I love Sundays, the best day of the week for sharing the comfort of home with family and friends. Last Sunday evening I roasted a chicken, we enjoyed it with homemade pesto and fresh salad leaves picked straight from the garden. Grace, the household’s 13 year old has been working on a school project about Mexico and she treated us to a national specialty, steaming mugs of hot chocolate spiked with cinnamon and chilli.
Ah what family happiness I thought as my university aged other daughter and I curled up on the couch for TV One’s Sunday Theatre.
‘Above Suspicion’ is based on a Lynda La Plant best seller. The television drama followed a group of detectives on the trail of a twisted serial killer; it was described as a crime-thriller and sported a pretty hefty series of warnings before it began.
Fore-warned for sure but in no way was I prepared for what the censors at TVNZ pass as suitable free-to-air entertainment. The drama contained references, descriptions and re-enactments of mutilation, incest, and child rape, close ups of a naked corpse autopsy, an as-live suicide and I’d say pretty much every type of vileness imaginable.
I was reeling by the time I hit the off-button. The 19 year old had voted with her feet much earlier. But now I’m confused, the Sunday Theatre used to be a television highlight, an evening of high quality, challenging drama. It was televisions’ finest hour sponsored by high-end brands like Montana and Lexus.
TVNZ did communicate that the material was extremely graphic but none of the previews, on their website or others alluded to quite how disturbing it would be. The AO gave me no indication either. Audiences are abandoning free-to-air TV in great numbers, so is this no-hold-bar content an attempt to woo them back? I wonder how advertisers like Telecom and the Warehouse feel about being sandwiched in between such icky stuff for a premium rate? The tele will stay off next Sunday and as for Black and Green chocolate, the current sponsor, I’ll be leaving you on the shelf.
