Sea Patrol is on TV, a programme all about the sea, with ships and sailors dressed in white, to fight the good Australian fight.
Yes: Sea Patrol.
It's on Prime; it starts next Monday week at 9.30pm, and the DVD came to me in a lovely little yellow courier bag, stuffed with a press release and a photo.
Ah, but what a photo.
Threatening to burn my retinas - both of them - were nine sets of teeth so white they made white itself seem dull and discoloured, like a pair of beige slacks slung atop a cream-coloured duvet, in a room painted fawn, in a house that was once freshly painted, but had faded as years of wind-blown dust and dirt had battered the sparkling pigment of what was once the most lustrous of white enamels.
Surrounding the smiles were nine handsome, freshly buffed Australian thespians so comely in their pin-point pressed navy get-outs, they deserve more than mere prose.
Prose won't do, it's not enough; this column would seem cheap and rough, if prose was used to so describe, then justice, Sir, would be denied.
So.
There's a press release upon my desk, a televisual request, publicity it seems to say, would help our channel pay its way.
And here it is in front of me, a DVD about the sea, with sailors numbering 24, who cheek by jowl, depart the shore.
Their age and temperament, they vary, some are freshly clipped, some hairy; some are blonde and clearly girls, some are men, with hair in curls,
(Of sailors' habits, let's brush over; nowadays they're straight and sober.)
On Sea Patrol, on episode one, of series four, the Australian sun, beats down upon our brave sea-men, when a mayday call is heard, and then:
Shots are fired in the background, the radio emits no more sound, heavily armed our chums approach, a fishing boat that a criminal poached:
Our mayday girl, no-one has found her, the vessel on the sea does flounder, about to return to whence they're from, a sailor cries "I've found a bomb!"
Hastily, with panicked flight, they exit smartly from stage right, on to their boat, they leap and bound, as the timer ticks a tocking sound,
They fly across the Timor Sea, "Put space between that bomb and me!" a sailor cries, in panic mode, just as the bomb, it does explode:
The sailors dive, no "adieu", headfirst into the briny stew: but were they saved? I cannot tell, despite you knowing that they fell.
To give away the end a crime, that I would not commit on Prime, if for the end, you have a thirst; you'll have to wait till the 21st.
