Slick world of chasing, tough talking and fun

Street Legal's Charles Mesure, Katherine Kennard and Jay Laga'aia.

By FIONA RAE

Some days, you can't move for television crews round my way - Being Eve around the corner, The Zoo up the hill, ads down the road and, blow me, if that isn't a house over the back on Street Legal. Talk about local drama.

Street Legal is so local that if you're not careful a trip to Ponsonby Rd or the waterfront for a coffee could land you a part in a scene where characters actually sit down.

The world that is created in Street Legal, which ends its second season tonight, is not officially Ponsonby Rd. It's a slick and gorgeous summery world of well-cut suits, modern apartments and flash bars. Even the underworld of nightclubs and massage parlours could have come from the pages of Urbis.

And it's fun. There's loads of chasing, running, and tough talking in the interview room. Nobody can sit still, not even the cameras. There's cool Don McGlashan guitar music and, best of all, there are hardly ever any courtroom scenes, despite the title.

The lack of legal business, which is far too boring to bother with, has been a cute running joke during the series.

"An actual paying client," sighed Carl Bland's New Age, dope-smoking Peter Wyeth last week. "I knew it was too good to be true."

Poor bugger. He has to put up with Joni (Katherine Kennard) and David (Jay Laga'aia) swanning off on their latest wild goose chase and, because he doesn't want to be an autocrat, tries to be supportive.

Wyeth & Associates has an uncertain future as Peter and his ex-wife Adie, played by Louise Wallace, argue over selling the business in tonight's finale. Wallace's character has largely been a sounding-board for Joni this season, but she gets a chance to stretch her acting muscles tonight, in a Weakest Link sort of way.

Most of the characters, though, are peripheral to the triumvirate of Joanie, David and Kees Van Dam (Charles Mesure), who whirl around each other like spinning tops, occasionally crashing and getting back up again.

It seems, however, that Joni has made her choice and, frankly, I'm glad it was Kees, because David calling her "Jo Jo" all the time was getting really annoying.

Besides, isn't Kees the more heroic? He gets to beat up the bad guys (Ray Woolf as a woman-hating strangler!) and save Joni all at the same time.

The cut-it-up, keep-it-moving style of the programme hasn't always worked, occasionally ending up like a clunky jigsaw. And the oops-I've-dropped-the-camera cityscapes are slightly dizzying.

But off it will go again, our most sophisticated and self-assured action drama that is doing the business in Australia, too.

And there's a big ending tonight as psycho Jack Clifford (Andrew Binns), who took to prison life like a duck to water and has the tatts and the muscles to prove it, starts making threats and sends Kees on a wild goose chase of his own.

* Street Legal, TV2, 8.30 pm