Random invasive medical procedures, and kindness

Sundays haven’t been easy lately. We’ve had to make some big decisions. Random Acts of Kindness versus Mike Munro undergoing a prostate examination, for instance.

Munsy must be glad he’s no longer with Nine. They would’ve made him go much further than the glove.

In the old days Munsy’s prostate would have found itself a relevant promotional tie-in (“Watch Mike get Packed to the Rafters’’) and not just been left to sell itself. But his procedure on Sunday Night and Random Acts of Kindness are essentially the same thing aren’t they. Private lives as TV fodder.

On the whole – and I’m fighting a terrifying mental image as I write those words – Munro did a good thing.

It was like a charitable public service announcement, only obviously he gets paid a lot of money to lie there and take something up the jinger. To use the correct medical term.

But not everybody saw it that way. Including the people who are part of the television ratings sample. I was reading Amanda Meade’s Media column in The Australian on Monday and she said insiders – and again, I’m seeing Munsy impaled on a latex finger – were describing Sunday Night’s being replaced with Dancing With The Stars as a bizarre piece of programming. Bizarre? Or a relief?

Because I think I can speak for all of the country when I say if we want to watch a television personality bending over for the camera, that’s the angle we’d prefer to see it from.

It’ll be interesting to see how Random Acts of Kindness goes against Dancing With the Stars. Nine can probably thank that name for a large part of the show’s success.

Not that there’s anything very random about product placement, but it sounds like something that’s going to make you feel nice and warm inside.

Possibly Munro felt like that too, I have no idea, but that’s a different kind of warm. I have some trouble with the idea that a commercial television network is openly referring to itself as kind.

You watch how quickly Random Acts of Kindness is stabbed to death if the ratings start to wilt. Real kindness would be not to have the show on at all. But what I want to know is will Nine, now that it’s at last found a successful format that doesn’t have the word Underbelly in the title, franchise it to other programs?

“Macca, you may not have found your perfect life partner on this series of Farmer Wants a Wife but you can have one for two hours, thanks to Stiletto, Sydney’s least tacky brothel …’’ Cue Macca sobbing gratefully in Karl’s arms.