First the RWC and now the Fair Go Ad Awards! Also, British improv in primetime.
TV
2011 Fair Go Ad Awards
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2011 Fair Go Ad Awards (TV1, 7.30pm). It’s been a big year for Fair Go’s Gordon Harcourt. His greatest hits, so to speak, include being punched on the nose by a used car salesman, and saving a couple from financial ruin. “I got a bit weepy over that one, actually,” he says. It was an insurance issue, resolved after Fair Go got involved. It’s the kind of story that keeps the consumer programme in our most-watched list year in, year out. Those big stories, says Harcourt – and Milo. Incorrectly labelled Milo from the Philippines has been a hot topic, too: “That sort of quotidian, daily sort of thing, our viewers love that.” And now Harcourt and the Fair Go team are facing the end-of-year challenge of the 2011 Fair Go Ad Awards, the annual viewer-voted gongs for the best and worst ads on telly. The awards will be beaming out live from a bar in downtown Auckland, a first for the show, although Harcourt admits he has “no idea” why they’ve decided to do the awards in a bar. “It seemed like a good idea – it was opportunism, because all the OB vans are here for the Rugby World Cup.” The show will include the results of the schools competition – this year, the challenge for budding primary and intermediate advertising whizzes is selling cheese; prospective secondary school Kevin Robertses have made ads for a fantasy phone app. But most fun of all are Fair Go’s traditionally terrible spoof ads, where presenters Harcourt, Ali Mau, Phil Vine, Hannah Wallis, Ruwani Perera and Libby Middlebrook throw their dignity to the wind. This year, there is a spoof of the Sky TV RWC camera-man ad, which was filmed at a navy confidence course, and there is a dancing flash mob that has already hit the news: “Climbing up a rope netting and diving in the mud and running around is easy. “I love that stuff,” says Harcourt. “But dancing in public in an airport on a Saturday afternoon? That was absolutely terrifying.”
Fast and Loose (TV2, 9.00pm). Gosh, British improv in primetime on a Wednesday night. Makes a change from American situation comedy anyway. A “pacey mix of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Mock the Week but in a good way”, said the Guardian. The highly amusing Hugh Dennis corrals a batch of British comedians, including The Thick of It’s Justin Edwards, Perrier Award-winner Laura Solon, Greg Davis (who plays sadistic Mr Gilbert in The Inbetweeners), and one-third of the comedy trio We Are Klang, Marek Larwood.
V (TV2, 10.35pm). The second season of the rebooted 1983 series was also its last, which was a shame for Kiwi actor Charles Mesure, who was promoted to series regular just as V was given only another 10 episodes before cancellation. At the end of season one, the aliens, led by sexy Anna (Firefly’s Morena Baccarin) had unleashed red sky and rain, although Anna claims its going to heal the Earth. Hm … Meanwhile, Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) and a plucky band of rebels (including mercenary Mesure) are trying to find out the truth and how they can foil the reptilian invaders. Fun part: when the aliens have dinner. Mmm … rats.
FILM
Devil (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). The stink of M Night Shyamalan is on this one, unfortunately for director John Erick Dowdle; you’ll be waiting for the Shyamalan twist, as it is his story and he produced it. Dowdle is perhaps going for a classic Hitchcockian locked-room mystery, but diffuses the tension by cutting to people outside. The story focuses on five strangers stuck in an elevator on the 21st floor of a high rise who are attacked every time the lights go out. Apparently, it could be the Devil. Or should that be the McGuffin? (2010)
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