Change Your Image
FilmGeek
Reviews
The Insiders Guide to Happiness (2004)
Weird and Whimsical
This offbeat, strange and yet very appealing TV series is one of the better small screen products to come out of New Zealand in some time.
The tracking of so many different, converging story threads, all with their own ample measure of quirkiness, challenged me as a viewer and made it so much more enjoyable that the usual linear story based series we have been subject to. The mystic elements were never over-done and just added to the drama (and comedy).
My favourite character was easily James, the slightly dopey insurance adjuster who undergoes a supernatural experience and spends most of his time trying to figure out what is happening to him.
I congratulate everyone involved with producing a superior TV series and hope we can see lots more from the same team.
Scrapheap (1998)
Home Improvement meets Mad Max
This is the most entertaining live action TV programme I have ever seen. Pitting two teams against each other in a contest of both brains and brawn to produce a complex working machine in 10 hours using only what they can find in the eponymous Scrapheap ("Junkyard" for you Americans) is just plain brilliant.
Not only entertaining but educational as well. To make it possible to build the machines, the teams must be able to grasp the basic operational principles behind each one. The explanations they give are a great way of passing that understanding on to the audience.
For some of the projects, I suspect that the scrapheap is "seeded" with some specialist items without which successful construction would be virtually impossible. However, that does not detract from the flow of the programme at all.
The producers also like to select teams full of colourful and eccentric characters. When people with nicknames like "Bowser", "Nosher" and "Lurch" feature, you just know they aren't going to "go quietly into the good night".
I rate this show very highly. I think any country whose citizens pride themselves on their ingenuity and "can-do" attitude would get a real kick out of this programme.
Channel 4 should be very proud of their work.
You Be the Judge (1999)
Kiwi attempt at Trash TV
Infamous within New Zealand for an incident when the results of a paternity suit DNA test were revealed live to the viewing public in front of the child concerned. Roundly condemned and quickly cancelled. We can only hope that this sort of crap is not repeated.