Get the Lowdown

The new ABC1 comedy Lowdown looks fantastic;



It's taking Hungry Beast's spot at 9pm on Wednesday nights from April 21. I just adore Adam Zwar and his brilliant series Wilfred which is currently screening on SBS - am very much looking forward to this one.

Bindi and the Bottle

Comedian Fiona O'Loughlin is in the small paper today after a throwaway comment on Wednesday night's Spicks & Specks (8:30pm ABC1). 

Page 7 of the Herald Sun ran a banner "Fellow stars, viewers slam boozy comedian for 'slap' remark". The article even had a breakout box with a blow-by-blow account of the events on screen - excessive? Yes.

The first line of the article read;

Alcoholic comedian Fiona O'Loughlin has sunk to a new low, calling Bindi Irwin a creep who needs a slap in the face.

But by midday the online article had removed the terms "boozy" and "alcoholic" with the only reference to O'Loughlin's former alcohol dependency in italics at the end;

O'Loughlin discusses her battle with the booze in an interview to be published in Saturday's Herald Sun.

Well, well, well. How convenient for the Herald Sun that they should stumble across this "public outcry" just days before their very own feature on O'Loughlin.

The article claims that the ABC's online message board was "awash" with criticism. Really? At midday there were just 22 comments on the thread regarding Wednesday's episode of S&S - hardly a public outcry.

Mind you, there are over 400 comments on the HS website in response to the article. Many of them are along the lines of "how is this news?" and many more along the lines of "it's called comedy, get over it". Sure there are the "who will think of the CHILDREN" lot but I'm pretty sure they all come from the same church-group and flood the comments section en masse whenever the 'moral panic' bells ring out and they are called to action.

Cheap self-promotion from the Herald Sun - not entirely shocking.

Perhaps O'Loughlin can sue for defamation seeing as she is not, in fact, a boozy alcoholic at this time. Whereas Bindi Irwin is, in fact, slightly creepy.  

Bee in your Bonnet?

Up until now, if you wanted to make a formal complaint to a commercial tv station you had to send or fax an actual letter - I mean putting actual pen to actual paper and purchasing an actual envelope (yes, they still make them). 

Well, times they are a changin' and we have this newfangled gadget called the in-ter-net nowadays - and FreeTV Australia has caught on.

SO - if you want to make a complaint about a commercial free-to-air station you just have to go here and fill out the webform. Easy as that.

Perhaps you'll complain about the frequency of Two and a Half Men episodes being aired? - every two and a half minutes as far as I can tell (or that they're aired at all). Perhaps you'll complain about Benny Hill episodes being aired in prime time on channel 7TWO when the youngens can watch and learn his vomit-inducing skills in objectifying women and terribly unfunny what-I'm-assuming-are-supposed-to-be jokes? Maybe you'll complain about the lack of ethnically diverse characters on Neighbours? Or how about that old chestnut of the advertisements being ten times louder than the programs? (I should point out they have a whole page addressing that very issue - which should by no means stop you complaining).

Ohhh, there's so much joy to be had in whingeing. Come on Australia - this is what we do best - and now it's been made easy! Just two minutes away from your Facebook stalking could have you receiving carefully worded emails from the stations explaining to you that your comments have been taken into careful consideration! Pure JOY!

Obviously you're not reading this anymore because you're already over there telling Mel and Kochie just exactly what you think of them ... ahhhhh, so much potential.

* I should point out that the page states;

This Electronic Lodgement System can only be used for complaints under matters covered by the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice. Code Complaints include program classification;  accuracy, fairness and respect for privacy in news and current affairs; the amount of non-program matter on television; and placement of commercials and program promotions.

But there are links to other feedback avenues so don't let that stop you.

Vulva Vulva Vulva

If you're to believe the Herald Sun people are supposedly up in arms about Hungry Beast's segment on vaginas, labiaplasty and magazine censorship which aired last night at 9pm and is repeated tonight at 8:30pm on ABC2. Obviously the Beast is attracting a good audience these days - has everyone forgotten a rather confronting feature documentary aired on SBS last June titled The Perfect Vagina? It showed far more graphic scenes of the surgery and of the female anatomy in general. There has also been a similar documentary regarding male genitalia aired several times over the last few years on SBS.

