TV Review: A good old dose of cultural stereotypes

Homegrown bro'Town leaves no ethnicity unscathed.

Morningside 4 life? Well no, not for life, as it so often turns out in love, jail terms - and animated adult comedies of dubious taste and no-holds-barred satirical intent.

The Naked Samoans have called time on their successful and ground-breaking creation, bro'Town (TV3, Sundays), last night's episode the first in the show's fifth and ultimate season.

The episode, titled Samson's Story, signalled that the team have no intention to go soft on us before the final curtain comes down.

The show returns with the same pungent mix of scatological puerility - you really wish they wouldn't - and gleeful revelling in what we all rather enjoy: a good cultural stereotype or two, no make it three, four ... hopefully, no ethnicity shall be left unscathed.

We're a big melting pot in the country's biggest city and thankfully someone can make fun of our differences and get away with it.

As well as the usual target of mealy-mouthed cultural sensitivity, last night's episode had a few other worthy creeds in its sights, from the traditional Pacific Island minister and his flock to men's self-assertion movement, the "Promise Guys", and big-business pastoralism as practised by one "Ryan Tamati".

But first we had to visit God in his lava-lava and Club Med-style heaven, leading to the inevitable poo jokes and dad's unnatural activities with a box of cereal. Yes, guys, we know you can get away with anything but a bit of self-censorship of the baser instincts really would improve the show.

So would a bit more intelligibility. It took quite some commitment to figure out there was some kind of narrative in there somewhere, something to do with the "ministerial" origins of Sione's baby brother Samson. And what was all that Cockney rhyming slang about?

Never mind, there were some good bits. Who better to send along to the born-again patriarchs, the Promise Guys - "some bullshit men's crew", as one of the bros so pithily put it - than sleazy, boozy old dad in his singlet and builder's crack, for a reliably brief flirtation with sobriety and family responsibility.

Sione's conversion to a "Destiny's child" under the Grand Arch-Bishop Pope Tamati afforded the episode's best lines and oh-so-unsubtle sneers.

Taking the shine off some well-deserved targets is where bro'Town has always been at its best.

In calling time on the show rather than running on into its dotage, I suppose the bros have an excuse for never growing up.