TV: So much to moan about and so little time ...

By GREG DIXON

Legend has it that the Times in London once received a letter which began, "Dear Sir, I wish to complain about everything."

Besides being a hoot, many of us know where this letter is coming from.

The world, after all, is full of the unreasonable, the inappropriate, the unjust ... not to mention the downright stupid.

But while a bunch of us might feel like dashing off a stiff note like that one, the majority of us won't bother - probably because we can't be bothered.

Which is just about the starting point of tonight's Documentary New Zealand programme, The Complainers (8.30, TV One).

As presenter Bill Ralston tells us, for some New Zealanders complaining is a way of life, and they just won't stop until they have explored every avenue and achieved what they set out to achieve.

The documentary has gathered a rich range of whingers, moaners, fault-finders, nit-pickers and denouncers to illustrate that view. No complaint there.

There's Marlene from Christchurch, who started listening to and calling up talkback radio after she broke her heel and now does it every day.

There's Syd, the Dunedin pensioner who has made himself the nemesis of the local city council.

And there's Arthur Clough, a Libertarian (surely the complainers' party) who is prepared to dress up in disguise so that the forces of evil who issue driving licences will not get an accurate electronic record of his mug.

What the documentary doesn't have is much in the way of expert explanation of what makes the complainer tick upstairs - and from the anecdotal evidence on offer here, the true complainer is not like other fellows.

Certainly, the complainers themselves offer little solid thinking on what took them from ordinary moaner to fulltime, no-holds-barred moaner.

Mostly they just deliver justifications for their actions.

Indeed, Dunedin's Frank Macskasy, a Burger King manager with a fixation on news in general and Holmes in particular, at one point makes what seems to be a cry for help for himself and other complainers.

"Why do I do it?" he says to Ralston. "Look, when I find out you'll be the first to know: I really have no idea."

As a rough guide, however, the true complainer seems to be either old, single or odd in appearance and obsessive in nature. The rest we are left to guess.

If we put this small reproach (okay, complaint) aside, The Complainers makes for fascinating viewing as it tracks the moaners' moans through the small industry which bureaucracy has built to deal with them.

By programme's end, they should have your grudging respect, if nothing else.