Give up the night job

Michael Hallows, Carolyn Taylor and Brad Hills.

Mission: to search for any evidence of shiver-down-the-spine entertainment in new "paranormal investigation" show, Ghost Hunt (TV2, 10pm).

As the team of Carolyn, Brad and Michael drove up to the haunted site of their first investigation, Dunedin's Larnach Castle, they were talking it up as hard as they could. By all accounts, this place was fairly brimming with "cranky ghosts and vengeful spirits".

One of the best tales from the castle staff was ghostly Larnach senior's performance at a play about his life, staged in the ballroom. When his dramatic equivalent shot himself, the ghost weighed in with some special effects using thunder and lightning.

The castle certainly has all the prerequisites for a good ghost hunt, chief among these being, as one interviewee who grew up in the grand old mansion pointed out, it's "cold and scary". Big empty houses tend to be that way.

Still if ghosts were there, our intrepid team were going to find them even if they had to - eeeeek! - wander round the house at night, on their own. Outside the house, tech-head Brad would monitor their activities and, if possible, capture the paranormal ones on camera.

The national skills shortage obviously applies to ghost-busting. How Carolyn passed her Paranormal Investigations qualification is a complete mystery. Before she even got in the house, and still in bright daylight, she was complaining about suffering something called the "bejigglies".

Once inside, she proved to be the wimpiest ghostbuster on the planet. As she had predicted, so blondely, when you're looking round a house in the dark with a torch "everything's going to jump out at me".

Yes, like curtains blowing in the wind, and those museum models of the castle's original inhabitants.

Meanwhile, macho Michael completed the sex role stereotyping. His method was to boldly call the ghost to come forth. Cue gust of swirly wind. Ghost? Or just evidence that the castle is draughty?

It may be spooky wandering round a big empty house at night but it's hard to translate this to television. The effect was not helped by Brad's "helmet cams", designed to make our investigators look as bug-eyed and spooked as possible, but with the rather distracting side-effect of angling up their noses.

The analysis of the investigation was one-sided. The team were excited by film of a hand print in the condensation on Larnach's bedroom window, and took it as a sign of ghostly breaking and entering. Any other, more rational explanations - a tradesman, say, or window cleaner - were not considered.

Brad's filming showed a mysterious blob, which could have been a figure in a top hat, in a very loose, Rorschach blot kind of way.

This, our investigators declared, was hard evidence of the existence of Old Larnach's ghost and at home, we too could draw a conclusion.

Despite his reputation, the ghost is actually rather challenged when it comes to producing blow-you-away special effects. Perhaps, in the digital age, he should give up the haunting and find a day job.

My mission would have to go unaccomplished.