I haven’t take much away from Kevin Smith’s raucous, immature comedy 1995 comedy Mallrats over the years, but one notion that has lingered with me is that of the “dirt mall”, the second-rate shopping centre that may have enjoyed a halcyon period for, like, three days after its grand opening but then gradually, inexorably degenerated into a haven for discount outlets, knock-off brands and subpar food-court snacks.
Visiting a dirt mall is generally a dispiriting experience – sure, you may have felt less sting in the hip-pocket nerve but you walk away dissatisfied and even a little unclean. You know you deserve better.
In 2019, commercial television is a dirt mall.
As someone with happy, formative childhood memories of both the entertainment and the communal experience provided by shared viewing of TV shows, it gives me no pleasure to say that.
And, hey, I know that there are still plenty of people out there getting their kicks from the distorted simulacra of reality offered by the likes of Married at First Sight. I’m aware that many such viewers are hip to the unreality of such programming and are digging it as heightened melodrama or ‘trainwreck TV’. Whatever gets you through the night, I guess.
But that’s not my thing. When it comes to such depictions of human behaviour and interaction, I’ve always been of a mind that one will be exposed to more craft, artistry, authenticity and honesty in either a legit documentary or a well-scripted fiction.
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With a loud, buzzy, trashy reality-TV show, you’re striking the very unhappy medium between those two. It’s not even a sugar rush anymore, it’s a fucking aspartame rush.
But it’s cheap to make and it can light up the right pleasure centres in the brain for a few seconds, so it gets made and hyped and discussed like it’s actually worth a damn in media outlets under the same ownership umbrella. Woot.
Still, the commercial networks seem to feel as if they should remain in the scripted-drama business, even though the pay-TV stations and streaming services have cornered the market on prestige and star power.
In this regard, Channel Nine and Seven are on the verge of launching some of their biggish guns for 2019. Let’s begin with Seven, which went on a bit of a buying spree at ‘your’ ABC and snapped up the rights to Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries (premiering 8.30pm, Thursday February 21) and more.
A ‘60s-era update on Miss Fisher’s Jazz Age sleuthing, this has Peregrine Fisher – niece of legendary crime-cracker Phryne Fisher, who’s missing somewhere in Papua New Guinea and presumed deceased – assuming her aunt’s mantle as a fearless fighter for justice and equality.
And it’s…fine? The pilot episode is a run-of-the-mill mystery about duelling department stores and dead fashion models, made with as much flair and period detail as a limited budget will allow – one can sense the camera operator striving to get just the right angle of older buildings without catching a glimpse of the 21st century in the frame – but it seems to lack the dry, droll wit and charm that distinguished Phryne’s escapades.
A deficit of Essie Davis, who so ideally embodied Miss Fisher, hurts for sure, despite Geraldine Hakewill certainly appearing keen to emulate the Fisher ethos while putting an individual stamp on her Peregrine character.
But neither Hakewill nor Peregrine are as immediately captivating (give it time), and Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries – despite some world-building and scene-setting that’s kinda ambitious and sorta imaginative (I did like the Adventuresses’ Club, home to female mountain climbers, fencing experts and scientists) – has its work cut out for it living up to the name.
Before savvy producers saw the value in rebooting or reimagining existing IP, there was the good old-fashioned rip-off. And Nine has exactly that with Bad Mothers (premiering 9pm Monday February 18), which is about as uninspiring as its title.
Lift a large chunk of the HBO hit Big Little Lies, from the stresses of the daily school run to the drama of someone with the seemingly perfect life winding up dead in nefarious circumstances, and throw in prosaic insights, observations and developments about the central quartet of wives and mothers leading lives of quiet desperation in upper-middle-class suburbia, and you’ve got this bland concoction, a show where people actually say things like “game on”.
(Hey, maybe people in the real world do actually say “game on” when things are about to get intense. I don’t watch television to see and hear those kinds of people. I want people in television to say the things I’m too clever to think up.)
The best thing Bad Mothers has going for it is Melissa George, who took on the pivotal role of neighbourhood queen-bee Charlotte after Jessica Marais exited the project. George is an interesting actor – mannered in a compelling way and kinda fearless in her choices – and she’s the only one steering into the melodrama of it all.
Maybe a little more of George’s fuck-it attitude is what scripted programming on commercial TV needs right now. After all, the gargoyle amateurs of reality-TV romance are leaving it all out on the field…why shouldn’t the professionals go just as hard?
