Harry S01E01-04 (TV3, 2013)

After a heads-up last year, Harry turned up without much notice (or so it seemed to me) and has so far progressed with all the speed of a turd.

It feels faintly unpatriotic or something to describe the show that way but, really, no matter the colourful gritty portrayal of South Auckland and the employment of a large swathe of Maori and Pasifika actors in such a high profile production, the finished product is a very big disappointment.

Take the somnabulent direction (yeah it's pretty and flashy but the pacing is so slooow), the clumsy dialogue (miss something earlier in the show? it's okay, someone will tell us what happened), and a story strung out over six - fucking SIX! - eps that would take any other even half-interesting procedural show one, maybe even two, eps to tell.

Take this week's ep where hero detective Harry (Oscar Kightley) gave some meth cook a cellphone, and how that phone led to the cook's demise.  With scripted policing like this - one of the writers is a former officer - recent events like the Urewera occupation and the Kim Dotcom fiasco would seem to indicate that this show is merely art imitating life.

Whoa, this show has sure got me riled up, bringing in recent events and shit into a review (and my longest post for some time).  It's the lost opportunity that pains me the most:  a Kiwi cop show with a brown lead and a whole lot of New Zealand On Air swag, considered edgy and gritty by mainstream media, but for this blogger undone by an absence of imagination in the writing (the dialogue particularly) and execution.

Yeah, I'll watch this to the fucking end.  'Cause I'm like that, bitches.