriana La Cerva, fiancee of Christopher Moltisanti. Ever since the Feds blackmailed her into snitching on Tony Soprano, her stomach never recovered. No matter how good at heart Chris' moll was, there was no getting around the fact she was a mole.

She kept giving the Feds peanuts, then the agents obtained a tape showing Adriana trying to get rid of evidence of a murder in the club. "Twenty-five years' jail or ..." So, during a long, appalling night, she confessed and tried to flip Christopher.

After agreeing to go into witness protection, he "slipped out" for some cigs. Then Adriana got the call from Tony — Silvio was taking her to the hospital where a suicidal Chris had, allegedly, been taken. With Silvio driving her instead into the woods, Adriana knew she was going down. She crawled, she cried, she died. And The Sopranos notched up another gut-wrenching death.

3. Spooks extended the myth that Brit spies are bright young people who dress like stockbrokers and tote baffling high-tech gadgets. But these MI5ers still weren't terribly good at foiling the (usually domestic) terrorists. However implausible the plot seemed at times, the lineup of actors — Matthew MacFadyen and David Oyelow in particular — turned this into a spy series worth watching.

But where Spooks bordered on formulaic, the heart-stopping mini-series State of Play sidelined all the rules. It opened with the death of a young black man and the apparent suicide of a female parliamentary researcher, and led to a downright dangerous investigation of some very nasty politicians by a team of newspaper reporters.

Cracking dialogue, a real sense of menace plus a dry dose of humour fuelled splendid performances by Bill Nighy (the editor) John Simm (the reporter) and David Morrissey (the tortured MP). This was appointment television.

4. VE Day. The moon landing. The explosion of the first atomic bomb ... yes, these were memorable events. But of course none had quite the where-were-you-when? aspect to them of the earth-shattering departure of Paul Holmes from TVNZ for the humbler pastures of Prime.

It was the end of an era all right — you could tell by the acrimony. The Great Communicator declared he was leaving with "no bitterness or sour grapes, nothing at all" before the inevitable slagging match with TVNZ management began 30 seconds later. Next year's exciting philosophical dilemma: If Paul Holmes' ego moves to Prime and nobody watches, will it still rattle on?

5. To be honest we had to scratch some collective heads to remember whether the Idol thing happened this year, or last and, oh God, is it going to happen again in 2005?

But what hysteria while it lasted. Ben won, but Michael should have. Or the other way around. Or somebody did. Probably none of the contestants.

There was the spat (ongoing) about the NZ On Air Funding. There was the spat — what happened to that? — about Michael's original number 1 single that turned out to be not so original. So where was the surprise?

There was nothing original about the imported concept. And certainly nothing original about the fact that the true star of NZ Idol turned out to be one of the judges: Mr Paul Ellis, not so much for his put-downs but for his wardrobe.

As runner-up, Michael pointed out, "It's a bit rich being told that your jacket looks as though it's been crapped on by seagulls when the bloke telling you this is wearing a jacket that looks as though it's been made from your mum's curtains."

6. The NZ Festival series on Saturday nights provided eight weeks of bliss for those who enjoy hearing our own stories told intelligently, with world-class production values. And on prime time too.

The series kicked off with Annie Goldsen's Sheilas: 28 Years, and moved on to Wrestling with the Angel, a carefully trod study of Janet Frame based on Michael King's biography of this great kiwi writer.

Colin McCahon: I Am was beautifully crafted, illuminating a great deal about the artist's work and pretty awful life. The festival also focused on physicist William H. Pickering, photographer Marti Freidlander, Michael King, a group of Pacific migrants and wound up with Reluctant Hero, on David Lange.

NZ Festival made you realise there are heaps of great stories in this country to celebrate. More please.

7. So let us get this straight: it takes only one newsreader to read the terribly important flagship that is One News at 6, but it still takes two to read the not-terribly important inflatable dingy that is TV One's late news, Tonight.

