TV: Cake, cash and a busty blond

Most people are susceptible to temptation. In fact some of us should have Oscar Wilde's "I can resist everything except temptation" tattooed on our arms.

So a television series about the subject promises to be diverting entertainment. Yet the new serial The Temptation Game (TV One 9.40 pm) is not as enticing at might be expected.

The programme is hosted by Angus Deayton, familiar for his role as Richard Wilson's long-suffering neighbour in One Foot in the Grave. Trivia buffs might also be interested to know that Deayton began his showbiz career playing fall guy to comedian Rowan Atkinson on tour, and that Richard Curtis used their experiences as the basis for his film The Tall Guy, in which Deayton's character is played by Jeff Goldblum.

The Temptation Game opens with a light send-up of long-running game show The Generation Game, with Deayton watching covetously as piles of cream cakes, cash and a bikini clad model slide past him on a conveyor belt.

The possibilities are apparent when Deayton, a likeable host, commences to explain what temptation is and how it gets us every time.

Again, on the trivia front, one of the most interesting facts to emerge from the episode is that it was Salman Rushdie in his early days as an advertising copywriter who penned the cream-cake line, "Naughty But Nice" - more fat war than fatwa in those days, eh?

Yep, Deayton's intros are okay, it's the example showcases that lack interest.

The first programme, entitled The Tempters, purports to show us four examples of people who are just that.

The first is Rosalie Osias, an ageing "busty blond bombshell" from New York City who sells the services of her law firm through a series of highly unorthodox ads, featuring mainly her own "best assets" (her words not mine) and a few saucy lines.

Number two is a lad looking for love who discovers that an ad exec is better at selling him than he is.

Next up is Joe Flynn who makes a tidy living conning journalists into buying his exclusive stories, the catch being that he has lifted most of them from info in the papers anyway.

Finally, the programme moves on to Sheffield-born Ian Long, who, it appears, is to American infomercials what Suzanne Paul is to Kiwi ones.

He can tempt people into buying anything. You know coals to Newcastle, fridges to Eskimos ...

Could he sell an All-Blacks commemorative Weetbix tin to a New Zealander?

The problem is that none of the items are very tempting - neither the people nor the subject matter.

Perhaps forthcoming episodes in the series may throw up more interesting subjects. But as far as episode one goes, viewers could find themselves following Oscar Wilde's other observation: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it" - in this case, the temptation being to switch off.