Michele Hewitson: An unsexy history of NZ

As in any modern soap, the cast has most of the options for earnest steaminess covered.

Passion in Paradise - A Sexual History of NZ (TV One, Fridays, 12.15am and On Demand) is not so much the beast with two backs - although there is plenty of that sort of carry on - so much as a very strange beast. It is a new thing from documentary maker, Bryan Bruce: A "dramamentary".

It is also a rather old thing; he began making it in 2006, so it has been muddled about with rather a lot since then. It is more like what you imagine, should anyone be given to such imaginings, what might happen to Shortland St if the scripts and story lines were given over to the sociology or history department of a university and if the staff of that department were obsessed with shagging.

It is not for prudes. It is about sex. You know this because there is a breathy voice intoning: "Sex. Sex. Sex", at any given opportunity and many opportunities are given. I was very pleased about this; it was helpful.

Otherwise I might have imagined it was about something else altogether - sheep dog trials, say, or rock climbing. It still may include those topics because there is surely scope for a sexual history of sheep dog trials or rock climbing which, for all I know, are very steamy topics.

Aside from that not a bit sexy but really extraordinarily annoying voice muttering in your ear - like having a mosquito in a negligee the bedroom - there are a few clues that things might get a bit ... sexy. There are sexy looks exchanged by the characters and ... more sexy looks exchanged between the characters. Nipples were shown. Then there is bonking. That was another clue.

The drama bit is that a group of students are taking a postgraduate course in Going At It in Godzone (I made that up but, catchy, eh?) which begins with what Maori thought about having sex (they had it) and what Cook's sailors thought about having sex with Maori women (some had it; some didn't) and what the missionaries thought about the "bits and bobs" on Maori carvings (they thought "tsk, tsk" and cut 'em off) and what a very naughty married missionary thought about having sex with a Maori woman half his age (you can guess about that.)

The students are asked what they think about various bits and bobs.

What would Maori women find attractive? "Anything big." What the hell were those missionaries and the odd missionary's wife up to? "Even the pious had sexual passions."

The lead characters are the lecherous lecturer, played with shaggy-haired enthusiasm by Errol Shand and a student, Zoe, who is given to having one night stands and then regretting them. This doesn't deter her from flashing cleavage, licking her lips and making eyes at the lecturer. She got hideously drunk at a staff and student get together.

He took her back to his apartment so that he could call her a taxi which is a marginally more original euphemism than "come up and see my etchings". It is Zoe who seduces the lecturer but it's still all fairly dodgy and will end in tears, or in an employment court.

As in any good, or really bad, modern soap, most of the other possible options for earnest steaminess are covered: There is a lesbian couple, a student who moonlights as an escort, a gay guy, a homophobic guy who is Chinese and is bonking his best friend turned girlfriend, a Maori woman.

All of which requires some fairly contortionist feats of editing. How do you get from the lesbian couple discussing having a baby - "So what lucky guy gets to be the father?" - to the hetero couple getting hot in the kitchen? Cut to the hetero guy chopping a carrot.

I have no idea who the audience for all of this deeply unsexy sex, sex, sex might be.

Perhaps a use for it will be found in teaching sex ed at secondary schools - although I imagine secondary school kids would find it about as cringe-making as I did, which is to say as cringe-making as sex ed at secondary school was, and as boring as third form history.

- TimeOut