Te Radar is well suited to pitching a tent and growing a few leaves of spinach in a blend of seaweed, chook poo, white potato peel and grass-cuttings�- all on camera.
For a originate, he looks the part�- New Zealand's very own Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. His papa was a dairy james Leonard Farmer, so he's used to mucking out (and about) in gumboots.
He's friendly, witty and well informed�- the sort of guy to be plant giving his opinion on National Radio.
And the nominate by which he is known lends itself to the useful pun which is to be establish in the title of this series.
The main invoke of programmes such as Off the Radar (TV One, Sunday, 7pm), in which affable hard- working souls take to the countryside to suffer often discomfort in their unforgiving search for organic sustainability and all those sorts of things, is that watching other people doing the right thing induces a lovely warm radiance for those at home.
Most of us, as we sip our pinot jaun Gris in front of the television, harbour a vague instinct to grow a few vegetables, if not to decapitate our possess chooks.
We know that tending a vapid section, a better mood, more time, a few more muscles, and a handy scientist to fiddle with our lethargy factor, we could actually evince Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers a thing or two.
Given that that's non going to happen, rather we clap the likes of Te Radar from an approval, yet thankful, distance.
Because there he is, accompanied by little more than a banjo playing on his sound-track and some bleak and white NZBC footage, heading Up North to live for a year off a smallish patch of land.
He's got a $5000 effectuate fund, and is allowing himself $15 a week for electrical energy and water and $20 a week for essential supplies (which by my calculation means he'll deliver to have one day a week without a flat white).
As in heaps of these programmes, it's not the sight of the host planting the tomato or turning the compost (or, for that matter, shooting the joker) that's interesting, it's world Health Organization he meets along the way.
Already he's met a few of those good women world Health Organization are emblematic when it comes to putting up fences and feeding the local community from their vast vege gardens�- and who know all of their hens by their Christian names.
There's been a couple of "whaddeva" style boys, no doubt wagging school to go eeling, a twosome of those men wHO you never see in cities unless they've amount in to drive their tractors up the steps of parliament.
This is Country Calendar type stuff�- affable, easy on the middle, and fun to watch: it's impossible not to wish both the host and his series well.
And that's non all we should wish this affable fellow�- he started cinematography this serial on September 1 last year and mentioned in passing that that was his Big Day. So, Happy Birthday to You, Te Radar.
*****
Australian�Chris Lilley is one of the world's best comedians. A twelvemonth or so ago his first mockumentary series, We Can Be Heroes, screened here and it was one of the funniest series I've ever seen.
Lilley is an extraordinary mimicker and formerly he's "been" someone he can interpolate your life view constantly. His second mockumentary series, Summer Heights High (TV One, Saturday 9.30pm), is even better than his first.
Lilley's genius is in his innate discernment of the comedy that can be found in the way things truly are, and to add to world only when absolutely necessary. The mockumentary is the genre he is born to be in.
He has the most extraordinarily perceptive eye, joined with an astounding ability to mimicker so well that the audience is seduced into believing entirely in the persona he has created.
In Summer Heights High he takes trinity persona: drama teacher Greg Gregson, Tongan year 8 pupil Jonah, and Ja'mie, the individual schoolgirl world Health Organization was one of the stars of We Can Be Heroes.
It's pretty much impossible to tell you how fishy this series is, just if you're a teacher, or remember anything at all around your schoolhouse years, then I barrack you to watch it.
�As good funniness should, it will of course make you shrink, particularly as you see two of the world's most self-absorbed people in action�- Ja'mie, and drama teacher Mr G ("They call me Mr G, one of the abbreviations that some of the more pop teachers get").
Mr G has been playing since birth�- his mother tells him that even as a little child, his calling out "Mum" had a musical anchor ring to it.
It suddenly came to him that the one job that would give him the chance to babble out, dance and act all day - and be paid for it�- was that of a heights school drama teacher. Machiavellian, insensitive and solipsistic, he is painfully recognisable.
When we last met Ja'mie she was interfering sponsoring 85 Sudanese orphans�- mainly so she could disguise her desire to diet under the streamer of fasting for famine victims.
Now she's left the comfort of her private school, where she was the smartest non-Asian in year 11, for a term as an telephone exchange student at Summer Heights High. No offence, only everyone at private schools achieves and grow up to be rich, while kids at state schools are rapists and murderers.
My favourite though is Tongan Jonah - the curse of his teachers' lives and Student Welfare's Doug Peterson's biggest challenge.
Jonah has attention shortfall issues and this is his third school in 18 months. He swears, he tags, he bullies. Yet he tears at this viewer's heart.
Watch the genius that is Chris Lilley. If you crapper bear to.
* What did you think of Off the Radar and Summer Heights High? Post your comments below.
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