TV review: Bluffer's guide to the South Island

South takes us on a tour of the Lush landscape. Photo / Supplied

I've got no idea why people live where they live," said Marcus Lush, who we all know lives in Bluff - unless we have been living on some other planet - for reasons not obvious to anyone else, or to us. Bluff is possibly another planet.

Why would anyone live there? Lush doesn't know why he moved to Bluff. But he knows he likes it, which is possibly why he lives there. This makes him a lucky man.

He does know this. He is a bit smug about liking to live in Bluff. He doesn't like to leave it, except now he does, because he gets to go off on "this odyssey" which is South (TV One, Sundays.)

Which is about "characters and stuff ... not really known about."

And, "these are those characters, these are those stories, these are those places".

Like all telly travel shows, presented by a character, South is as much about the character presenting the thing as it is about the characters. You couldn't have some nobody jaunting around the country; nobody would watch. But if you don't like Lush you won't be much interested in South because he'd annoy the hell out of you - which would rather defeat the purpose of watching to learn more about the places he visits.

If you don't appreciate his occasional forays into the whimsical, you won't much like his South. I find him occasionally charming - through lack of trying to be, as much as anything. But there is only so much whimsy you can take.

He visited a lighthouse on Dog Island. He said, of lighthouses, "people are into them, eh?" You can't imagine, say, Michael Palin, saying that. You can, just, imagine Palin musing about how he'd imagined that, in lighthouses, people lived in round rooms and slept in curved beds.

That was whimsical. It was also something to say. As Intrepid Journeys has demonstrated all too awkwardly at times, it's hard to think of things to say about places, or lighthouses.

Lush met a farmer who had struggled to make ends meet on the land. "A hardworking, stressful ... lifestyle", but an idyllic one, apparently. "If that makes sense," said Lush, knowing that it didn't really, but it was something to say - that fits with his idea of the idyllic south.

"You can eat your sheep", he continued, valiantly, and "there's no stranger danger, that's for sure."

There was now. There was a strange character in the landscape in his fluoro raincoat getting what passes for over-excited for the laid-back Lush."It's so good, I've just about blown a head gasket."

I wouldn't get quite so carried away, but, to borrow from the delivery of the characters the south breeds, it's not too bad and some people will be into it, eh?

If it's a travel show, there have to be quirky characters. There was a bloke in a tepee he bought with a grant from Winz. He's hoping to make it a tourist attraction. He should hope Paula Bennett doesn't turn up to stay the night. There was a couple who collected buoys and decorated the garden with them. Lush ran in the married women's race at a sports day. He pondered the big questions: Why don't they have coconut shies in the South Island? "I suppose they just don't get the coconuts."

He said, of Bluff: "You could be anywhere, on a good day." Does that make any sense? Not much. But more than having to see Lush with his top off, in a tepee, which might be a new definition of stranger danger in your living room.