KEY POINTS:
Every now and then TVNZ delivers a masterpiece which rivets us to the screen and makes us say, "That was great television". Such was Mark Sainsbury's interview on Close Up with Linda Sauaki, the mother of a young man who, just one week earlier, had been sentenced to
jail for stabbing another youth to death.
I have seen enough of the usual suspects rounded up to comment every time some crisis hits the leafy suburbs, and I am sure viewers were tired of hearing my opinions. That's why I quit television and radio commentary.
There's rent-a-quote for every issue - Christine Rankin, Bob McCroskie, Garth McVicar, Mai Chen, Gary Gottlieb, David Farrar, Russell Brown, et cetera, ad nauseam. It's predictable, therefore unchallenging.
But Close Up presented another angle. Perhaps anticipating that some of us middle-class, middle-aged parents would tut-tut about irresponsible parenting, Sainsbury gave us a parent who, in her own words, could have been considered "strict", but nonetheless is now racked with suffering because one of her dearly loved children has taken another's life.
She, with her family, is a victim, but not the sort that Sensible Sentencing would willingly represent.
It is always a risk putting someone like this on telly. If they blame the "system" for their kids "falling through the cracks", we turn away in disgust. If they dissolve in floods of tears, we turn away in discomfort. But Sauaki was a picture of tightly controlled grief and emotion, and all the more powerful for it.
Sainsbury's gentle yet unflinching probing of this stricken woman forced us to confront our prejudices and re-examine our swiftness to judge. At the end of the item, I was in tears.
I hope every mother who, like me, has muttered about slack parents, watched this interview. When we lived in Auckland, my teenagers had these nightmare, out-of-control parties with crowds of gatecrashers coming up the drive and down from Mt Hobson.
That was 15 years ago. Thankfully, only possessions were stolen, no lives were lost, and after that we hired Matrix Security to guard all entrances. But I listened to Linda Sauaki and thought, there but for the grace of God.
But these interviews don't just land on a presenter's desk. All credit to the producer, Nicky Grant, who, armed with only a newspaper photograph of Mrs Sauaki, drove to Manurewa and asked around until she tracked her down. This is real journalism - not sitting on your bum in an office but getting out and talking to people, and telling their stories.
Which is why it's such a shame that One News is so cheesy. How many others, like me, give up after the first five minutes, change to the cooking channel, and don't bother to flick back to Close Up?
News should be delivering an audience to the magazine programme, not driving viewers away.
Whose idea was it to have Lisa Owen wagging her finger at us night after night from the Auckland Casino, or the house where a woman died after her power was disconnected, lecturing us into a social conscience?
It was like Eva Radich with pictures, when she fills in on National Radio (though Radich is excellent on the Concert Programme, obviously her milieu).
And when will someone tell Wendy Petrie the word "hours" has only one syllable, a distraction which drove me crazy when she reported cave-side on Dr Brewer? "Live", she needlessly kept telling us; live but breathless.
Which brings me to my new fellow columnist Bill Ralston (welcome aboard) and his attack on TVNZ last week.
What he wrote needed to be said and yes, it did clear a lot of the air about the state broadcaster and the stuff-ups which heretofore have been blamed on Ian Fraser and Ralston. But can we let them get on with it now?
The organisation has reported a financial loss for the first time since it was commercialised, so any further carping is rather like kicking a man when he's down.
As Ralston said, it is impossible for TVNZ to fulfil dual roles by being a public service broadcaster and delivering a commercial return to a money-hungry government. The best thing National could do, if it got into power, would be to halt this schizophrenic status.
In 1998, under Rick Ellis, TVNZ posted a profit of around $68 million but the National Government had appointed a pet board which obligingly poured all that money into the consolidated fund.
TVNZ could be a commercially successful state-owned enterprise and put its profits back into great New Zealand programmes.
I've said this before, but it's time to stop digging up the tree and examining its roots trying to figure out why it won't grow.
Oh yes, and it was great to see Holmes back, on form, later the same night. He just doesn't lose his touch.
