Warning: Sunday Theatre to throw up to
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.
Tags: Lexus, Montana, Sunday Theatre, Telecom, The Warehouse, TV One, TVNZ
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
I thought the choice of Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette a few weeks back was also a questionable choice for Sunday Theatre which probably would have worked better on a channel like C4 (I none-the-less watched and enjoyed it anyway). P.S Home made pesto – yum!
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:49 am
I was trying to eat my dinner at the time. Had a hard time keeping it down and had to leave the room on occasion. Not really my idea of a comfy night in.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I did not see the programme which is a pity because I really enjoyed the book. I think it is reasonably well know that Lynda La Plante writes thrillers about serial killers not period piece romances. One of the things about the book that makes it so readable is the graphic description of such things as the discovery of the bodies and the detailed autopsies. In fact the book is so well written and so descriptive of these things and the way the characters are reacting to them that you can almost see and smell these things yourself. That is what makes a great novelist and Lynda La Plante is certainly that. Personally I would be very disappointed if a television adaptation of her work failed to capture the graphic images conveyed by her writing.
Paul