So why has Aunty showing us a few "graphic" images got everyone's knickers in a knot? 

Let's see, is it that Gen Y (Hungry Beast's target demographic) are prudes when it comes to female genitalia? Doubt it. 

Is it that no one actually watches SBS? Refuse to believe it. 

Or is it that people are quicker to make complaints about the ABC because it's the main public broadcaster and clearly should not be using its funding to educate the masses on the correct representation of the vulva? Methinks it's the latter. After all, it's your ABC, you pay taxes, so you get to put your two cents in about every little thing that may or may not be to your tastes.

The thing is, it is our ABC - as a collective - and most people on Twitter thought the segment was informative and gave it much kudos. Who are the people that found it offensive? Are they not aware of anatomy? Should their children not be aware of the misrepresentation that the censorship laws are creating? Perhaps they should spend their time complaining to the commercial stations about music videos or to their local service station for shoving Krystal Forscutt in their children's faces. 

God forbid the kiddles see an anatomically correct vulva without diamantes or a playboy bunny symbol anywhere near it.    

I thought the segment was well made and not at all innapropriate. I'm not sure whether the magazine censorship laws can be blamed entirely for women's warped visions of what we are supposed to look/act like - but it was a reasonable argument expressed well. Perhaps the sensitive dears not wanting to view the female anatomy could have changed the channel after the first, or second, warning.

Here's Kirsten Drysdale's blog re the issues of censorship covered in the segment.

Wicked Crime-Drama

Wicked Love: The Maria Korp Story scored 1.3 million viewers last night for channel 9. Starring Rebecca Gibney and Vince Colosimo it told the tale of murdered mother of two Maria Korp in 2005 - a tale that included sex, intrigue, lies, swingers and a good dose of Colosimo-esque ego-mania. It was very watchable.

I wonder though, whether it might have been better to use different names for the characters rather than those from the real life case. With the success of Underbelly has come a trend for real life crime-drama on Australian television. The thing about drama is that the story is embellished to create it. Facts are included or excluded for entertainment purposes. Events are changed, assumed, embellished.

Many people watching last night would have developed an opinion by the end of the telemovie. 

Whether it was that poor old Joe Korp had a personality disorder that was evident from childhood (thanks to some grainy childhood flashbacks of little Joe in 'cowboy' mode) or that Tania Herman was a misguided fool-for-love led astray by her dominating lover - viewers are making assumptions about people in real life based on the character portrayals by some of their favourite actors.

I found it interesting that Maria Korp was portrayed (by Gibney) as a normal albeit long-suffering wife of a cheating husband but that her obsession with psychics, spirituality, animal sacrifice and penchant for the "swinger" lifestyle was touched on only slightly. Her 'eccentric' behaviour was definitely shown as only being a result of her husband being unfaithful.

Tania Herman was portrayed almost as an innocent. A lonely single mother looking for a good time on the internet who was convinced to commit a crime by her lover. A far cry from the tough, muscle-clad Queen of the Jailhouse as some news reports have suggested more recently.

Then there's Joe Korp, eerily portrayed by Vince Colosimo as an unhinged, egotistical, dominating smooth-talker. He is quite plainly the villain of the piece and is unlikeable from the very first moment we meet him - perhaps because we know how the story unfolds.

But these characters are not, in reality, accurate portrayals of the actual people involved in the case - how can they be? Yet some viewers have been commenting on forums and blogs today about the case as though they had read all the court transcripts and had a deep understanding of the actual events.

As a crime-drama Wicked Love was quite good. But it's not a documentary - if it were, then such attractive actors would not have been chosen and there would have been no voice-of-God narration from the dead victim. Even the title suggests that this is indeed the "Maria Korp Story" - not a story based on actual events.

In fact it is based on a novel that is based on actual events called The Maria Korp Case: The Woman in the Boot Story, by Carly Crawford - which I haven't read.

It seems to me though, that in using actual cases for these crime shows that networks are making the viewer the judge, jury and executioner of the people involved in the real case. 

It's an interesting genre and I do find these programs fascinating, but to be honest I'd rather watch Australian Story and get the facts from the actual people involved (if they want to tell them) - even if they are less attractive and there are no soft-focus sex scenes.