Critic's view - Wednesday, July 22
The Age
Thursday July 16, 2009
World's Strictest ParentsChannel Seven, 7.30pmAFTER seeing the moving and affecting series Brat Camp, this Australian show seems really lame. Whereas Brat Camp generated much of its heat from the tantrums and fireworks of the truly scary teenage tyrannosaurs, the adolescents selected for this show just seem grumpy by comparison and roll over without too much of a fight. The grimly troubled and self-destructive yoof of Brat Camp were broken down and then remade over many weeks in the wilderness. Here, they clean a toilet or two, dish out some food to the homeless, get a letter from home and all is right in the world again. It's all a little unsatisfying because what you really want to see is these kids suffering in the same way they have made their loving parents and grandparents suffer. All they end up getting is a bit of a boring trip to the US Bible Belt and some reasoned talking about consequences. Far more entertaining would have been to give them a pocketknife and a packet of matches each and to have dropped them in the middle of the Projects in New York or Compton in LA and then followed them for a week. Crocodiles have the right idea: they eat their young.We are WizardsABC2, 8.30pmTHIS documentary will really only be of interest to fans of the Harry Potter juggernaut. Ostensibly it's about the young (and occasionally older) fans who immerse themselves in the young wizard's spell but it spreads itself too thinly trying to cover three concurrent stories, each of which could have easily made a more interesting yarn on its own. There's the phenomenon of wizard rock, where geeky late-teen boys dress as Potter characters and fill public libraries with tweens who throw themselves with abandon into literary mosh pits of exceedingly good-natured fun. But it also touches on the idiot might of entertainment monolith Warner Bros that blindly sent cease-and-desist letters to teenagers running fan sites from their bedrooms. And the Christians who believe Harry's evil pull to the dark occults will destroy society. It would have worked much better if the focus had been narrowed to concentrate on 14-year-old Heather Lawver's plucky battle with and boycott of Warner Bros and the transnational's eventual rethinking of its relationship between fans and franchise. Or, my favourite, the nutbag Christian filmmaker Caryl Matrisciana, whose articulate-sounding gobbledegook manages to look past the communities of well-behaved kids coming together and having good clean fun, past the good-triumphing-over-evil morality that is at the heart of the Potter tales and instead focuses on the supposed witchcraft repackaged. But, of course, her quoting of scripture never mentions any of the equally-scary Old Testament stories that has caused many a child to have nightmares.Spicks and SpecksABC1, 8.30pmTHIS is the show that just keeps on giving and tonight's is another of the popular "themed" editions, this one being the '60s. But really, it should have been called Spicks and Specks with Denise Drysdale because the bonzer Aussie sheila carry-on of "Ding Dong" steals the show - and that's a good thing. Australia's first gogo dancer manages to even steal some of the limelight from fellow guest team member Adam Richards, whose campery is always worth a look, and she out-funnies opposing guest team members Brian Cadd and Ian Turpie, who trade old entertainment war stories like a couple of drunk diggers on Anzac Day - but instead of playing two-up they play their own game of one-up(manship). Here's an idea: get rid of the shameful THISAfternoon on Nine and replace it with a reprise of Celebrity Squares or Blankety Blanks with Ding Dong sitting in every week.
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