Holmes stretching to fill 60 minutes

Daylight saving doesn't start for another week, but it was as if someone had already been mucking about with the clocks. There was Paul Holmes on Holmes at 8.30pm. And there he was signing off an hour later. Here was a face who had previously only existed for 30 or so minutes - at 6.30pm when the Holmes show first shook up our watching habits on TVOne - now popping up in the mid-evening.

It felt decidedly odd. Holmes thought so too. Stumbling over some words early on, he quipped: "I'm not used to being up this late at night."

Having ditched its star acquisition from an early evening nightly slot after minuscule ratings, Prime has decided to try to recoup its investment by giving him - and reporters Steve Hopkins and Alison Mau - an hour on Thursday nights.

Watching Holmes' new hour-long incarnation ... well the time didn't exactly fly by. It just sort of glided past slowly with the occasional risk of a stall.

It didn't help that the three main stories - engaging as they were in parts - felt drawn-out and heavy on the padding.

The panel discussion finale almost risked bursting to life, except participants John Banks, Michelle Boag and Nandor Tanczos all reverted to type while looking like a dreadful mix-up in a dinner party seating plan. Though we know now that Tanczos does wash his dreadlocks.

It started with Holmes interviewing the three oldest kids of Donna Awatere Huata and Wi Huata. The parents come up for sentencing next week for their fraud convictions.

The trio were a study in humiliation and damaged pride. But stretching the piece out over two segments extended it too far.

So did the subsequent items. Mau and Hopkins went behind the scenes at election night political bashes, which while amusing for its irreverence and its shots of other network reporters standing around waiting and Mau raiding the food tables, it didn't know when to stop.

Hopkins' piece comparing the cases of two transsexuals - one who had her gender reassignment done privately in Thailand, the other the 73-year-old Vicki Harvey waiting for a taxpayer-funded operation locally - also staggered along barely straying from its two lavishly made-up talking heads.

It made you realise the one big advantage of an hour-long Holmes. You get a bigger variety of victims per programme.

But the new-format Holmes is going to need more than a longer casualty list to sustain it. It might actually need a new format rather than a double dose of the old one.

* Holmes - 8.30pm Thursdays on Prime.