Burnouts, bourbon and bungee-jumping can't make Bogans interesting

Miah, Anton and Ryan take us to the Tron in Bogans.

What is a bogan? asked the narrator at the beginning of Bogans (TV2, Thursday, 9pm) which is a documentary series about ... bogans. Ooh, ooh, I know! Bogans are people who live in Hamilton and the male ones like doing burnouts and listening to heavy metal and have mullets and drink bourbon and Coke (pre-mixed, out of cans) and the female ones like watching the male ones do burn-outs and listening to heavy metal and don't have mullets and drink bourbon and Coke (pre-mixed, out of cans) and it is obligatory for both male ones and female ones to wear black T-shirts with the names of the aforementioned metal bands emblazoned on them.

That is the stereotypical idea of bogans but there must be a lot more to them if an entire series - based on a book, Bogan: An Insider's Guide to Metal, Mullets and Mayhem by David Snell, aka Doc Bogan, which was based on his thesis on bogans - has been made.

A telly series, a book, a thesis. That's a lot of bogan material to be working with.

"So who are they and what makes them tick?" asked the narrator. I'd have liked to have heard more from Doc Bogan, who has a supporting role, on screen and off, about the tickings. He is a bogan and so is keen on bogans and on observing them, from the inside. You can appreciate that bogans tire of the stereotypes (while also enjoying playing up to them and what are stereotypes but a way of recognising your own?) and fair enough too. Hey, bogans are people too. They might even be people who, like all of us, lead rather dull daily lives and so seek to do slightly more interesting things at the weekend. Hey, bogans go bungy jumping too!

Dr Dave, David Snell, from new TV2 show Bogans.

One of "small but perky" Kate Mate's mates (do not try saying this after five cans of pre-mixed bourbon and Coke) was having a birthday. She wanted to do something exciting for her birthday: "Other than just drinking."

This is perfectly reasonable but a bunch of bogans going bungy jumping, while exciting for them - "They're shitting bricks!" - does not make for particularly exciting watching. Ninety-year-olds go bungy jumping. Whether or not 90-year-old bogans go bungy jumping is a question that will likely remain unanswered. (I would like to learn whether there are any 90-year-old bogans. Or do they grow out of it, the way punks did?) It would have been more interesting to meet a bogan who was, say, a keen gardener, or cook, but perhaps there aren't any.

So, bogans have birthdays too. And we learnt that they sing happy birthday when the cake comes out - even when the cake is decorated with a skull and Viking horns. And that they sing happy birthday as tunelessly as the rest of us.

At the Big Bogan Day Out, the annual burnout contest, there was an espresso van. I'd have quite liked to see a row of bogans ordering at the espresso van: A trim soy latte and two flat whites, no bourbon, thanks. But we got to, fleetingly, meet a bogan chick who, obligingly, said: "I love burnouts, meat, drinking piss." I think she said meat. Burnouts are piles of fire extinguishers - "We are bogans but we like to do it safely" - and billowing, acrid smoke. A burnout contest, said a bogan, smells like "mum's home cooking".

These bogans are likeable and some of them are probably quite interesting but Bogans makes being a bogan seem a dull affair. This is not the fault of the bogans but of a clunky, paint-by-numbers format and a narrator's script burdened with banalities. We can see the bogans taking turns bungy jumping so we don't need to be told: "The others take their turns."

Or that the bogans are now heading home: "Finally it's time to head back to Hamilton." This is leaden stuff and makes being a bogan seem as exciting as mum's home cooking. That script should have had a burnout done over the top of it. And Doc Bogan declined to attend the wet T-shirt contest, which is what the makers should have done.

- TimeOut