This afternoon Channel 9 announced a new show starting this Sunday. Not sure if they were planning this before Carl Williams was killed but it’s definitely related to their Carl Williams: Baby Faced Killer show from earlier this week.

It’s possible that they discovered how quickly they can put this kind of material together and have some solid gold ratings filler by just throwing together some old news footage and shoving Vince Colosimo in a sound booth for a few hours to read a few lines of voiceover.

Called Australian Families of Crime, the whole exercise feels like a cynical attempt to plug in to an audience’s basest interests. What once seemed like the sensational and exploitative homeland of Channel 10, with their Cops / Hard Copy programming is now wholly occupied by Channel 9.

The flag they plant to claim this land as their own is in the titles of the episodes. The first is called Milat: Backpacker Bloodshed. Shocking, isn’t it.

There is, in our culture, a fascination with the macabre. I love stories of serial killers and other true crime when they’re told well. The producers of Crime Investigations Australia, credited with creating this series, have told some great stories of Australian serial killers and other criminals. They have never, however, shied away from an exploitative production style.

It’s the speed with which this series was announced and slammed onto the air (announced on Thursday and airing on Sunday) that stinks of exploitation. Capitalising on criminal behaviour is a very tight rope to walk. What makes the Underbelly series an acceptable pulp story but Baby Faced Killer a soul-less profiteering on somebody’s horrible crimes and gruesome death? Maybe it’s just time but then the adage states that timing is everything.

Australian Families of Crime airs at 9:30pm Sunday on Channel 9.

Longtime Boxcutters listeners will know that I have never been one to watch much live TV. When we started doing this show, I had three video recorders hooked up that I would variously record on or try to work through the previously recorded shows while juggling the physical tape space on multiple VHS tapes. I still have episodes of Jake in Progress and Caroline in the City I’m sure I’ll get to one day… Anyway, I digress… The reason I was a power user level time shifted viewer from way back was so as to have a ready reserve of quality viewing available at a time convenient to me, rather than the time and day convenient to the networks, and to waste less of my life waiting for the show to come back after the ads. With more than 25 years of experience, I’m a veritable guru when it comes to readying the zapping finger over the remote buttons at the first sign of going to a break and getting the right count to come back to normal speed.

So it takes something really special for an advertising campaign to start to piss me off consistently. Congratulations channel 10… You’ve done it. Continued inside »

There’s been a lot of talk about Variety coming back in the last couple of weeks. Everything to do with the Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunion (other than the obvious criticisms) shows has been about variety coming back. “Isn’t it great to have variety back?” people will say.

Of course, people said the same thing when Dancing with the Stars started. Also, when I was growing up, one of the long running variety shows was the Black and White Minstrel Show, as was the Muppet Show. Take from that what you will.

The truth is, Variety never really left us because it doesn’t really exist as a genre. Is Hey Hey variety? Then what is similar between that show and Dancing with the Stars? How do they compare to the Brady Bunch Hour or The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour or Donny & Marie?

There’s almost no difference to what Hey Hey became late in its existence and a tonight show. Dancing with the Stars is closer linked to Celebrity Masterchef than it is to Hey Hey or the Osmonds.

So we take the term Variety out of the equation and what do we have? People feel like they’re missing something from their television experience and it somehow involves singing and dancing and family entertainment with a bit of light comedy thrown in.

What people are saying when they talk about wanting variety to come back to television is that they want is some sort of stagnation. They don’t want to think, they don’t want to learn, they don’t want to go on a journey. It’s mindless television and it must be stopped. Its nothing but a distraction and that’s not the way any entertainment should be. If, when watching television, you come away from it with nothing, was that time well spent?

I was outraged after the second reunion show when reading the Facebook messages on the Hey Hey page about the Black Faces debacle. People were offended that Harry Connick Jr was offended. How does that even make sense? This so called family entertainment is pitting us against each other.

Television is like one of those comic book devices that could save the world but in the wrong hands would mean disaster. Variety is just another word for television being in the wrong hands. It must be stopped.

The following took place as part of the Outland Institute radio show and our controversial “Rule of One” review process. Since this aired, last Friday, there has been another episode of :30 Seconds but the Rule of One prevails.

Last Monday, the first episode of the new sitcom from Andrew Denton’s Zapruder’s Other Films aired on the Comedy Channel.

Called :30 Seconds (complete with the colon), it’s about an advertising agency.

Yes, at the moment it seems like Zapruder’s is only coming out with shows about advertising. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Denton.

Comedy, as you well know, is a very sensitive lover. It requires caring, attention and tenderness.

To continue that already tortured analogy, the flowers and chocolate, the romance, if you will, are the acting and directing of a sitcom.

They make us feel like there might be something this relationship for us. We’re prepared to give it a chance and maybe allow a couple of dates.

The sex in the analogy that not even I can believe I’m taking this far, is the writing. It’s the writing that, BAM!, really drives home the idea that this comedy deserves a part of our lives.

As far as acting goes, :30 Seconds has the chops. Gyton Grantley, Kat Stewart, Peter O’Brien and Stephen Curry all bring their exquisite thespian skills to the set.

