Latest version of NZ history unsettling

History, we are told, is a construct and often tells us as much about the time of its writer as the past. If this is the case, then The Unauthorised History of New Zealand(TV2, last night, 10pm) is unsettling viewing.

It was not just presenter Jeremy Wells' glowering and pontificating at historic sites, or his feigned berserker attacks on Hector's dolphins and innocent gorse bushes that put the frighteners on in last night's start to this new chronicle of our nation.

The mission of this illegitimate version appears to be to show Kiwis of the past as self-conscious, craven, naive and - worst of all, or funniest depending on the spirit in which you wish to take this romp through the good old days - inescapably naff.

Warning: if this first episode on the theme "Visitors" is anything to go by, it is not for those with a fragile sense of nationhood or those looking for a feelgood nostalgia trip. Wells is a master of ego deflation, so we wouldn't expect anything less than a full dissection of our most tosser-ish tendencies.

It began promisingly enough, with Wells in best mock David Attenborough mode, perched on one of those imposing dunes flanking the entrance to the Hokianga Harbour and tracing the nation's genetic mix from Kupe, to Europeans bringing "booze, syphilis and Toby jugs", to latter-day immigrants arriving in "mighty steel waka" at the airport.

But it soon became apparent this is a rather lazy forage through the past. Its humour is built mainly on the cheesiness which is an inbuilt feature of archival film and video footage, especially any showcasing the once standard Kiwi male summer uniform of walk shorts, walk socks and sandals. Easy pickings.

Some of the mockery, however, was commendably creative. You might not remember it this way, but Bill Clinton's visit to our shores began with an official welcome from the Prime Minister of the day: "President Clinton, described by his own wife as 'a hard dog to keep on the porch', kept his plus-size predilections in check when welcomed by our own famous chunky honey, Jenny Shipley," Wells told us. Excellent. If you'd been allowed to write history essays this way in school you might have been tempted to take the subject.

As an excuse to air archival footage and mostly have a good laugh at the pomposity and naivety of our forebears - or more worryingly, ourselves in the not too distant past - TUHONZ gets a pass mark. Footage of former Auckland mayor Sir Dove Meyer Robinson trying to control a crowd of screaming Beatles fans and the arrival of KFC's Colonel Sanders - "Dalai Lama of the deep-fried" - were some of the highlights.

Christchurch came in for a fair drubbing but Wells, always unwelcome in Gore, has never been one to shy away from insulting the South Island. This show alone might explain some of the divisions in the country exposed so tellingly by the weekend's election results.

But the smart-arse insults, no matter how creatively articulated, started wearing a bit thin after a while. And the show lost the plot with the bit on the "great sheep migration to New Zealand" and the dolphin for dinner routine. A round-up of immigrant pests - backpackers, gorse, Suzanne Paul dancing the Blue Monkey - was just a list of cheap shots.

It's early days in our bastard history, but so far Wells' well-honed instinct for the absurd, his genial superciliousness and fearless posing of the outrageous question are all talents going begging in this show.