KEY POINTS:
Stephen Fry went to Maine to hang out with the lobster catchers in his American travel series.
He learned how to massage a lobster to lull it into a Zen-like state of relaxation, just before it went into the pot. I suspect this to be utter nonsense and
that if you put a lobster in a certain sitting position, it will simply be unable to move. But, aw, didn't those wriggly big sea bugs look cute sitting up nice and quietly?
There is no "aw" factor in Million Dollar Catch (TV3, last night, 7.30) in which the Bluff crayfish catchers "risk life and limb" (theirs and the crays') to make the most of the few months the Chinese market pays the big prices.
You can catch crays all year round, but September is the time you can make $160,000 a trip.
Of course, you might not want to watch people catch crays all year round, or even, I thought, for the 10 episodes promised by Million Dollar Catch.
One of the show's "stars", Vaughn Fisher (I waited for the narrator to say "Fisher by name; Fisher by nature" and was not disappointed) gave his review of the show in the Herald last week. He said of the episodes: "They don't look too bad and they are very informative."
They're an excitable lot, your Bluff cray catcher. The narrator: "They're rough, they're tough and they come from Bluff."
We could have done without these groan-inducing attempts to treat us, and the fisher people, like beings as smart as sea bugs. And there is absolutely no need to attempt to convince us that there is drama worth watching on the wild waters of the southern coast.
You can see why they've felt the need to beat it up.
Pitching a show as watching a bunch of laconic blokes go out on little boats to catch things in cages just isn't going to cut it in a market where really exciting shows like Top Town are on offer - watch a bunch of mostly laconic blokes and sheilas jump on large balls in a swimming pool and fall off.
So it is pitched as another sort of game show: "The race for the million-dollar catch", and "kids, do not try this at home", and "it's life or death".
This silliness is heightened by the real quotes, from the real jokers who say things like, "she's not easy, I tell you". And "wee bit of a dilemma", in response to a deckhand slicing a tendon in his hand. "These things happen on boats," said the skipper.
But Million Dollar Catch works despite the completely unnecessary attempts to impose drama. There's drama enough in the scenery: the sea looks dangerous and thrilling; Fiordland is as always brooding and beautiful. The first episode was stunningly shot.
The characters are compelling and a couple are a bit dotty - we didn't need to be told that there are a couple of clowns; we can figure out that young blokes giving the camera the finger will provide the comic relief.
I wouldn't want to get carried away so I'll go with Vaughn's assessment: It doesn't look too bad and it's very informative.
It's also bloody good, but it might be even better if you turn the sound off during the voice-over bits.
