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Critics’ Choice 2012: Dog of the Year

Critics agree: there's no hiding from Everybody Dance now as the worst new show of the year.

Part 2 of the Critics’ Choice survey asked journalists to choose the “Dog of the Year” and the “Most Overhyped Show” -TEN topped both categories.

But it’s not all bad news. There were also plenty of names for the “Star of the Year” and a look at Trends this year that emerged this year.

Again participating were:

AM: Andrew Murfett, The Age
MI: Michael Idato, The Sydney Morning Herald
DS: Debbie Schipp, The Sunday Telegraph
EM: Erin McWhirter, TV Week
AMe: Andrew Mercado, The Playlist
HB: Holly Byrnes, The Daily Telegraph
MH: Melinda Houston, The Sunday Age
SE: Scott Ellis, The Sydney Morning Herald
JM: James Manning, Mediaweek
SY: Sue Yeap, West Australian

DOG OF THE YEAR (Aussie): Everybody Dance Now. Runner Up: I Will Survive.
AM: Everybody Dance Now. Did spectacular damage to Ten’s schedule and must have embarrassed the Murdoch family to no end. A strange show that was almost compellingly bad. Overall, just a bewildering dud. Both Fremantle’s Excess Bagagge and I Will Survive take runner’s up spots.
MI: Channel Ten, under a management which has presided over one of the most extraordinary strategic disasters in commercial television history.
DS: Everybody Dance Now. OK, so judging by the production angles – it looked like they were a few cameras short – the big budget items were the host and judges. Maybe if they’d explained the rules it would have been better. Actually, it wouldn’t. A bedazzled, awkward, mis-timed, mis-stepping mess. Thankfully Ten’s discovery that Nobody wanted to Dance Now took the heat off Nine for the tragedy that was Excess Baggage – the weight loss show where nobody really lost any weight – early in the year.
EM: Everybody Dance Now – clunky, poorly cast and just downright bad, there wasn’t a lot of good to say about this show and viewers showed that by switching off.
AMe: MicroNation didn’t work as a comedy or a spoof and Lara, Brynne and The Shire were all shockers. But nothing can top the big hot mess that was Everybody Dance Now. It was dead on arrival from the very first moment when Sarah Murdoch stumbled out onto stage but it literally tore open its hamstring when Kelly Rowland’s first line was “Hey y’all, I loves me some Australia, y’all”.
HB: The Shire. It stopped being funny when those scrags pulled a butter knife. Check that, it stopped being funny after the opening credits episode one.
MH: The Shire, Being Lara Bingle, My Bedazzled Life, WAG Nation – all hours of my life I’ll never get back and in the case of the two former shows, dollars Ten could ill-afford to spend on ideas that were doomed from the get-go.
SE: Everybody Dance Now.
JM: I Will Survive.
SY: Oh there were so many contenders this year but I think Everybody Dance Now and I Will Survive would have to be right up there. I didn’t really understand the format of the former (did anyone?) and when the latter changed its premiere night after TV guides had all been printed it did not bode well.

MOST OVER-HYPED (Aussie) Being Lara Bingle / The Shire.
DS: Being Lara Bingle/The Shire. Rule number one of reality television – it has to be interesting in a car-crash kind of way. Ironically, Lara’s show did feature a car crash, and it still wasn’t interesting.
AMe: The X Factor and its continual exaggeration that they have discovered world class superstars and legends when the truth is they are mostly tomorrow’s Today Tonight tragedies.
HB: Being Lara Bingle.
MH: The Shire, probably.
SE: Rove LA
JM: The Shire: Was the most over-hyped. But the media is probably more to blame than the PRs…and the series wasn’t that bad.
SY: Being Lara Bingle.

STARS OF THE YEAR: Brenna Harding
AM: Anna McGahan. Should be a superstar.
MI: Hamish & Andy. The second season of Gap Year genuinely built on the first. Adam Zwar, as a producer. Agony Uncles/Aunts were excellent. Channel Nine. No, really …
DS: Ashleigh Cummings and Brenna Harding – Puberty Blues. Sure, they had the benefit of a delicious script and production, but the chemistry between these two showcased that both have serious acting chops.
EM: Lachy Hulme – On all levels this talented star showed off his acting chops in a variety of different roles from quirky Dr Kleg on Offspring, to a fiery Kerry Packer on Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War to mining disaster survivor Todd Russell in Beaconsfield. Lachy’s gift, is that every time you watch him you don’t see him or make reference to past characters, you see the character he’s portraying. He fully embodies each and every character – a true star.
AMe: Patrick Brammall showing a very funny side in both A Moody Christmas and The Strange Calls, Julia Morris and Firass Dirani in House Husbands, Matt Nable in Underbelly: Badness, Asher Keddie’s drunk dancing in Offspring (why didn’t it lead to a Euphoria comeback?) and Anthony Hayes in every other Aussie drama.
HB: Dare we pair them together, but KAK and Sonia Kruger had blinders, for very different reasons obviously. Kerri-Ann showed what a bloody legend she is, blinging it up on Dancing With The Stars then staring down the Big C. And Sonia’s gamble to jump ship to Nine for Mornings and Big Brother paid off.
MH: Brenna Harding, Puberty Blues. What a talent. Absolutely stole the show.
SE: Peter Maddison, like the projects he highlights, he went from a unfinished to a star.
JM: Good hosts don’t have to dominate: Less is more. Darren McMullen: The MTV specialist got another chance on FTA and the audience responded very well. Chrissie Swan: Added TV to her CV in a great year where she also shone on breakfast radio and as a Sunday Life columnist. Other notable and somewhat unsung hosting heroes: Scott Cam (The Block) and Luke Jacobs (The X Factor).
SY: Matt Le Nevez. To quote a female colleague – “he’s the McDreamy of Australian TV”.

