Powerpoint: Old TV rules, OK?

By MICHELE HEWITSON

The only thing more tedious than showing off about sojourns in parts foreign is showing off snaps of sojourns in parts foreign.

But there is a point — truly — to my imparting the information that we were recently forced to slum it at a resort in balmy Vanuatu.

And the point is that Vanuatu, with its mix of French, British and Melanesian influence, is where old Australian television programmes go to die.

How old? Well, the one we got mildly addicted to was at least 15 years old and screened at Gin and Tonic o'clock every night. Rafferty's Rules, a courtroom drama set in Manly, stars an actor, John Wood, who still graces Australian (and New Zealand) small screens. You probably know him better as Sergeant Tom Croydon of the cop show Blue Heelers.

Not a lot happens in Rafferty's very small, very local world. He's a magistrate from the wrong side of tracks with a taste for social justice. He lives alone with a cat called Rhubarb. Both he and cat are slightly overweight. Rafferty, but not the cat, is constantly trying — and constantly failing — to have a meaningful relationship with something other than the end of a beer bottle.

Yet we fell for Rafferty, in a way that affected us a little like the local kava: it tasted slightly peculiar on the first sip, but when persevered with was mildly soporific, made us giggle and led to a general feeling of goodwill to human kind and old television programmes.

It is, in other words, gentle drama. Whimsical, even, as John Wood has said, without ever being mawkish.

Its other great charm is its location: it belongs firmly in local television-land. It wasn't local to us, obviously, but that it was made locally and lovingly with attention to vernacular and issues of the time shine through it.

Remind you of anything closer to home?

We, well-travelled through remote control visited lands, turned up our noses at Shortland Street when it first screened. We didn't, surely, look like this (Kirsty's hair), sound like that (Marge's "mind your beeswax.") Now TVNZ has a draft charter which might well have read like a draft charter for a local soap set, say, in a hospital: "[It] will contribute to a sense of national purpose and identity and a pride in New Zealand's diversity and extend the range of ideas and experiences available to New Zealanders."

There's been little enough to crow about since Shortland Street and, whether or not you keep up with the changing hairstyles, it counts as a local television success. Now returning head of comedy and drama at TV One, John McRae, reckons we're almost grown-up enough now to aim for the giddy heights of our own Coronation Street (Marge saying "mind your beeswax, by gum?") As dire as that sounds he might be onto something: a drama set in a street of state houses in Otara to appeal to the Coro Street crowd — gritty realism over reality television? At least it would involve actors.

One of the reasons Rafferty's Rules struck me as such good television was that it had acting in it. Good acting, done by trained actors who had cut their acting teeth on stages in front of live audiences.

In an age (well, it feels like an age) of voyeurism posing as entertainment, where untalented attention-seekers who will do anything as long as the video camera is switched on, Rafferty and his ilk are beginning to look less like nostalgia and more like compulsory training modules for aspiring drama makers.

I should mention that Rafferty's was a ratings failure. It was thought, according to Wood, to be "too intellectual."

Won't be a problem here. Me and Marian, we'll simply tie you to your couch and make you watch what's good for you.