Imagine the scene in the offices of the New Zealand Tourism Board.
"You know the one thing wrong with this country? Everyone here is too damn nice. It's just so boooring! Visitors aren't coming any more. We godda do something.
"Yeah, agreed, but what?"
"I bin thinking: what about a TV series showing we're really, really weird?"
"Nah, they won't buy it. They know we're too nice."
"No, wait. You remember that old film, what was it, 'Deliverance'? We'll base something on that. Bunch of inbred psychos in backofbeyondsville, throw in a bit of incest, murder, a few hippy lezzies, a detective with a troubled past but a heart of gold sorting it all out
"
"You could be onto something. Might just work
. (laughs) nah, they'll never commission it."
But they did.
Ingredients: a set of male characters who are either morally weak, sociopathic or with an IQ in single figures. A cast of female characters who are abused, long-suffering martyrs. Add some comic relief with a bunch of women in container homes kinda led by a kinda earth mother, mockingly characterized as living on crisps and liquorice allsorts and fantasizing about men with larger-than-average penises.
Plot: Psycho McPsychface, the patriarch of an isolated, family community, lives with his children, grandchildren (some of whom are possibly both) and a colony of feral attack dogs in the middle of nowhere. Named with leaden irony Paradise, this tranquil spot, disturbed only by the occasional pointless murder and the disappearance of a pregnant twelve-year old, is invaded by a commune of traumatized women trying to rediscover their inner souls in peace. They just happen to choose the favourite spot of a psychotic Scotsman, whose Mother is buried on the plot, and whose malice is matched only by his sentimentality – with hilarious consequences! No, not really – I don't think any of these things are funny, even in an ironic way. Which is the main reason for not liking this series, which is patronizing, callous and emotionally manipulative by turns.
But the scenery is really, really lovely. Perhaps I'll visit New Zealand with its great countryside and nice people anyway – and by the way they are mostly genuinely nice, and not a bit boring.