However, since Smirking Eric Young and colour-uncoordinated Kate Hawkesby took over micro-waving One News stories for an audience of bored insomniacs, the channel's late news has at least offered something new — some of the most interesting, er, clothes seen outside the sartorial atrocities presented in the Wearable Art Awards.

8. How about that Coronation Street love triangle? But which one? Tracy, Steve and Karen? Or Tracy, Roy and Hayley? Both. In fine Coro form, slapper Tracy had a one-nighter with Steve. Then she tricked Roy Cropper into a "night of passion", and told him he was the studly father of her baby.

On the eve of Steve's wedding number 2 to Karen, Tracy dropped her you-are-the-father bombshell but Steve didn't want to know. Meanwhile, the Croppers forked over thousands to buy the baby, whom they named Patience.

But Tracy went mad with maternal feelings and retrieved the now-renamed Amy. Before Patience became Amy, Blanche succinctly argued the case against the Croppers: "He's mad and she's a man." The Croppers lost their Patience, and the Steve-Karen-Tracy triangle continues to haunt them all.

9. Who says television never solved anything? Well give them a biscuit from us because it's true. State Of The Nation, TV One's two-hour live debate held in, of all places, New Plymouth didn't seem to make a damned bit of difference to the country's race relations predicament.

While anchor Anita McNaught and her lovely accent worked hard to solve the insoluble, the show succeeded only in confirming the fears of some: that the charter would deliver well-intentioned but wishy-washy television. More heat than light. Moments of madness. The roar of the mob ... if only State Of The Nation had been more like Waitangi Day.

10. Which way is up when you're talking about butt implants? Did we even know you could get butt implants before Nip/Tuck? It's been a plastic fantastic sort of year, really. China has just held the world's first Miss Plastic Surgery contest. We've suffered through all sorts of real life nips and tucks on the telly.

Nip/Tuck is simply art — if very black humour is art — reflecting life. And it's got to be better than yet another forensic science drama. Its like Footballers Wives except the acting's better. Although it has to be said that in Footballers Wives the plastic surgery's more convincing.

The first series of Nip/Tuck had storylines to rival the footie wives. Highlights include a Mafia hit in the operating theatre, an attempted self-circumcision, and a sheila smuggling heroin in her breast implants. Try hiding it your butt implants next time, babe.

11. England, England, England — land of Little Britain and Mean Girls, two of the best comedies to roll through these parts in some time. Most of the major networks' comedy is dominated by god-awful American comedies about god-awful American families. So thank god Prime has leapt in to fill the gap left by the closing of The Office. These are two shows that remind us the British still have the world's best sense of humour.

12. Peter Elliott's Explorers delivered another class-act travelogue. The genial presenter followed in the footsteps of early European explorers through remote and rugged parts of the country. History with scenery, and some intriguing stories of tough-as-old-boots colonials going off the beaten track.

13. Just when you thought we needed another twentysomething drama like Hare Krishnas need hair product, along came Insider's Guide to Happiness, a compelling local addition to the genre. It sparked new life into the old scenario of young things finding their way in the real world, stirring it up with a dash of surrealism, time warps and a peculiarly Kiwi mix of gloom, doom and charm.

The drama brought us the year's best performance by a dead guy — Fasitua Amosa as the late Matthew. Cue some of the show's best lines as a startled James learns of his karmic destiny — "But I'm from Wanganui" — and is warned by a colleague, "You've got monks in reception".

14. Finally, after a long and difficult birth in March, a christening which looked it might last until late April, Maori Televison became a reality. And now having found itself forever in the headlines before it became a broadcaster, ironically its next fight is to get itself noticed. But with its vast raft of shows big on Maori news, sport te reo, music, kai and nostalgia, it's made New Zealand's airwaves vibrate on a whole different frequency.

