Summer essentialsAustralian televisionAmong this year’s many treats we had the return of Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney, more Newsreader and the amazing Gina of Alone Australia
Deadloch
Prime
The latest production from writer-creators Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan (best known for The Katering Show and Get Krack!n) departs dramatically from their previous work. Set in a small Tasmanian town, Deadloch begins with the discovery of a corpse and a dick joke, establishing the premise for a whodunit while signposting lewdness and raucousness. The detective flown in to help Sr Sgt Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) is the thunderously loud and bloody ’strayan Eddie Redcliffe. Madeleine Sami’s exaggerated comic performance in this role is intentional but a little too much for me; however, there’s much else to appreciate – including interesting commentary on gender politics and a playful tension between how the show looks (moody, serious) and feels (playful, mischievous). – Luke Buckmaster Read the full review
Taskmaster Australia
Network 10
When Ten announced an Australian version of the beloved UK (and arguably even more beloved New Zealand) series, in which comedians debase themselves in a series of ridiculous and diabolical tasks, I’ll admit to some trepidation – call it cultural cringe, call it having been burned before. Thankfully, Taskmaster Australia stuck close to the original recipe – even reusing the set from the NZ version – and after a slightly shaky couple of episodes, the Australian iteration (with Tom Gleeson’s slightly more collegiate spin on the curmudgeonly hosting role) settled into a relaxed and upbeat rhythm, making for perfect silly-but-not-stupid evening viewing. – Alan Vaarwerk
The World Cup*
(*The Matildas)
Channel 7/Optus
The most popular Australian television program in 2023 was, as it has been in previous years, a sporting event. But this year it wasn’t an AFL grand final, or a rugby league State of Origin decider. The Matildas’ epic World Cup campaign culminated in a semi-final against England, where Australia were narrowly eliminated despite a sensational goal from captain Sam Kerr. The match broke the audience record for the modern television ratings period, going back more than two decades. It was the peak of 2023’s Matildas mania – partly fuelled by the compelling Disney+ documentary released prior to the tournament. – Jack Snape
The Newsreader season two
ABC
The makers of The Newsreader – including creator Michael Lucas and director Emma Freeman – have sanitised some aspects of media history, but they certainly prioritised compelling drama and strong characters, especially the two thoroughly appealing leads: Anna Torv’s Helen Norville and Sam Reid’s Dale Jennings. The newsroom setting allows the writers (Lucas, Kim Ho, Adrian Russell Wills and Niki Aken) to portray history from an interesting and slightly detached perspective, viewing significant events through the prism of TV news reportage. In the ante-upping season two, these events include the 1987 federal election and the Australian bicentenary. – LB Read the full review
Wellmania
Netflix
Loosely based on a memoir by former Guardian Australia columnist Brigid Delaney – who co-created this deliciously crude and effervescent dramedy with Benjamin Law – Wellmania was a global hit for Netflix, which has mystifyingly passed it over for a second season.
Its star, the Instagram satirist Celeste Barber, proved her slapstick shtick translates beyond social media, and she brought impressive emotional range to hot-mess protagonist Liv Healy, a party girl food writer stuck in her home town of Sydney while she goes on a health kick in an attempt to pass the medical test for her US green card renewal. Between the physical comedy of colonics, cupping, naked therapy and Bondi coastal runs, Liv is also trying to repair relationships and process unresolved grief. – Janine Israel Read the full review
Queerstralia
ABC
This incredibly meta and intricately constructed docuseries must have been a nightmare to put together, but thank goodness it was. The comedian Zoë Coombs Marr tells the queer history of Australia – once deemed “the Sodom of the South Pacific” – with screenwriter Nayuka Gorrie covering First Nations notions of gender and sexuality.
