Shush to the spoilsports

Please stop telling me what happens on next week's show, writes PETER CALDER.

I had managed to miss it once, blocking my ears and singing loudly because I couldn't find the remote to hit mute.

But the second time it caught me by surprise. I walked into the room just as the trailer was showing.

It was for part two of The Swap, the thriller on Lexus Sunday Theatre about a house swap which became a cunning sting.

I'd rather enjoyed part one, even if it was relatively routine. I felt drawn in and was looking forward to part two. The trailer, however, contained a shot in which Tom Forrester (Michael Maloney) was crowing that "we might even get rich!"

The implication was clear: the man we thought was the victim of a crime looked to be in league with the perpetrator in a fraudulent conspiracy.

My heart sank. The anticipation of a good Sunday night's viewing seemed to have gone flat.

It was not the first time I'd been distressed by news I didn't want to hear. Although I watch little television and when I do, I usually mute the ad breaks or fast-forward through them, having recorded the show I am constantly distressed at trailers (they call them promos in TV-land) which give away key developments in the plot of an upcoming programme.

The excitement which attends on my regular weekly appointment with the modern American gothic soap, Six Feet Under, is often threatened by revelations in the promos. To add insult to injury, that show promos next week's episode an instant after this week's last frame fades to black, so even in the midst of the programme I am not safe from having the dramatic carpet pulled out from under me.

And our household's Coronation Street fan says she can keep up with what's going on by watching the promos.

I complained on behalf of trailer-weary viewers everywhere to TVNZ, but while I awaited their response I watched part two of The Swap and some of the wind fell out of my sails. The trailer had been artfully (I won't say cleverly) compiled to mislead us - a fact the company's spokesman underlined in his response with more restraint than I perhaps deserved.

That artifice raises other questions, of course: how might the show's creators feel about having their work edited to mislead? And if a viewer thinks he has been told what's going to happen is he any less disappointed than if he has been?

Yes, I was wrong on the specific but the general outrage remains.

The promo for last week's episode of Six Feet Under made it unambiguously plain that Brenda's bothersome brother has a major meltdown. Any fan of the show will have seen it coming, but every one of us would rather not see it till it comes.

TVNZ spokesman Glen Sowry assures me that the company's promo makers are internationally recognised, award-winning, experienced directors who work hard to attract an audience to the programme.

Which is all well and good.

But in making a programme attractive to potential viewers, they need to have a care for the actual ones, the shows devotees who are going to watch whether it gets a promo or not. It's an old adage in any business: try to get new customers by all means, but make sure you don't lose the existing ones. We were here first.