Best of the Blogs: Paul Casserly: Shame on You TVNZ

Jason Hoyte, Leigh Hart and Jeremy Wells in 'The Late Night Big Breakfast'.

It’s been a busy year so we can’t blame you if you missed some of our blogs. Over the next two weeks, we’ll bring you the best of our blogs from across entertainment.

Leigh Hart's latest comedic outing Late Night Big Breakfast is one of the best things on television, but it pretends to be the worst, writes Paul Casserly.

In Leigh Hart's latest comedic outing - a twisted replica of Good Morning called The Late Night Big Breakfast - the guests stare off in bemused confusion as the tinder dry comic team of Hart, Jeremy Wells and Jason Hoyt riff madly on subjects that veer from soft furnishings to "anal seepage".

The "seepage" exchange was with an alleged "family health advocate" and was as inappropriate as anything you'll see on TV, outside of the Family Health Diaries, to which this oddly engaging show owes much.

This is comedy inspired by the works of Mary Lambie, by the powers of magnetic underlays and by the sort of easy listening music performed in rest homes. It's informed by infomercials.

It's also one of the best things on TV, pretending to be one of the worst, and is a refreshingly unpredictable squall in the current dull climate of risk adverse programming.

Hart is a master at having a bob each way, appearing to be dishing out a scathing critique on consumer mad TV, while at the same time being un-ashamedly commercial and mercenary. His own beer label Wakachangi even has an extended plug that seems like a gag.

He also takes aim at TV One's marquee show/brand Masterchef with a parody, "Master Cook", which made some sharp observations about the overuse of the diary-cam type recap interviews that plague reality TV like a particularly virulent strain of Ebola.

"I'm really feeling under pressure, in the kitchen and having to do these diary cams", laments Hoyte during a "quiche challenge" with Hart and guest contestant Jax Hamilton from Masterchef.

Wells, meanwhile, is also doing the diary cam despite playing a judge and successfully channeling Josh Emett ; "I'm not sure why I'm doing these diary cams, seems like a waste of my time."

And that's what TLNBB is, a glorious waste of our time. ...

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- nzherald.co.nz