The show’s wordy script is often extremely funny, as Coombs Marr uses humour to parse what are often very painful stories of persecution. The three episodes explore how LGBTQ people have been shaped by the law, the evolution of sexual and gender identities, and how communities were formed in periods of crisis, like the Aids era. It should be shown in schools. It should be watched by everyone. – Sian Cain
The Messenger
ABC
I love how, in this under-appreciated young adult mystery series, things are bent of whack in slightly dreamy ways – as if 90% of it is based in our reality and the rest in a bizarro hypnagogic world. The plot follows 19-year-old Ed (a charmingly sleepy-eyed William McKenna) who receives playing cards inscribed with addresses, each containing a problem to solve or a wrong to right. A fun neo-noirish atmosphere surrounds him and his friends – including Audrey (Alexandra Jensen), Ritchie (Kartanya Maynard) and Marv (Chris Alosio) – who live in a small town that looks strangely retro, but again in quite subtle ways (Ed, for instance, drives an old-looking cab). The plot is lean and uncluttered, the writers and directors putting trust in the story and cast, with very impressive results. – LB Read the full review
The Cook Up with Adam Liaw
SBS
The best thing about The Cook Up isn’t actually the food – though the food always looks really delicious and makes me sad that the concept of Smell-O-Vision is no longer in vogue. Host Adam Liaw is on a mission to show audiences that food is never just food; it’s the intersection of culture, history, climate, politics, economics and memory. Each episode revolves around a delightfully specific theme (such as recipes with zero food waste, or low-cost meals, or just “peas”) with guests ranging from bestselling cookbook author Alison Roman and comedian Nina Oyama to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre’s chief executive, Kon Karapanagiotidis. The best bit is when Liaw is staring at his guest’s dish and you just know he’s thinking: “Can I eat that now?” Also, did I mention the food always looks really delicious? – Sinead Stubbins
The Artful Dodger
Disney+
I thoroughly appreciated the spirit, panache and pace of this quasi-Dickensian series that extends the story of the Oliver Twist pickpocket who once led a gang of criminals and is now working as a surgeon in Australia (the amusingly tenuous connection being that pickpocketing and medical procedures both require dexterous handwork). The show’s youthful energy is reflected in the casting of Thomas Brodie-Sangster in the lead role; he’s in his 30s but looks about 12. When a shady figure from the protagonist’s past unexpectedly arrives, old mate Dodger gets embroiled in more and more shady exploits. Setup director Jeffrey Walker sets a roaring pace, understanding the show can be absurd, eccentric, even expendable – but it should never be boring. – LB Read the full review
The Great Australian Bake-Off
Foxtel/Binge
In many ways, the Aussie spin-off of the popular British baking competition has actually evolved into a better show than the original. There’s no insufferable Paul Hollywood glaring at contestants, for starters – but the Aussie version also doesn’t signpost who is winning and who is doing badly as overtly as the British Bake Off. The baking is just as accomplished and often far more interesting, with Australian contestants turning to native ingredients and more experimental flavour combinations as often as they do vanilla and strawberry. This year’s season was as good as ever, but particularly poignant after the sudden death of co-host Cal Wilson in October. – SC
The Betoota Advocate Presents
Network 10/Paramount+
In this horribly decayed dog-eat-dog world, we can turn to the Betoota Advocate for a path through the darkness. Akubra-wearing editors Clancy Overell and Errol Parker (real names Archer Hamilton and Charles Single) might look like the offspring of Barnaby Joyce, but their straight shootin’ demeanour caricatures Australian masculinity and provides a fun performative element to help reassess entrenched national narratives. The speed of the show is fast and bouncy and the laughs come regularly. There’s a hysterically funny moment in the Hillsong episode, in which a former member of Frank Houston’s church recounts how he and a friend successfully got a bunch of worshippers (including Houston himself) to embrace the gospel of the Flintstones and cry out, while speaking in tongues, “yabba dabba doo!” – LB Read the full review
Hard Quiz
ABC
For eight seasons, Hard Quiz has celebrated freaks and geeks who know too much about a very specific thing. It’s wonderful. Whoever decides the pairing of the very particular quiz topics deserves the Order of Australia – where else on TV can I learn about Harry Styles, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Pulp Fiction and wheat all in one 29-minute block? Tom Gleeson may tease his guests for their precise proclivities, but you can tell he’s just as thrilled as we are. Best of all, it takes the thing you’re embarrassed to know everything about and says: “Hey, you’re not a freak for being obsessed with Joseph Stalin/colonoscopies/the 1995 comedy film Billy Madison! Well, maybe you are a bit, but that’s fine too.” – SS
The Kingdom
SBS
Marc Fennell is rapidly becoming one of our most entertaining documentarians, with his excellent series Stuff the British Stole and Framed, the story of the art heist in which Picasso’s Weeping Woman was stolen from the National Gallery of Victoria. The Kingdom is his most personal work yet: an examination of Australia’s strange conglomeration of Christian megachurches, particularly the influential and lucrative Hillsong, which began in the suburbs of Sydney before expanding around the globe.
Fennell grew up in evangelical Pentecostalism, beginning at the Christian Life Centre led by Hillsong founder and paedophile pastor Frank Houston. Now a non-believer, he meets with those who have left Hillsong after years of scandal, and looks at the other churches hoping to inherit the flock. – SC
Love Me season two
Foxtel/Binge
Australian acting royalty reunited for more steamy sex and penetrating conversation in the second season of Love Me, an intergenerational family drama about feeling the fear but loving anyway. Where season one saw the grieving Mathieson clan embark on new romantic entanglements after the death of the family matriarch, this season deals with how to hold on to love when reality encroaches. Hugo Weaving and Heather Mitchell are enchanting as opposites-attract late-in-life lovebirds; Bojana Novakovic and Bob Morley are devastating as the striking couple navigating exes and infertility; while Celia Pacquola’s wacky best friend brings much-needed levity. Shot in Melbourne and Sorrento, Love Me unfurls languorously in bedrooms, boardrooms and on benchtops, as the characters strive to love without limits. – JI
Alone Australia
SBS
Like many, I have been a huge fan of this long-running survival reality show since coming across it during Covid lockdowns. The first season of the Australian edition did not disappoint, plonking 10 contestants in remote Tasmania to survive as long as they could in one of the harshest environments seen on the show, entirely alone but for eels and some stubbornly evasive pademelons. Who would have thought that more than 1 million Australians would come together each week to gasp over someone accidentally dropping a fish? It was incredibly compulsive telly; bring on season two! – SC
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