Crime scene blunders steal the show
21st March 2009

After last week’s decision to cut jobs TVNZ has moved to restore market share with the launch of a new flagship series. The new show, Crime Scene Blunders, lifts the lid on the tragic, hilarious or just plain tragically hilarious mistakes made by police in their investigations.

In the spirit of the programme TVNZ ‘leaked’ the script of the series opener to selected media. Here it is – Crime Scene Blunders, Episode One.

Huge applause, lights, techno-pop music. Jason Gunn enters.

Jason. “Good evening and welcome to Crime Scene Blunders. Yes I’m Jason Gunn and just to prove it I’ve got my gun right here. Give us a close up on the piece, Morrie. There you are, it’s a nice wee Glock, standard police issue, and crikey! it’s been the cause of a few crime scene blunders over the years. Let’s hope this baby’s not loaded or we could have a few blunders of our own tonight.”

The gun fires.

Jason. “Whoopsedoodle! There go the studio lights, told you I could be in trouble. So moving quickly along let me introduce my co-host, please welcome our extreme advocate, Horace Rumple QC.

Big cheers. Horace enters with wig and gown.

Jason. “Welcome Horace. Now, you’d be Rumple of the Bailey?”

Horace. “No, no, Jase, I’m Rumple of the Trailer Home.”

Jason. “Fallen on hard times?”

Horace. “Nuh, I fell on a large quantity of gin and the old career’s been downhill ever since.”

Jason. “Well we’ll give it a pickup tonight because, goodness me! it’s been a great week for crime scene blunders.”

Horace. “Certainly has, Jase.”

Jason. “And first up is the Housing NZ ‘ram raid’ in Porirua.”

Horace. “Yep, this is a beauty. The Housing Corp whistles up the cops to kick the Mongrel Mob out of a few houses they’ve been using as a wildlife park and, dear me, they go and leave the letter of complaint lying around with the name and contact number of the little old lady who dobbed the Mob.”

Jason. “Classic! Well, over in our studio witness box ..”

Horace. “…you mean, the witLESS box, Jase.”

Jason. “…we’ve got Inspector Dicky Riddle. We should tell you all our police guests have been given false names to conceal their identities.”

Cut to police inspector.

Jason. “How’s it going, Dicky?”

Dick. “Yeah, good, Jase. It’s a pleasure to be your first guest.”

Horace. “So, a bit of cock-up, Dicky. What’s happened to the old lady? She had some death threats, eh?”

Dicky. “Yep, but we’ve sorted that out. We popped her onto the witness protection programme.”

Jason. “So, where’s she living now?”

Dicky. “Alaska.”

Jason. “Got her contact so we can call her?”

Dicky. “Sure, it’s 027 – oh, now wait a minute, you were trying to get me to make another blunder, weren’t you?”

Big blast of music and appluse.

Jason. “Congratulations, Dicky! You’ve won our super ‘stop-the-cop’ prize. What’s the prize, Horace?”

Horace. “Ah, we haven’t got any, Jase, the sponsor went belly up.”

Jason. “Here you are, Dicky, you can have my Glock. It’s got the bent barrel so you don’t have to worry about hurting anybody.”

Horace. “Moving on, Jase, and next up is the ‘candid camera’ story.”

Jason. “A wee ripper and a big ‘whoopsedoodle’ for the boys in blue this week, when the investigating officer left behind the camera he’d been using to photograph the crime scene victims.”

Horace. “Yep, and now the dude who snaffled the camera is offering the photos for sale to the media.”

Jason. “And we’re going to show them to you now so you’ll know what to look out for if he offers them to you. Let’s see the pics, Morrie. What’s that? A hold up?”

Horace. “We’ve got a bit of a techno failure, Jase. We can’t put the blurry lines over the faces in the photos.”

Jason. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. The faces on the pics are going to be roughly in the centre of your TV. So while we go to the break you get some masking tape and cover that part of your screen so you won’t see the faces.

Horace. “We’ll be back shortly with our sports slot, Howzat!?, the latest blunders from the Appeal Court.”

Jason. “And our hugely popular celebrity dance-off, featuring this week, David Bain and Arthur Allan Thomas.”

Both. Back soon.