15. On The Office Christmas Special David Brent returned for an excruciating marathon finale to one of telly's finest comedies. There was no let-up in the pain as Brent desperately tried to eke out the dregs of his rapidly fading celebritydom. The torture began with his first assertion that the reality doco series had stitched him up to look like a plonker, and continued through a rock video, sad pub gigs, to hanging round his old workplace to "boost morale".

The finale gave us a frightening new contender for colleague horror of all time, in the pregnant Kama Sutra enthusiast Anne. The Brentmeister was allowed a soft landing in the final few minutes, however — just enough to puff up all that ego and self-delusion again. Unbowed in Slough.

16. Wouldn't it have been more fun to send a couple of trailer trash blondes to go and live the life of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie for a few weeks? A rottweiler, some tats and some white tasselled boots in the lobby of Daddy Hilton's big white mansion might have been more fun. But then a leaked porno vid via the internet wouldn't have the cachet — or the promo value — if it had been said of white trash having sex with some poor boy in some dump motel someplace.

This was also the year reality dating show There's Something About Miriam thought it'd be a hoot to have some idiots compete to win the affections of Miriam — who turned out to have been a man in a former life. And the year we had a thing called My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance. In which some blonde bimbo had to convince her family that she was in love with a Big Fat Obnoxious guy. They were pretty well-matched, actually.

How low can this go? Looking forward in the new telly year to: Nicky Watson on successful dating and Matthew Ridge on how to be successful in business.

17. In the doco series Status Anxiety and Child Of Our Time — or the "Insider's Guide to Unhappiness" — the pointyheads went all populist to delve into our deepest fears. What if we're not happy and what are the odds our kids'll turn out rotten? In Status Anxiety, philosopher Alain de Botton pinpointed the chief nightmare of the corporate/celebrity age: being a nobody who doesn't make much money.

De Botton offered a potpourri of views from religion, philosophy, history and art as ways of opting out of the status ratrace. But, judging by the number of SUVs clogging the suburbs, we're all still trying frantically to keep up with the Joneses. Meanwhile, in Child Of Our Time, telly professor Robert Winston scared parents everywhere with his comprehensive look at the big question for the DNA era: "Are we born or are we made?"

18. If you're going to have a show Celebrity Treasure Island you'd expect there to be something called "Celebrity Scurvy" or something. Unfortunately, Lana Coc-Kroft went much further, falling dangerously ill and eventually lapsing into a coma after a foot infection — for the last time, no, she didn't eat a cockroach — from a coral cut turned to toxic shock syndrome.

It took months for the Sports Cafe presenter to recover but she was up and about in time for the screening of the instalment of the reality series in which she was seen in the early stages of the illness. The episode attracted 700,000 viewers just as Paul Holmes and Treasure Island producer Julie Christie got in a spat about Coc-Kroft's treatment on location in Fiji.

19. The OC had rich kids with good addresses and a wealth of problems. Sound familiar? No, this was not Beverly Hills 90210 for the 00s, at least not according to OC star Mischa Barton, who pointed out some crucial differences: "That was more of a soapy drama, and I think ours is just grittier.

We show a lot of drugs and drinking. And it's like, sure, that's what people are doing now. It's really modern." Uh huh. Still, The OC made heart-throbs of its cast. In particular, Russell Crowe-lookalike Benjamin McKenzie, who carried on the fine tradition of hot American teen-drama stars of actually being 26. But no, this was not Bev Hills, the update. Not with lines like, "Welcome to The OC, bitch."

20. And here's where we mark the 2004 end — or the beginning of the deathless re-runs? — of those long-running successful American sitcoms Friends, Frasier, Sex and the City. In Friends and Sex ... the romantic loose ends got all tidied up so in their respective finales with Ross and Rachel and Carrie and Mr Big all heading off into their respective middle-ages as couples. Who would have guessed, huh? Altogether now: "I'll be there for you-oooo ..."

- by Frances Grant, Greg Dixon, Michele Hewitson, Linda Herrick and Russell Baillie