Television: Glamour duo bring sad spin on current affairs

TWO presenters, one show, with reporters doing the heavy lifting on the stories, while the glamour duo talk and snigger between themselves and pop out an occasional, pithy one-liner.

Come on, are they (the presenters) actually necessary?

Example, Seven Sharp (TV One, weeknights at 7pm) - touted as a down-home Kiwi news show I can deal with.

But the two grinning presenters, Mike Hosking and Toni Street, leave me cold.

If there's such a thing as a soap opera current affairs show, then this is it, I reckon.

However on Wednesday night when I tuned in, Pippa Wetzell, the co-anchor of Fair Go, had been seconded for the night because Toni had had a medical emergency with one of her children.

Again I was bemused, wondering why they had to have Pippa tucked there beside Mike for the night. Made no sense ...

She didn't do anything. They don't really - they are just there smiling and nodding - though I bet the salaries are decent.

So I watched the show from end to end, and a couple of the stories were mildly interesting.

First up was the former Kimberley Hospital in Levin for the intellectually handicapped closed down in 2006, and now being redeveloped as a prime retirement village.

Central to the story was former resident Brent Swain who had lived there for 12 years.

Swain works for the developer as a labourer, and he was delighted to talk on camera about the old days when he was one of the boys kept out of the public eye.

Now 45, Swain said he remembered the day his parents dropped him off in 1972, saying they would come back another day and get him.

"They never came back. They left me there," he said.

It brought back memories for me of the days when our psychiatric institutions were closed down, and there have been several documentaries highlighting the plight of those former residents. They were big stories and in depth.

Though this piece was cheerful in that Brent was going to be given one of the new retirement houses, it didn't really even skim the surface.

It was once over lightly, probably in case viewers became bored - or worse, switched over ... perish the thought.

However at the close of the story there was nary a comment from the illustrious two, and it was straight into the bombing nightmare in Brussels and a Kiwi lawyer who lived there, saying it hadn't been enough to bring him hurtling home to New Zealand.

Well, that rocked the pair. Not want to return immediately? How very strange, they said.

By then I'd had enough and decided to leave them and their comments to it.

So over and out, no more Seven Sharp pour moi, chaps.