Australian TV drama spending is up – and it shows
In a crossposting from The Conversation, RMIT’s Lisa French argues that increased government funding is delivering better local television drama
Australian TV drama expenditure has increased by 27% in the last year, according to a Screen Australia report released today, accounting for 50% of the A$752 million spent on big and small screen drama in 2012/13. But could we say this corresponds with significantly better home-grown drama? I’d say the signs are extremely positive.
Next week, the second series of the prize-winning ABC drama Redfern Now, goes to air. Drawing together some of the leading lights of Indigenous TV production, Redfern Now will be screened in an environment of renewed optimism about Australian television. Critics loved the first series, and it won an audience-voted 2013 Logie for most outstanding drama in April.
It’s not the only Australian show enjoying critical and commercial acclaim both here and overseas. So what’s driving the current swathe of quality Australian TV drama?
Indigenous stories
At the 2013 AFI Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards in January, Indigenous practitioners scooped the pool. Redfern Now, which explores the lives of six households in the Sydney suburb of Redfern, was nominated in five categories and Wayne Blair’s film, The Sapphires, about an Indigenous girl-group entertaining American troops in Vietnam in the late 1960s, won the award for best film.
Since the early 2000s, there has been a suite of successes in Indigenous screen stories, including Mabo, The Straits, The Circuit and First Australians, culminating in Redfern Now – and The Sapphires on the big screen.
As Indigenous scholar Marcia Langton has observed (invoking Allen Ginsberg), Indigenous people “recognise the power of visual media not only for their own communities, but also for changing the consciousness of the nations that encompass them”.
Indigenous writers, producers and directors have seized the opportunity to tell their own stories. And those stories are prompting all Australians to rethink our history and to better understand ourselves as a bi-cultural nation.
Female stories
In March this year, Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake launched on Foxtel in Australia. The show, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of the stunning New Zealand landscape, has been acclaimed internationally, winning one Emmy award and earning another nine nominations.
A New Zealander working from Australia, Campion typifies the transnational career path of many screen professionals. She works with both local and international money and talent across film and television. Narratives with women at their heart have been a consistent feature of her work.
Women such as Campion have historically been in the minority in key creative roles in both film and television — but that’s changing. According to Screen Australia data, women’s participation in TV production has been growing. It now stands at 44%.
A 2007 UK Film Council report concluded that greater female participation behind the cameras changed the gender balance on screen too: “when women are involved in writing, production and directing, they create more female characters”. We’re seeing a similar trend in Australian television production.
Women are writing, directing and producing more Australian TV shows. As a result, we are seeing a new array of female characters on screens: the housewife (Packed to the Rafters), the career woman (Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo), teenage girls (Puberty Blues), Indigenous women (Redfern Now), female prisoners, (Wentworth), and a female prime minister (At Home with Julia).
TV for the whole world
As a government-subsidised industry, the Australian film and TV sector often reflects government policy. In 2012, the Gillard government’s plan to address the “transformation of the Asian region into the economic powerhouse of the world” in the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper were matched by key players in TV.
The then head of the ABC, Kim Dalton made it clear that the Australian production industry was in the box seat for the Asian Century.
Dalton put in train plans to expand globally with HBO Asia. One of the results is currently screening – Serangoon Road,, the ten-part, A$10 million drama series about the British withdrawal from Singapore in 1964-5.
International partnerships of this sort now provide important funding avenues in a highly competitive marketplace. It is overdue for Australian producers to look to Asia – not only for revenue and funding, but for story sources to explore how we fit into the region.
Australian drama is also making some inroads in the United States. The ABC drama Rake, starring Richard Roxburgh as the eponymous rake, barrister Cleaver Green, has been rebadged for the American market, as has local man-in-a-dog-suit comedy Wilfred. The TV adapation of Christos Tsiolkas’s novel of the same name, The Slap has received rave reviews and strong ratings in the UK; and, as with the small town crime series, The Doctor Blake Murder Mysteries, it has been sold to networks around the world.
It’s generally much cheaper for broadcasters to buy overseas productions than make shows in Australia, so the recent successes are all the more impressive.
Something particularly Australian, and particularly significant, is coming out of the mix – so tune in and enjoy it.
Lisa French is associate professor in cinema studies, media and communication at RMIT University. She is a previous director of the St Kilda Film festival and was on the board of the Australian Film Institute.
This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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“Jane Campion… …A New Zealander working from Australia…” ha! the rule is:- A successful NZer is called Australian! Everyone knows that.
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‘Most Outstanding’ Logies are peer-voted, not audience-voted. Unless you mean an audience of peers. What I’m saying is it wasn’t one of the Logies voted for by Bylynda Bogan, who plumped for House Husbands as Most Popular Drama.
(I’m not knocking Redfern Now.)
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Lisa French just seems to have swallowed Screen Australia’s press release whole. Given the considerable extra funding to the ABC one would expect that the TV drama would be better. But there have also been some real shocker series by the ABC including Crownies (ABC spend at least $11 million), The Straits (ABC spend 4 million), Serangoon Road (ABC spend at least 5 million) and some very dull comedies. Redfern Now was a great drama initiative for indigenous drama but gee it was dull and worthy and rarely able to rise above soap opera. Audiences turned off in droves. Time Of Our Lives really was a soap. In comparison to material from the UK, US and Denmark with its brilliant crime thrillers the increased output was been pretty average.
And of course there is Top Of The Lake, a New Zealand crime story set completely in New Zealand. Why Lisa did Screen Australia invest any money in this series at all? If it had been set in America with same creatives Screen Australia would have baulked but somehow setting it in New Zealand is OK. The ABC actually withdrew from it when it realised it had little connection to Australia despite the kudos attached to a Jane Campion series.
One hopes that in future some real analysis and debate came be brought to Australian TV drama. There seems nobody out there prepared to do it even when paid by universities.
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Money does not improve drama, it helps with production, but it cannot improve drama.
The consistent problem with our television drama has been insufficient time allocated to production, sub standard scripts and a lack of theatrical understanding by many producers and alas, by some directors.
Australian writers are as good as any in the world, but they do not get a fair run or sufficient opportunity to hone their skills and develop their craft.
Actors are too often left to wait for a phone call offering them an audition, many times with a self appointed specialist who has no idea what they are looking for or at.
Directors are often pushed up camera operators or floor managers with great technical and procedural skills but little or no theatrical knowledge at all, who are in turn dominated by the Producer. Producers? Well most producers remain a mystery to me even after my 45 years in the theatrical business.
Jane Campion is a fine example of a person who has been in the business for many years, she knows her craft and has had the intelligence to stick with, not only what she knows best, but the specific areas within the craft for which she has a great feeling .
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