Pop Culture! [#582]

So, is Australian television drama dead or what? The news last week that the premiere of Ten’s big hope for early 2014, Secrets & Lies, had failed to draw anything like a decent audience – 404,000 according to the ratings; which is not enough to keep it on the air – coupled with the long-awaited return of Puberty Blues also getting its lowest ratings ever (538,000) suggests that it might be time to get out the shovels.
The thing to note is that both shows were on Ten, which has been in serious trouble over the last year or so, regularly being beaten by the ABC – which you would think is a sign that the national broadcaster is doing what it should be, unless you read any of the News Corp media outlets, in which case the strength of the ABC is a sign that it needs to have its funding cut and outlets reduced to prevent it from taking money out of the pockets of News Corp.
With Ten struggling, it’s easy to suggest that the reason both shows have failed (or at least, are seriously struggling) is due to the network as a whole dragging them down, especially as both are the kind of “quality” drama series we’re supposed to support. But it’s easy to overlook that Ten has had a long history of making “quality” drama series – and by “quality” I mean “inner city/well-off people with problems” – that never really connected with audiences. Remember CrashBurn? The Cooks? Tripping Over?
Meanwhile, much of the ABC’s current ratings success boils down to their shift towards more mainstream material, with Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and The Doctor Blake Mysteries hitting big both here and in overseas’ sales. That’s not to say that Australian audiences don’t like “quality” drama – it’s just that it’s really, really, really hard to get it right. And when you don’t, there’s not much else going on to keep people watching. If you don’t like the characters on Miss Fisher, there’s a murder mystery each week, plus a whole bunch of historical costumes and set design, plus the occasional insight into how our lives were different all those years ago. Same deal with Doctor Blake.
It’s probably over-reaching to suggest that the difference in ratings between Secrets & Lies and Puberty Blues boils down to more people being interested in what life was like in the ’70s, but with the explosion on reality television over the last decade or so it seems reasonable to suggest that people are watching television to learn about stuff as well as be entertained.
Nine seems to have figured out that the more you can cram into a series the better, with their current ’60s drama Love Child already renewed for a second series. But hang on a second – isn’t Secrets & Lies a murder mystery? Isn’t the big hook there that the audience gets to solve the mystery alongside the characters on the show? Well, sure – but there’s a big difference between sitting down for an hour and seeing a crime solved and being expected to tune in week in week out to put the pieces together. The former sounds like entertainment; the latter just sounds like a lot of hard work.
Written by Anthony Morris