TV: Linda Clark gives us something to chew on

By JOHN ARMSTRONG

Proof that TVNZ is heeding the Beehive's stern strictures to deliver some serious telly of old has arrived by way of Face The Nation (TV One, tonight 9.30).

Linda Clark's show, now into its third week, inhabits one of TVNZ's new "low-advertising zones," as a patronising voiceover keeps on reminding us.

Well, who cares? Are we supposed to be pathetically grateful to TVNZ? Why does TVNZ always have to be so damned self-congratulatory?

Still, a low-advertising zone means Face The Nation's half-hour contains only one shortish ad break, giving Clark the luxury of 25 minutes to eviscerate her guests. Now that's radically conservative for you.

Last week's victim was Matt McCarten, the Alliance's backroom fixer. Somewhat bizarrely, he was on trial for good behaviour, pleading guilty to running a stable Coalition and seeing his party whipped in the polls as a consequence.

"From joy to jitters," crackled Clark in delightful tabloidese, suggesting the Alliance was now inhabiting what TVNZ might call a "low life-expectancy zone." But the discussion turned out to be little more than a fix for political junkies.

Far more pertinent was the previous week's probing of Acting Police Commissioner Rob Robinson, who had managed to keep a disturbingly low profile in the wake of the Waitara shooting.

"Are New Zealand police racist?" thundered Clark , defining the prosecution and immediately alienating any fan club she has out in pro-police talkback land.

Clark threw a stack of official reports at Robinson which were chock full of anecdotes of police harassment of Maori. The confrontation was somewhat deflated by Robinson's adoption of a defence of mea culpa. Avoiding entangling himself in Clark's specific allegations of police misbehaviour, Robinson retreated to the general, admitting that some of his coppers needed to do some hard thinking about their thinking.

He talked of "learning experiences," "attitudinal change" and "working things through."

"Words, words, words ... I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand that in plain English," huffed Clark, clutching her pen like a javelin as she tried to skewer his evasive lingo.

But she gave him room to breathe where other interviewers might have constantly interrupted. Slowly, the bureaucratic mask began to slip. Robinson admitted the force was hurting over Waitara. Suddenly, television was giving us a glimpse of how the police, too, suffer after this kind of tragedy.

Face The Nation stands somewhere between last year's forgettable Crossfire and the long-gone Fraser. It is a step up on the unsatisfying fast-food formula of the former; it has yet to come up with the kind of meat Ian Fraser regularly served up through measured dissection of his guests.

They were really made to sweat. Our politicians (and other false gods) have evaded that kind of scrutiny on television for too long. But give Clark time.