“About a third of them turn out to be more loot from the colonial era, since great uncle George happened upon it. So, of course, they’d never sell it, even if it would fetch 10,000 pounds at auction. Like hell they wouldn’t!” Columnist ROBERT MACKLIN escapes to the Antiques Roadshow.

If you’re like me and can’t stand TV commercials, after a day writing and revising, we turn to the ABC and lo! It’s the upper-class vowels of Fiona Bruce introducing Antiques Roadshow.

Behind her is some extravagant pile built in the 18th century from the sweat of countless black slaves in the Americas, and she often gives a tour of the joint. 

Half the time the owners have drunk and gambled their way through their ill-gotten gains and the place has been taken over by the state. And instead of selling the old masters on the walls and making reparations to the poverty-stricken descendants in the Caribbean, they’re charging a wide-eyed public a substantial fee to view the rich rewards of their colonial felonies.

But since there’s not much sport on the other channels, you stick with AR as the parade of hopefuls pass through the selection panel to reach an “expert” who will give them a resale valuation of their various family treasures. 

About a third of them turn out to be more loot from the colonial era, quite often the sacking of the Chinese imperial summer palace. These have been “in the family” since great Uncle George or some such happened upon it. So, of course, they’d never sell it, even though the expert reckoned it would fetch 10,000 pounds at auction.

Like hell they wouldn’t. Why else would they have brought it along? Same with great grandpa’s medals from World War I. According to the expert, they tell a wonderful story of “bravery” when the poor bugger was just as likely to be half mad with the drink and the other half with the enemy artillery exploding all round him. 

The experts are a fascinating bunch, One of the two painting chaps – the one with white hair – seems pleasant enough, but the other prissy creep (who stars with Fiona in a spin-off called Fake or Fortune) is very hard to take. 

The jewellery folk – two chaps and a kindly woman – are quite bearable, but my favourite by far is the wacky bloke with a handle-bar moustache and a penchant for guns. He fondles them like they were pets. He never talks about their job of killing people, but you can’t help feeling that one day he’ll go running about the castle garden shooting things, even if they’re only trees and shrubs.

Fiona then does a little act with an expert who tries to fool her about the relative value of three objects called “basic”, “better” and “best”; and she signs off with a bon mot in her patronising best.

It’s a huge relief to be back in Australia for a repeat of Tom Gleeson’s Hard Quiz. In fact, it’s getting so that some seem like repeats of repeats! And while they were quite amusing the first (and occasionally the second) time around, the bones of the formula are beginning to show.

Tom’s schtick takes a teaspoon of Groucho Marx’s aggression towards his contestants and mixes it with a couple of rude words and lots of sly digs at the ABC. 

And the questions – often on the most arcane subjects – are very well researched. But then Tom adds a personal note that shows he’s forgotten one of the wise injunctions of showbiz – “be nice to people on the way up, because you’ll surely meet them on the way down”. 

His caustic remarks about his spin-off, outrating Charlie Pickering’s show, or any number of other putdowns (Daryl Somers and Grant Denyer leap to mind) are neither clever nor funny. 

Truth is, Hard Quiz will have its own shelf life, and when the end is nigh Tom will want a showbiz hand to hold.

Good luck with that.

Hard lines, Tom.

robert@robertmacklin.com