Greg Dixon: Campbell takes a bit of licence with the tone

John Campbell's show tried to be both hip and ironic, serious and yet not to be taken seriously.

Gidday youse fellas? Eh? What?

Perhaps John Campbell thought he'd wandered in to record more dialogue for TV3's much-hyped comedy show BroTown rather than his much-hyped new current affairs vehicle, Campbell Live.

Probably not. The boy is far too meticulous for that sort of scheduling blunder. And he's been waiting for this moment for years - or is it just us who've been waiting? Certainly I wish that sort of hype on no one.

But this peculiarly Kiwi welcome set rather a peculiar tone for a programme that surely wants to be taken seriously. A programme which, moments later, was to announce to the nation that our driver's licences are just so much plastic.

It was a self-conscious introduction. But then it was a self-conscious first show.

Campbell rushed at it. He wanted us to love it and he poured on the bonhomie with a heavy hand. He was, I think, nervous.

But perhaps what was more peculiar was that last night's premiere almost entirely ignored the man's greatest talent, his interviewing.

Instead, nearly the entire programme was given over to an investigation by reporter Melanie Reid, with help from Carol Hirschfeld, into genuine driver's licences being sold to Asian immigrants.

A hot scoop? It was a sound-enough yarn with corruption and public safety at its heart. But where was the culprit?

Keep watching, Campbell told us. More tonight, he said. But I wanted to know last night.

The story already felt stretched.

Campbell wants his show to be taken seriously. He seriously wants to know what we think. He announced the show has an interactive website so that we might tell him.

He also seems to want us not to take it all too seriously. Now that is a tightrope. Can you do hip and ironic and still be a serious current affairs show? Possibly. It will take a master of tone to pull it off.

But the first gags didn't really work. The Nats produced seven press releases yesterday. So what?

And deadly dull prose is still deadly dull prose even when - or perhaps especially when - read by Max Cryer in a suit in front of a roaring fire with cheesy music in the background.

We already know about the good bits in Helen Clark and Don Brash's breathless hagiographies. There weren't any. Oh yes, that's right, Campbell Live was being ironic.

He says the website is a work in progress. So is his show.