In it for the long haul

Clarke Gayford clambers into the cab for a second season of his hit home-shift show.

- RUSSELL BROWN

MOVING HOUSES, TVNZ 1, Anzac Day, 7pm
The key to Moving Houses, which begins a second season this week, is that it's about drama that was already there. People were putting old homes on the backs of trucks and taking them places for a long time before anyone pointed a camera at it. It's never not a dramatic thing to do.

A good example is the new season's opening episode, which sees a grand-looking house cut into several pieces and driven from Auckland to Ahipara, at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach. It's a journey some of us might find a bit daunting just in a car.

The producers of factual TV series often contrive deadlines to generate tension but in this case, the deadlines are quite real - if the trucks miss their midnight moment through the Dome Valley, they're off the road until the following night. And that's not the only hazard.

"Yeah, exactly," agrees host Clarke Gayford, who professes to being uncomfortable with what's sometimes called the magic of television.