Political satire The Pretender close to home

The Nats will be rather glad The Pretender is on past bedtime on a Sunday night. This is because of Dennis Plant.

Take the most venal peccadilloes of our politicians, distil them into one body, and out comes National Party candidate Dennis Plant.

The satirical mockumentary follows the battle in the Wakatipu South electorate between "that unmarried, tree-hugging hippy" Labour MP Janis Goodyear and multimillionaire property developer Dennis Plant, for whom Queenstown is "my Monopoly board".

Plant's Queenstown hillside mansion has "a great view of the little people ... no I mean, they look little from up here. It's a God's-eye view."

He boasts he is a mentor and a friend to his staff.

"I always come down to their level. My door is always open. They appreciate that, they like it. Yeah, Dennis the friend."

Plant is as close as New Zealand may ever come to having its own David Brent. And, like all Brent, the caricature is just that little bit bone shavingly too accurate for comfort.

What is wrong with New Zealand, Plant says, is "that common hard-working people can't stand up and say what they mean". So Plant's time has come.

He is by his own reckoning "charismatic. He's the one, go'on, you know."

He thinks some sort of slogan might help. "Maybe something that rhymes. Dennis Plant, go'on, then go get 'em. Something like that."

Behind him is his campaign team. Johnny, his campaign manager from Wellington - "three winners in a row, eh Johnny?" - spends the entire half-hour looking as though he'd rather ingest blended guinea pigs than manage this candidate.

There is James the speechwriter, who finally cracks Plant's slogan problem with "There's no can't, with Plant".

"OK," says Johnny. "You're going to have to be very specific with your pronunciation there."

There is the earnest Edward Hamilton-Smith, a former Young Nats president at Otago University.

"What's cooler, going to the pub with everybody else, dancing, going to parties and sleeping with girls, or you, know, doing what we did?"

They meet to discuss policy. Abortion proves tricky.

Pro will deliver 700 votes. Anti will get 400 plus, "but it's better because I doubt the pro's will swing from Labour anyway," Johnny decides. Edward is confused.

"If we are anti-abortion and anti-solo mothers, won't that mean there will be more solo mothers?"

Johnny: "Not if they're married."

Meanwhile, Janis is all over the local paper - "there's Janis in the park, Janis again with some war veterans, Janis hiking".

Janis gets on-camera endorsement from Helen Clark - the real Helen Clark - who thinks Janis will "do the goods".

Janis sends Plant a basket of fruit. Plant is highly suspicious.

"If you give a man fruit down here, shit, you might as well take him behind the cow shed and give him one.

"It's an insult. She's insulting me. She's saying my campaign is fruity."

Bugger the real campaign. This battle for Wakatipu South is the Adults-Only campaign, and only slightly more ludicrous than the real thing.

The real thing promises more money in taxes; in The Pretender free carparking buildings are the currency.

Great Southern Television is the Frankenstein responsible for the creation of Plant. The same company is behind Eating Media Lunch. And both are a poke in the eye for those critics who claimed good New Zealand satire was dead.

* TV3, Sundays, 10.30pm.