The glaring deficiency in the show is in the bedroom. The writing just isn’t there. So often we see a sitcom where the jokes come forced, like the writers are squeezing in the jokes regardless of context.

The secret is to let the jokes come from the characters. Especially when an accomplished cast is at the writers’ disposal, it the characters are good, the actors will find the comedy and the director will help bring it out.

The actors in :30 Seconds just don’t have enough to deal with. The characters are one dimensional at best.

The potential is there for a great comedy but the writing needs to improve.

Also, the lighting is some of the worst I’ve seen outside YouTube.

Last week Oliver Stone announced his latest project. It’s a ten-part documentary series called the Secret History of America.

Stone is the king of creative conspiracy theorists. This series is apparently going to include newly discovered facts from the Kennedy administration and the Vietnam War amongst other things.

So I think it’s important to note how television has shaped the landscape of conspiracy theories.

Of course we can spend hours talking about the X-Files and its Lone Gunmen characters who subsequently had their own spin-off series that didn’t last very long. We could subsequently disappear up our own arses trying to work out why it didn’t last very long and who gave the order to pull it from air.

We can talk about the first moon landing being the first televised event to be derided as a hoax by conspiracy theorists who believe that the whole thing was shot on a soundstage in Burbank.

We can talk about programmes like 24, Prison Break, Heroes and even my beloved Lost, that base their entire story-lines around international conspiracy theories.

But we won’t, and I think you know why.

Conspiracy theories are a simple way to create intrigue in a series. They give the audience a chance to be part of the story-telling. Every reveal escalates the conspiracy up some chain of command that feeds on our fears of lack of freedom. They raise a question of the control we have over our own lives but, more importantly, how much trust do we put in the medium that is giving us information.

While these shows impel us to question everything that we see on television, they also serve as a warning. When we see the protagonist who has been following a conspiracy-chain for several episodes or several seasons, they always end up as loners, obsessed with finding the truth, often wearing the same clothes day after day.

So do these shows want us to actually know the truth or are they trying to stop us from finding the truth? And who’s in charge of trying to keep us confused like this?

Would you believe me if I told you it was an international federation of school teachers? I’m not crazy. This is the truth, people. They control the information. We are all their puppets.

Or maybe not.

This first appeared as an audible segment on John Richards’s excellent Outland Institute radio programme.

I really love what the free to air networks have done with digital television. The offering from Channel 9, Go!, is a remarkable piece of television development.

Remember when networks didn’t know how to fill their entire schedule so they’d put old, cheap or seemingly random programmes on at dead times? My Two Dads at 4pm, Newhart whenever it rained at the cricket, and Thrillseekers at midday on Saturday were all old Channel 9 staples.

I don’t think they ever thought people were watching their station at these times. Either that or Kerry Packer really loved an afternoon of stuntmen jumping cars over canyons.

One of the ingenious things about Go! is that you can watch their entire programming for a day depending on whether you wake up in the morning or the afternoon. They’ve really catered this one to the lazy. Despite the exclamation mark in the title, Go! does not seem to be an imperative. In fact, it’s the name I’d give to a new designer drug that made you feel like you were having a good time while really the whole world was passing you by.

Here’s a taste of what they’ve launched with: The Nanny, Just Shoot Me, Entertainment Tonight, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and Australia’s Funniest Home Videos. All of those shows are available TWICE A DAY. In case you miss an episode of the Nanny you can catch it again eight and a half hours later!

I think what happened is they couldn’t fit the entire title, “Go Into A Vegetative State!”, on the screen.

Really, this was the laziest thing I’ve seen come out of the Free To Air networks for some time. Somebody got paid for coming up with that programming schedule, that title, that media release that came to my inbox. Everybody involved should be ashamed.

So there’s this thing that’s been on the television for a while, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but the kids are calling it “Reality Television“.

Anyway it’s this thing where you get real people in real life situations and follow them around or see them in fish-out-of-water scenarios like the mother from one family going to live with a different family for a couple of weeks.

It reminds me a lot of this thing they used to have on television called “documentaries“. Do you remember those? They were fantastic. We’d learn all about the world as people showed us the lives of ants or, if they were on SBS, the lives of Hitler’s ants.

Well, hold on to your seat because documentaries are back, baby, they just look a little different.

Because people have such low attention spans and trust issues, these programmes need to have famous British people:

• like that guy from A Fish Called Wanda
• or whatisname who played Oscar Wilde
• or, even more famous than either of those, the guy that was in Who Dares Wins and Maid Marian and her Merry Men.

And of course, they can pretty much only be on the ABC for them to have any credibility whatsoever.

This week we’ve got the premier of two of these documentary things*.

The first is on Sunday night on ABC1. Stephen Fry, who you might remember from Blackadder, driving through the US and telling us about local customs in a way that is different to Louis Theroux or Ruby Wax.

Then on Tuesday there’s Tony Robinson, who you might remember from Blackadder, presenting the history of Crime and Punishment.

Apparently, this is not as you would expect – a 5 minute piece saying:

Dostoyevsky had an idea for a book, sat down with pen and paper for a few months and then got a publishing deal.

