Colin Hogg: Between a frock and a hard place

Faye Marmont and Kevin Berkahn from <i>Meet the Frockers</i>, which could have been fun but failed to deliver.

Week two of the great viewing drought found me in a desperate state, prepared to look at almost anything on television for the sake of entertainment.

In my wretched and far-reaching search, I even happened upon a couple of local series, both in the innocent flush of their first runs, though I knew there must be something awfully wrong with them to have been sent out to screen in the wilderness of the summer holiday zone, when few view and even fewer want to advertise.

The first of these unloved shows touched down on Wednesday (TV One, 8pm) with the unpromising title of Meet the Frockers. It turned out - surprise, surprise - to be a reality series about brides and especially the poor devils who make their dresses for them.

It could have been fun; it should have been fun. Ancient Auckland king of the wedding gown Kevin Berkahn certainly gave it his best shot, alternating between wails of camp delight and bitchy little barbs.

But an oddly mean-spirited voiceover and the inescapable feeling of having seen this sort of thing somewhere before, but much better, undercut the show's thin premise and even thinner charms.

And you pretty much know what's going to happen anyway with a show like this - bride wants dress, bride gets dress, Kevin shrieks, "It's become such a bloody drama."

For what turned out to be the sight of even more people camping it up and getting all dramatic, I watched the final episode of the other local show in the wilderness, Showtime (TV One, Saturday, 8pm).

This series originally launched some time back in a mid-week slot but, failing to hit expected ratings, it was swiftly pulled, shelved and rescheduled to breathe its last in the dead zone.

It was probably a merciful death. Showtime was an odd old-fashioned sort of series - a fly-on-the-wall peek inside the creaky worlds of a couple of local repertory theatres.

And that might have been faintly entertaining except it turned out not to be and not helped in the least by an earnest voiceover forever trying to pump up the drama as the Howick Little Theatre and the Otamatea Repertory Theatre frantically rehearsed their ways to their respective opening nights.

"Can the cast pull off the performance of their career?" cajoled the anxious English-accented voiceover - and of course they could, though I'd long since ceased to care.

Thinking a decent documentary might raise my spirits, I switched to Prime at 8.30pm for something promising called The Mighty Mississippi With Sir Trevor McDonald.

And when I say promising, I mean I fancied a doco about the legendary river of America - as you might after watching the Otamatea Repertory Theatre's version of The Three Little Pigs.

But the problem wasn't the big river part of The Mighty Mississippi With Sir Trevor McDonald so much as the dreary old presenter.

Bringing neither interesting perspective nor welcome light touch to the proceedings, Sir Trev, an elderly ex-ITV newsreader, made me feel I was venturing through New Orleans and up that magical river in the company of an old bumble bee, droning on.

The drought continues.