Flight of fancy

The Conchords, alias Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, are two guys from New Zealand trying to make it as a band in New York. It may take some time, judging by their efforts in the first of this comedy musical made from US cable channel HBO.

Consider some of their song lyrics. "Let's get in a cab/I'll buy you a kebab" has the advantage of rhyming even if the sentiments leave you cold.

How about "Let's go to my house/We can feel each other up on the couch". Or, and this takes some beating, "You're so beautiful/Like a tree or a high class prostitute".

Flight Of The Conchords will tickle the fancy of those who like their lyrics ridiculous and their comedy alternately laid back and off the wall.

It helps that the central players - Bret with the beard, Jemaine with the glasses - are a likeable pair of losers.

No wonder they're not getting anywhere with an agent like Murray, who's determined to increase their fan base. "That's not a fan base, that's just a woman," they point out about the single obsessive female who dogs their every move.

They both reckon being in the music business will deliver lots of hot chicks to their doorstep. Jemaine thinks Sally, a girl he meets at a party, might be the one. Bret thought the same when he dated her.

He's not a great success with women. After six or seven weeks of a relationship, he notices that women find him boring.

"I don't know what happens, that's how long it takes to get to know someone," he says, returning to his secret project - a crash helmet that looks like your hair.

Sally and Jemaine don't last long. He can't understand why ("I'm usually more charismatic than that") although inviting Bret along to dinner with them may have something to do with her departure.

On a more serious note, Unreported World visits South Africa to see the sights that tourists don't and reveals the drug problem in the country's top tourist resort, Cape Town. The community is in the grip of an epidemic of addiction to the drug crystal methamphentamine, or tik as the locals refer to it, and "South Africa's new bondage" as reporter Sam Kiley puts it.

The statistics for the country are depressing - someone is murdered every 30 minutes and one in five people is HIV positive.

On the streets in Cape Town, Kiley finds communities who feel abandoned by the government. Unemployment is at least 40 per cent. Young people wander the streets and mug each other for small change to buy drugs.

Kiley is invited to watch a group take the highly-addictive tik. He refuses to smoke, even asking for the window to be opened to stop him inhaling involuntarily.

Gangs control these poor areas. One boss boasts of 27 cases of murder and attempted murder against him. Others show off their bullet wound scars.

They ignore the hazards of drug-taking. A hospital doctor says the drug can cause neuro-psychiatric problems and he's now treating around 180 patients a month.

The rich parts of Cape Town seen by tourists are heavily policed. The poorer parts are lawless where, as someone says, policemen being "a rare and exotic sight".

This lack of law and order has led to a group of elderly women taking up the fight. These "neighbourhoodwatch aunties" are to be found on street corners at dead of night to deter pushers and addcits.

Local politicians have jumped on the bandwagon to organise a Tik Off week. But they all appear to be fighting a losing battle, with Chinese triads and Cape Town gangs battling to be drugs lords.

Kiley finds that people in the white community are taking tik too. It can be purchased in the trendiest part of town in the heart of white South Africa.

In a relentlessly downbeat and depressing report, a visit to one poor family says it all. The whole family is doing tik. They've even sold the curtains, nappies and stripped pipes out of the toilet to finance their habit