It is in unflattering terms in which the small South Pacific country of New Zealand is discussed in episode one of 800 Words.
George Turner (Erik Thomson, Packed to The Rafters) plans to move his family from Australia to the aforementioned country, but his teenage daughter feels the idea is less than optimal.
In her words, her father is moving the family ''to the arse-end of the world''.
There is little comfort for George, or the New Zealand viewers of 800 Words, in his son's summing up of the situation, despite George's clever riposte: ''It's not the arse-end of the world.''
''Actually it kind of is - geographically,'' his son says.
800 Words begins on TV One on Thursday at 8.30pm.
According to TV One, it is doing well in Australia, where it began in September, attracting more than a million viewers per episode.
The show is a transtasman production, from Australia's Channel Seven and Kiwi production company South Pacific Pictures, created by James Griffin (Outrageous Fortune, The Almighty Johnsons) and Maxine Fleming (Being Eve, Agent Anna).
George Turner is a man who used to skate through life but is now struggling, following the sudden death of his wife.
He is evidently (as the title suggests) a columnist, but his writing has clearly come to ahalt.
He makes a decision to move his two teenage children away from Sydney to the town of Weld in New Zealand, where he spent his summer holidays as a child.
The plan is to make a fresh start but that is evidently, from viewing episode one at least, going to be difficult.
The family's going away party in a Sydney house full of boxes and clearly less than impressed friends and relatives shows cracks already opening.
His former wife's parents are anything but supportive of the idea, and offer his children the opportunity of staying with them rather than going to New Zealand.
That offer is refused, and we soon see the family motoring over Sydney's Pyrmont Bridge to the airport.
From there they hurtle from the built-up urban to the forested rural, somewhere coastal and well off the beaten track.
It is no surprise Weld is made up of quirky New Zealand types and the family's welcome marred by an unfortunate crash into a rolling sculpture.
You should be warned 800 Words is described by TV One as ''heart-warming'', but that is not necessarily a bad thing.
And who knows, perhaps the family will find a place in the small community, and discover some important things about themselves, life and death?
I bet they do.
• Charles Loughrey
