Thursday, 18 August 2011

Rugby fever is about to hit airwaves for the largest sporting event ever to be held in New Zealand and new sports series Sin Bin will be following the social scene.

Complementing Maori Television’s free-to-air coverage of RWC 2011, the new magazine-style sports series, Sin Bin, provides up-to-date news coverage of the tournament as well as an insight into the cultures and customs of some of the countries arriving here for the cup.

Producer Ngatapa Black says Sin Bin is not your usual sports show and goes the extra mile to teach our visitors the ways of the Maori people “with a twist”.

Sin Bin premieres on Thursday 8 September at 8pm over eight half-hour episodes presented by actor and broadcaster Toi Iti who has a diverse background across different mediums including theatre, radio, television and film.

Iti is joined by Maori Television’s answer to the Laughing Samoans “The Forward Pack” Simon Adam, Mitch Tipene and Anaru Penenara. These boys are certainly not your typical sports presenters, in fact their biggest sporting achievement is not getting the wooden spoon for the Auckland rugby presidents’ grade. “The Forward Pack” are larger-than-life staunch sports supporters, quick off the mark and will easily pass on their infectious excitement of being amongst the world cup atmosphere.

Similar to the ‘adopt a nation’ scheme, in each episode Sin Bin adopts a country, but not the obvious ones, Ms Black says.

“We have a look at the interesting ‘underdog’ countries with teams participating who might normally get overlooked,” she says.

Countries such as Georgia, Japan, Namibia, Romania, Russia, and USA are featured and Sin Bin will find out about the food, customs and culture of these nations and with this knowledge, meet the teams and show off what they have learned about their countries.

Wherever you are, Sin Bin is right there with the supporters as they stand in the middle of the cities watching the games on big screens, and in the pubs.

ENDS

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