News, Top Stories Archive:
Snake-oil television to anyone who’ll listen
Everybody’s never been happier. Everybody’s making more Australian content than ever. Everybody’s got some snake oil to sell.
That’s if you believe the network executives.
“We’ve got Australian drama more spot-on than we have for a long time,” Seven’s head of programming Tim Worner told the Daily Telegraph.
“Television drama and comedy are possibly the healthiest we have seen in the last 10 years and looking forward it will just get better.”
Nine’s David Gyngell is just as buoyant.
“We are making more shows than we ever have,” he said. “Financially, we have got ourselves into …
ABC unveils 2009 trump cards
The Chaser’s War on Everything is back in 2009. The ABC has announced 10 episodes for the bad boys of comedy, after a year off air. No doubt ther comedy team are realising without Anna Coren and John Howard around it will have far more material to play with.
The ABC has announced the return of the show as part of its 2009 line-up, beating TEN’s 2009 launch to the punch.
Also next year, Andrew Denton will produce Project Next in which “original thinkers, movers, mischief-makers and cage-rattlers” will be enticed into …
Returning: Stupid, Stupid Man.
Wayne Hope is certainly having a good year at the ABC
The final episode of Very Small Business goes to air tonight. Next week ABC will bring the second series of the TV1 comedy set in a men’s magazine editorial, Stupid, Stupid Man.
Hope and Robyn Butler are also preparing a second season of The Librarians.
Returning in the comedy next week are Matthew Newton, Bob Franklin, Chris Leaney, Leah Vandenberg and Sophie Katinis. Guest stars in the first ep include Stephen Curry, Deborah Mailman and Leo Sayer.
It airs 9pm Wednesday on ABC1 followed …
Bondi Rescue: Bali
With the obvious exclusion of SBS, lack of diversity on screen is always an on-going issue.
Grey’s Anatomy, The Amazing Race, and The Librarians are some rare exceptions. While we’ve all just had our collective, four-yearly Olympic cultural lesson, I have to say I didn’t learn much about what it means to live in China. Meanwhile, one of the highest-rated shows in Australia depicts foreigners as liars, criminals and drug-traffickers. Significantly, Border Security thrived by depicting nasty foreigners around every corner, at a time when the Tampa incident and Schapelle Corby’s case …