KEY POINTS:
The dark, gothic strain which seems to run through Kiwi screen arts has infiltrated a new genre. Lurking in the schedules on a Sunday morning on TV3 is what might be called the "reality telly of unease".
Waka Reo combines an assault course in Maori language and a Survivor-style elimination competition: 14 contestants are picked off over the weeks until a winner remains to collect $10,000 and presumably all the benefits of their new fluency.
But the players seemed a little unsure what they were in for as they were filmed for their introductions against a brick wall in the noir-ish setting of a back street in Christchurch. So far, so sinister.
Some said they were in it for the chance to learn the language, others were upfront about the money and the fame: "I quit my job so I could be on TV."
They were loaded on to a small boat taking them who knew where: one hopeful guessed "a big mansion with spa pools", a la Rockstar or America's Next Top Model.
No, they might be on telly, but glamour was not to be part of the package. The group was sent off to a country marae in the hills, there to sleep communally for weeks on end - "I'm putting a padlock on my sleeping bag," said one lad fearing for his honour - and undergo total immersion language teaching for eight hours a day.
As the TV students were sent clambering up steep hills through the mist and rain, on an immunity-style challenge, you felt for them: this was more the setting for Vincent Ward, balaclavas and despair.
This is language learning as a character-building exercise, with intimidating elimination challenges in a darkened room. If I were one of the 14, I'd be less worried about being kicked off and more concerned that I might never make it back.
The discipline is all a show for the telly, of course, but for those who remember marae visits as educational, warm and fun, it seems rather a shame to mix up such an experience with the reality telly formula of bitchiness and overriding ethos of me, me, me.
Meanwhile, those of us who have been lying awake at night wondering whether we could possibly handle any more "celebrities" in skimpy sequinned numbers trying to sashay over the dance-floor, had a helpful refresher course on Saturday night, Get Ready to Dance with the Stars.
As we got to relive Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt clumping round with his feet of concrete and shirts resembling birthday cake wrapper, you could see why TV One thinks we're better off prepared.
But far from having a viewer all agog for more, this worked as aversion therapy of the sternest kind. There was Rodney Hide moving his partner around the dance floor with all the grace and insouciance of a piece of earth-moving machinery. Then there was far too much information from that judge about the effect of Shane Cortese on her hormones and from Georgina Beyer on the attributes of Nicky Watson.
Oh all right then, there were the charmers: Beatrice Faumuina's regal bearing and nifty tosses of her somewhat slighter male partner; Norm Hewitt's sparkly shirt and confession that, liberated from the faked ferocity of the rugby pitch, "in dancing I was able to be me". Yeah, take that macho rugby head New Zealand.
But then we got a sneak preview of series three contestants, including Suzanne Paul sharing with us her "hot flushes". No amount of forewarning can help to steel a soul for this.