ANNUAL TRENDS: Second screens. Runner Up: Australian Drama.
MI: The emergence of Scandi dramas (aka “euro-noir”). The popularity of Australian dramas selling overseas as scripted formats. The rise of “second screens”, significantly the brilliant iView app, Foxtel’s brilliant Olympics app (which has been developed into its new channel viewing app.)
DS: Influence of social media. We saw shows live and die by it. Reality show contestants were bullied over it, or made stars by those using it. Celebs and wannabe-celebs got themselves into hot water using it. Lesson? Learn it, respect it and never, ever forget the power of it.
HB: Here’s hoping the trend for quality Australian drama continues. The interactivity of audiences proved its value and potential on The Voice which did monster traffic on social media and online.
MH: The good news is our appetite for Aussie drama just keeps growing and I’m loving the interest in factual stories from the past and the recent past. I think we’ll see more big local true stories adapted as telemovies and mini-series, and I really welcome that. The big, live reality/shiny floor shows are crucial to keep viewers watching FTA in real time and when they’re done well, there’s nothing wrong with that. And although it’s not something I do myself, the kind of telly that encourages interaction from a second screen is only going to grow. I also sincerely hope that assorted dogs this year will see the end of local soft-scripted or dramality series. I have my fingers crossed. (Although Formal Wars is an ill omen…)
SE: Second screen viewing. Twitter became vital for enjoying a show with a crowd. Fango, Zeebox, Jump In etc are still playing catch up.
JM: The FTA business model seems clearer now than it has been previously – glossy event TV, live sports or quality domestic drama.
SY: If you look at the end of year top 10s, reality shows again dominated over scripted formats. The original reality show Big Brother came back and shows like My Kitchen Rules added more episodes and rated even better than previous seasons. It looks like we’re in for even more reality in 2013 with double seasons of The Block and MasterChef, more MKR and newcomers like Great Aussie Bake Off. Only time will tell if we’ve had our fill of cooking reality shows.

PROGRAMMING TRENDS: Shows running late.
DS: Hopefully 2012 was the year of shameless and tireless cross-promotions hit their peak, with reality contestants and judges invading current affairs shows, and network talent doing a steady round of promo duties on morning shows, lifestyle shows, and light entertainment shows, and reality show guest spots, all to promote their vehicle. Subtle as an axe.
HB: The celebrity reality show format continues in 2013 and I for one can’t wait for Celebrity Splash. When we see the first star in spandex I may recant that statement, but what the heck let’s do this! With the rapid uptake of PVR use, do you think programmers can schedule for shows to run on time? Otherwise, audience anger will fester on.
SE: Fast tracking. The only way to effectively beat the pirates.
JM: Audiences like magicians.
SY: The annoying trend of shows starting late and running over sadly doesn’t seem to show any sign of abating. I’m also tired of promos that give away far more than I would ever do in a review. Stop the spoilers please!

Part One: Best of 2012

9 Responses

  1. For me, it’s a tie between Everybody Dance Now, The Shire, being Lara Bingle – 3 of the biggest dogs on TV in years, and symptomatic of how far programming standards have slipped at Channel 10 – thank you Lachlan Murdoch.
    Agree about Sonia Kruger – I think she did suprisingly well taking over from Gretel on the revitalised Big Brother.

  2. Thanks for the info David. 🙂 I feel I should mention I was expressing my lack of confidence in those shows rather than my eagerness to see them, haha.

  3. This was not a good year for Ten. Risk taking is one thing, but creating a bunch of crappy shows and hoping one of them takes off is another. And we’ve still yet to see Come Date With Me and Recipes to Riches…*sigh*

  4. Scheduling for commercial channels is as easy as pie. Just make sure you never show advertisements between 59 minutes to the hour and 2 minutes after the hour, and 29 minutes after the hour and 31 minutes after the hour.

    Wash, rinse, dry and reload.

  5. What can I say very bad shows on a very bad network, never liked any of the shows that TEN bought on this year what a disaster, I actually really enjoy watching ABC and SBS over TEN! much more intersting shows.

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