No, instead it’s about laws and criminals and punitive measures.

I don’t know who else from Blackadder is making documentaries but they seem to be the most trusted people in the world.

* Be aware that this was written to go to air on 7 August so time references might have no bearing to the actual time you’re reading this, if you are reading this, and if you’re not, I’m not talking to you so turn around and face the wall.

The following, in a different form, was used as a rant on John Richard’s excellent The Outland Institute radio show. In case you missed it, which you shouldn’t have because it’s an excellent show, as I previously stated.

This week’s television controversy surrounds MasterChef. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. We’ve invited into our homes a Poh-faced liar.

From the very beginning Poh has been shown favouritism by the judges. How many other people had the opportunity to go home after failing the audition and return to cook another dish?*

Poh not only failed once, but twice. Poh was eliminated from the competition and then, with no reason given, allowed to return along with some other, seemingly randomly selected contestants. No one else in the MasterChef competition has been given as easy a ride as Poh and that is outrageously unfair.

It’s true that Julie also received some leeway with the rules of individual challenges. Out of the last three challenges in this week’s finalist series, Julie failed to finish her dish all three times: twice serving raw food and once just failing to plate up all the elements of her dish in the allotted time.

Many times in the last 18 hours people have told me via twitter and sometimes even to my face that Julie only ended in the final two because they want to publish her cookbook.

The night before, after Justine lost, Matt Moran went to her house and offered her a job. We all felt wonderful because it worked out well for Justine.

Couldn’t the same thing have happened to Julie? If Julie had lost the competition last night but her pitch for a cookbook so overwhelmed Donna Hay that she offered her a publishing deal on the spot, we would feel joy and heart-warming tingles because Julie was well on her way to success.

There was no sensational coda for Chris last night.

And so it comes down to the internal logic of the show. Like any good story the characters need to live by the rules of the story’s universe. Despite the real-person/contest nature of the show, it’s still telling a story. In last night’s episode the rules were laid out in the beginning: make a dish that would look good on the cover of a cookbook.

When it came down to judging, though, the aesthetics of the dish were largely irrelevant. Suddenly it came down to the flavour. The judges said that Chris’s dish didn’t taste good.

Somewhere along the lines they changed the rules without telling the contestants or, more importantly, the audience.

A good TV show has turned into a farce.

* In a moment of subtextual racism the judges sent Poh home to gather the ingredients to create a Malaysian dish. The implication that she was unable to create modern Australian cuisine because of her ethnicity should have been seen as a slap in the face with regard to her skill as a cook. Instead the judges somehow made it seem like they were encouraging her. Would they expect a Cajun to only make craw-fish gumbo? Would a Jew only be rewarded by making gefilte fish and matzo ball soup?

It’s unfair to everybody that she was given a second chance AND told what to make. It’s unfair to her that they did not judge her ability on the merits of her first dish. It’s unfair to an entire race of people that we should expect them to only be good at cooking one type of cuisine.

“Some things I know and some things I don’t.” – John Monad

What I do know is that John from Cincinnati starts screening on Showcase this Monday at 8.30pm, around the time many of us here experience the earliest rumblings of our weekly granola cravings. This show has divided audiences, and my reaction to it is similarly mixed. I reckon there are some absolute gems here (some characters, lines, performances) but the overall “plot” will leave many unsatisfied.

Make up your own mind and deliver your verdict here.

The Herald Sun this week reported on Channel 9?s end of year line up, under the somewhat humorously banner: Nine?s Rating Charge. It referred to a mess of new Nine shows including the ridiculously over the top Damages, Burke?s Backyard Spring Special (I assume Nine are hoping Burke has somehow traversed the divide from old and past it to retro cool in his time away), Surprise, Surprise Gotcha (hohum, a celebrity prank show), The Singing Bee (karaoke) and a bunch of lifestyle rubbish including: Girl?s Of The Playboy Mansion (already screened on Pay TV), RFDS (about the Flying Doctors), The Gift (about organ donation), and Dirty Jobs (about crap jobs people do).

With the exception possibly of Damages that group has the freshness of week old garbage at best.

To borrow a bit of football parlance I think it?s about time Nine started ?tanking?. 2007 is over, start thinking about 2008. In the meantime, try some different ideas, blood some new players.

Here are some things they could try:

*Give shows more than one of two eps to find their audience. ER has disappeared from our screens already. It was always going to struggle up against Californication.

*Weeds is funnier and more irreverent than Californication and could easily be just as much a hit here. Nine could give it a proper run, showing an entire series or two, unedited, in a consistent timeslot with a bit of promotion.

*Why not use the HBO output deal to give Flight Of The Conchords a run? (Same rules apply as for Weeds) Or the new relationship drama Tell Me You Love Me.

I know none of these ideas will help Nine win the rating the rating but neither will this steaming pile of guff they are serving us.

EDIT Channel 9 are apparently going to screen series two of Weeds from Oct 1st at 10:30pm… Whether this means consistent, unedited and promoted screens remains to be seen.