Wanted: Sandra Sully Vs Matt Doran's Alex Perry-Tight Suit

15 July 2013 | 2:10 pm | Andrew Mast

Sandra Sully's Wanted co-host attempts to beat Alex Perry's record for tightest-clothes-worn-on-an-Australian-reality-show.

It's bizarre watching Channel Ten's Wanted team behave like they are making breakthrough TV with their new-fandangled 'interactivity' angle on solving real-life crime. Remember Australia's Most Wanted? That aired for most of the '90s on Seven and it also was 'interactive' – it's just that the viewers used landline telephones to interact. Sorry, they didn't have a hashtag. [Y'know before that, it's quite possible that TV viewers 'interacted' with their favourite TV shows by post.

At first Wanted could be mistaken to be Ten's move into news satire. An Australian Brass Eye. It starts with the odd dialogue of former Superintendent Moustachioed Silver Fox (aka Terry Dalton). Introduced by Sandra “I'm here to give this program news gravitas” Sully as “our very own crimebuster”, the Fox introduces a YouTube-quality CC-TV vid of a nutter beating the crap out of a convenience store worker. He also narrates the clip for us… it is grainy, we might need some help. The Fox tells it like it is, “… and then POW! The POI (person of interest) bashes him with a steel bar! Look how many times he hits him!” Then he demands, “Look at his face! Look at his clothes! Do you know him!?!” Half of the audience is surely now feeling guilty by association.

But it doesn't end there. The Fox outlines that viewers can help “strike your own blow against crime… get onto Crimestoppers!” Oh yeah! Let's get steel bar interactive and call the fucking shit out of that Crimestoppers line and tweet the fucking crap out of that hashtag.

It sounds like the Fox has just invited us to commit our own violent crime, film it, upload it and if it gets an airing on that ad-break-length crime-stopping show Crimestoppers, it's like an audition tape for getting on Wanted. Australia's Got Crime! And the Fox is the right man to judge. As we discover when Sully then gets her Dr Seuss on and asks, “I guess you've dealt with a fair bit of crime in your time?” Unfortunately, the Fox does not respond with, “I do not like those thieves and thugs! I do not like men high on drugs!”

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Instead, the Fox crinkles his moustached lip, grips his clipboard a little tighter and stares down the barrel of the camera. He answers sternly, “I certainly have, Sandra! I've seen it all!”

Last week's debut episode of Wanted also included re-enactments, interviews with witnesses, co-host Matt Doran in a suit so tight that even Alex Perry wouldn't wear it and a musical performance.

But our tip is to keep an eye out for a Wanted spin-off from the show's runaway star Xanthe Mallet. A forensic scientist with an English accent – you know, just like in those US forensic procedurals with a token Brit (usually either extra aloof or someone beholden to an '80s goth idea of what it means to be edgy). Wanted: Bones: Australia – a reimagining of Lisa McCune's Forensic Investigators: Australia's True Crimes only with less words but more colons in the title.

Mallet strives for aloof (but there is a hint of goth in the black dress she has selected for her in-studio pieces). But just like Bones, she mucks on down to the forest location of the murder she is investiga-reporting (note: she is wearing a trenchcoat here, once a must-have item in every goth wardrobe). But unlike Bones she can break down that forensics jargon so anyone can understand. Mallet outlines tonight's crime: “What we do know is that she was murdered.”

Back to Sully, who switches from Seuss to Sesame Street. After once again informing us to call the Crimestoppers line if we have any information, Sully urges education: “We want you to learn this number off by heart.” Sully may intend to randomly pop quiz people in the streets after each week's broadcast (best you avoid the corner of Toorak Road and Chapel Street in Melbourne after 9.30pm on Wednesdays).

The Wanted team also implores us to nominate a crime that we think should be investigated. The show's hashtag makes it easy to tweet them the week's biggest crime: “#WantedTV audience for Mole disappeared. Maybe holed up with AusAmazingRace audience. Pls help”.