Television: Mums deliver warm fuzzies for viewers

Who you gonna watch - Mythbusters.

Driving, barbecuing, navigating, reading emotions, loading luggage ... who does it better, men or women?

Are men inherently better than women are at some skills, and vice versa?

Mythbusters, Prime, Wednesday, 7.30pm, is an entertaining documentary show based on scientific skill testing.

This week's programme was about gender myth busting.

Driving, of course, was the biggie with that constant sneer from the men that female drivers just don't rate.

Ten men and 10 women competed on a driving track, all heavily disguised, so it was impossible for judges to see what sex they were as they ripped through their paces: close cornering, reversing, driving in a strict 25mph (40km/h) speed limit.

The programme hosts are entertaining, skilful presenters, which makes it fun to watch.

The grilling (barbecuing in NZ), navigation and map-reading and driving tests showed the skill set was pretty even - no huge discrepancies at all.

In fact only the recognition of what emotion a person's eyes were showing was won hands-down - by the women. The rest were pretty fair and square.

A test of another kind - One Born Every Minute - is a British documentary showing the reality of mums in a hospital labour ward, TV ONE, 8.30pm, Wednesday.

The full-on drama has hugely pregnant mums, breaking waters, rolling contractions and desperate sucks on the Entonox inhaler.

Entonox is made up of half oxygen and half nitrous oxide and is otherwise known as laughing gas. It's used to take the edge off labour pain, and is held in a mostly white-knuckle grip by most mums.

As they roll with their labour, most dads are there too, encouraging and supportive as the midwives call the shots.

This programme is the real thing and though scenes have been edited, it doesn't detract from how it stacks up.

I do wonder just how big an audience this programme attracts in prime viewing time; it wouldn't be everyone's preferred watch.

It's not something I would watch regularly but in saying that when the baby finally makes it - as one midwife said, most slide out like a wee salmon - it imbues watchers with a warm "gosh, that's great" feeling. Well, it did me anyway.

Strange really because there's nothing new under the sun, hence the title. And somehow those first precious minutes for baby, mum, midwife, dad, and for some their granny, big sister and best mate, are star-studded Oscar moments.

As one of the midwives said, it's always the best, the most precious feeling and it never fades - each and every birth is amazing.

So in the documentary TV genre, One Born Every Minute rates right up there, an old subject treated with respect and warmth.