Doug Coutts’ TV Preview: Crayfishers

CRAYFISHERS

☆☆☆☆☆

Prime, 8.00 Tuesday

A PERSONAL VIEW
By Doug Coutts

In a happy coincidence the surname of the family around which Crayfishers is centred is Fisher. I guess if they were the Crays, the show could have been set in London’s East End and anyone heading out to sea would be doing so with concrete surrounding their plates of meat.

But no, we’re in Bluff and it’s crayfish on the menu. Head of the family Vaughan Fisher, a second generation crayfisherperson, has retired to a mansion on the hill overlooking the town and sent his two sons Jayce and Slade out on the boat, with their cousin Jamie to help out.

Jamie enjoys going to sea, he says, because he gets some man time away from the missus. One supposes that once the missus sees the show, Jamie will be able to enjoy even more man time.

Jayce is the captain while the other two are called ‘crew’, which is code for “no, you stay outside in the rain”.

There’s lots of build-up in episode one, pointing out the perils of sailing past the Bluff breakwater into the roughest sea in the world – I think that’s one of the many superlatives used in the show, alongside ‘New Zealand’s largest crayfishing fleet’ and the ‘best rock lobsters in the entire universe’ – but not a lot actually happens.

There’s the suggestion that there might be a bit of peril coming up next week though, so make sure you tune in.

The Fishers are no strangers to television, or the show’s producers Great Southern Television for that matter. Great Southern made a series called Million Dollar Catch a few years ago that featured Vaughan et al.

The Discovery Channel is chocker with fisherfolk confronting danger atop every rogue wave  – there’s the crab guys of Alaska and the Scottish chaps whose accents are so impenetrable they could be chasing anything, so why shouldn’t we have staunch Kiwi blokes getting out amongst it?

You have to wonder though – how many dangerous jobs are left that haven’t been turned into a reality series? Aspiring producers may have to look elsewhere – perhaps we’ll be seeing the likes of Delivery Nightmares – When the junk mail’s too big for the slot or Papercut Hell – Writers on the edge. That second one’s a ten-parter for sure.