New must-see TV:
A whole lot of nothing

The newest television show to feature Hawaii takes reality TV to its final frontier: no cast, no plot, no mood music, no nothing. It is simply a single camera set up and pointed at an empty pool at the Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki. In the forefront are two lounge chairs, empty except for folded beach towels. As you watch the chairs, the pool, the blue sky ... absolutely NOTHING happens. And it continues to happen until the commercial break. After the commercial, nothing persists to unfold at a frightening pace.

"What IS this?" I asked my wife as we watched the empty Halekulani pool.

"A day of nothing," she said.

It turns out THAT is the actual name of the program: "A Day of Nothing." Brilliant.

It's on the Fine Living channel on cable, channel 322. All "A Day of Nothing" is is a camera pointed at a secluded spot somewhere in the world with a couple of chairs or a blanket in the foreground beckoning viewers to relax and wish they were there.

Seeing nothing happen on TV is unnerving. I kept waiting for some drama, like a man and woman sitting down on the lounge chairs and plotting a tryst. ("Meet me in my room. My husband is off playing golf.") But that didn't happen. Mainly because, as I learned, the program was shot several months ago. So any good stuff like that was taken out.

Joyce Matsumoto, Halekulani director of public relations, said a TV production crew asked if they could get a lengthy shot of the mostly empty pool for a new concept show they were pushing. The camera was set up and eventually caught all of the nothing that happens at the Halekulani pool early in the morning.

"There's not much casting," Matsumoto said. "The star is the tranquility."

It's also an exceedingly long though understated, not to mention free, advertisement for the hotel.

ON THE DAY I discovered "A Day of Nothing," the camera also took viewers to Ala Moana Beach, where an empty pair of deck chairs sat in the sand near a blanket. And then it showed a half-hour of a deserted part of Hanauma Bay, with a blanket and picnic basket laid out.

It's strangely appealing, looking at beautiful scenery, accompanied only by the quiet ambient sounds ... water lapping at the sand, kids laughing down the beach. It's the TV version of an aquarium. The point is to get people to chill.

Occasionally, lines of inspiration appear on the screen, like "Wear a pareo. While vacuuming." I imagined some mainlanders, unaware that a pareo is a beach wrap, vacuuming in funny hats. Some viewers likely looked at the Halekulani pool thinking, "I wish I was sitting in there right now. With a mai tai. And someone whose spouse is off playing golf."

Unfortunately, the show doesn't just feature Hawaii. "A Day of Nothing" later offered Costa Rica beach scenes. Personally, I thought our nothing was better than theirs.