KEY POINTS:
What do you get when you mix an Indian, a Chinese, a Korean, an Indonesian, a Sri Lankan, a Malay, a Filipino and a whiteass Kiwi? New Zealand - but you normally never see them all together on the telly.
That has changed with the new, rather clever
sketch show A Thousand Apologies, which debuted last Friday on TV3. It opened with a bunch of pompous TV execs - all white, all terribly self-satisfied - sitting around a conference table, under orders to diversify their content, or else.
They couldn't believe that "they" would want to be on TV, or that "they" were not already represented - on shows like Crime Watch. "Is this primetime or World Vision?" scoffed one. One can just imagine real-life but out-of-touch TV execs having exactly the same conversation. TVNZ's Rick Ellis' thoughts on crime reality programmes come back to haunt him, yet again ...
In a good-humoured way, the show, made by a collective with the same name, poked a stick at Pakeha racists.
One snotty Kiwi bloke went to the dairy, run by a Korean, and sneered he couldn't read the labels because they were written in that funny squiggly language. The Korean offered to translate: kumchi/ pickled cabbage. Yuck, said the Kiwi. Dried seaweed? Yuck. Bottled water, translated? I'll take it, said Dumbo.
The World's Fastest Indian appeared, as a naked Indian running across Salt Lake Desert, and a sushi bar conveyor belt appeared with little suitcases passing along it. Out at the airport, giant sushi rolled along the luggage conveyor belt. Cute.
A young Asian woman was taught to drive badly by a jerk of a Kiwi male instructor. Determined to be a good Asian driver, she was pulled up by a cop who took one look, and said, Oh. I see.
The show ended with a nifty adaptation of Scribe's Not Many, with the Asian gangsta rappers - many in places like Takapuna, West Auckland, all over - boldly alluding to the fact that they are going to take over, while not quite mastering the art of gangsta dance. A hoot. A Thousand Apologies is well-acted and written, shaping up to be the New Zealand answer to Goodness Gracious Me. That it's scheduled in prime-time is a canny move by TV3.
The Millen Baird Show, which follows afterwards, is the same sort of format but much more blokey. A cast of characters who live in Paua Point, including a Black Paua gang, flipped their way through a series of mildly amusing sketches.
My favourite characters were Mr Denial, a young crook who said no to everything, including a male admirer when he went to jail. The flatmate from hell, and haven't we had all one, was the slob who moved in with a passive guy, and took over the house with his selfish sloth.
I liked Horse the gay rugby player and the Black Paua guy who lumbered into the dairy, run by two Indian guys, and menacingly took possession of a carton of eggs. The annoying, enthusiastic bloke who stalked his neighbour trying to sell him a work-from-home scheme was a good touch too, popping up everywhere, finally in his bed. At which point he got decked.
Of the two A Thousand Apologies is the smarter and the funnier. But because they are both sketch shows, with many similarities, the points of difference became a bit of a blur. Maybe that is the point - a melting pot of a society. Both series make a lot of other Kiwi stuff on TV look very pallid indeed.