KEY POINTS:
What: Balls of Steel, Distraction
Where: TV2 9.25pm, 10.15pm Friday
Balls of Steel and Distraction are television's version of a gentle massage. No effort is required, no issues are explored, and there's nothing challenging anywhere near them.
Or, it's too early in the evening for the network to
give up and screen infomercials, given these are not slots for a programmer to waste anything aimed at the audience numbers likely to jar major advertising dollars loose.
Balls of Steel has no connection to the Swedish ball bearing industry, nor to any developments in France's favourite village sport, petanque.
It's about celebrating the staunchness needed to go out and embarrass, annoy and confuse people. Equally, it could sum up exactly what's required for a sober viewer to see it out to the end.
It's English and exhumes Allen Funt's Candid Camera, a show revolutionary and funny in the late 50s, growing old and finally cold in the 60s. Forty-plus years on, the struggle to coax anything fresh from the corpse is part of the new show's best drama.
Contestants vie to be the most outrageous. Their names describe their approach. The Annoying Devil puts "For Sale" signs on people's houses, to generate phone traffic at their workplace. The Black Militant Guy is always outraged. Giving him the white pieces at a chess match is a horrible mistake. The Big Gay Following makes a very special request of the people he tracks around town. The winner gets a trophy. Do not ask for a description of this item.
A few mildly bright moments flickered through a certain amount of dross. One was the man woken at 4am by someone trying to sell him double-glazing. His grabbing a baseball bat had promise. But nothing happened. The contestant ran.
There was the astonishing willingness of young men to allow another contestant to establish whether steel was involved, in exchange for a £10 note.
A contestant went after Americans and US celebrities. No chance. They'd seen it all before, with a casting agent getting off the show's best line, to the person taking an inordinate amount of time preparing to read a short script. "You need to be auditioning for a mime company."
It ends this week. Hope exists. More series are made, and likely to turn up, although no local dates are available
Distraction is a US show with an English host, Jimmy Carr, of Destruction UK and Destruction US. It slots in at the level of one of Auckland's more undemanding pub quizzes.
The gimmick is something else happens while contestants try to answer the questions; ping-pong balls are fired at them, they have to share a phone booth with nudists, swallow ice cold drinks.
Balls of Steel has a sharper edge, in its celebrating embarrassment. Distraction is much softer. Neither of them makes any claim to being anything beyond something to provide colour - and a few laughs - at the end of a working week.