At Long Last, The Termination Of National Fervour

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday December 17, 1988

DEBORAH LIGHT

THANK God it's nearly over. The fever of the blood that raged through Australian TV programmers as they whipped themselves into a Bicentennial frenzy is cooling as the year draws to its end.

This week we saw a screening of the 1919 classic, A Sentimental Bloke(ABC), tomorrow the drama series 1915 gets another run also on the ABC. Meanwhile on Seven one of the more embarrassing excesses of the nationalistic fervour, Joe Wilson, dragged out over three long nights.

Like much of the programming we've seen this year, the series focused on"the indomitable Australian spirit", "the struggle of one family to succeed in a harsh, brutal land - an inspiring love story". Sound familiar? The same might have been said of Dirtwater Dynasty, A Fortunate Life, I Can Jump Puddles, Harp of the South and a host of others.

An early work of Henry Lawson's, Joe Wilson, came from a collection of short stories written from Lawson's bush experiences. Here it was mercilessly stretched into a six-hour miniseries and then - when the full extent of the injuries was realised - hidden away until the non-ratings period.

Henry Lawson would have bit through his glass at whatever watering hole he now frequents had he tuned into dialogue like this:

"Oh ........................... Is it you Mr Wilson?"..................."Yes. .......................... Is that you Miss Brand?........................... Supposing we take a stroll." ................. "Thank you ............. I'd like that very much.............."

And so it went. The pauses, I guess, were meant to convey the awkward tension which presumably accompanied those early, naive, country courtships. But the long, meaningful silences turned out to mean not much at all. They did help fill the hours and were useful if you wanted to do odd jobs around the house.

Matthew Fargher as Joe sulked his way through the epic while Kim Krejus, as his "little German pudding" of a missus, spent much of the time jutting her jaw in the manner that we are lead to believe was adopted by plucky pioneer wives.

It was a shame because "the harsh, brutal land" was made to look anything but by the producers whose use of the angular shadows thrown by the harsh Aussie light made the country look rich in colour and beauty.

That's the thing about the Australian bush. It looks great on the telly as long as you don't have to live in it along with the blowies and redbacks.

Far more interesting, historically, was Robyn Williams's Watershed, a history of our water supply screened on ABC. Many have been mesmerised over the years by the Robyn Williams voice - its superb diction and cadence - which on ABC radio's The Science Show has managed to make all manner of things -from the reproductive processes of arachnids to theoretical time travel through black holes - riveting information. It came as a surprise when he began popping up on television. The face from which this cultured voice emanates looks like it has just emerged from a Rugby scrum into which it was wedged some years ago.

Water was to this young European settlement "more precious than gold", Williams explained. The trouble was it remained thus well into the 1950s due to a lackadaisical approach to planning for a burgeoning population. When action was taken, it was late and inadequate.

"From the very day it was set up, the Water Board seemed to become a standing joke," said Williams.

Some joke. In 1988, 200 years after white settlement, Australia has a vast number of beautiful beaches you are strongly advised against swimming in by that same body. Disobedience could lead to the contraction of serious diseases from pollution pumped into the seas by systems devised and overseen by the Water Board.

For this reason, Watershed was timely, although I thought Williams went a little easy on the issue of beach pollution. The program had obvious scope for scatalogical puns: " ... if you're a rapidly growing industrial society and you don't keep (sewage) separate from the water supply, then the s... will really hit the fan".

In fact, three quarters of it, 1,100 million litres a day, is pumped into the ocean.

As Williams pointed out, our water supply was horribly polluted from about the time Captain Phillip unpacked his kit bag. You'd think we'd have learnt a thing or two by now.

Into the story of our water supply, Williams managed to fit a history of the nation. This covered the huge migrant influxes and their effect on the sophistication of the resident Anglo-Saxons; the advent of the motor car; class and racial discrimination; the improvement of living standards. Williams interviewed the men and women - "dam people" - from communities which grew up around the construction of dams such as the Avon and Warragamba.

But the highlight of the program was Williams, tucked into giant waders, sallying into Sydney's sewers to see "where it goes every time you pull the chain".

He looked only marginally less silly than Cagney and Lacey this week on their mission to crack a scam involving a game show called Luck 'n' Bucks. "Isn't it where they dress up weird and jump up and down like crazy people?"Cagney asked Lacey, or was it the other way around? Sadly, these two were not above it all. When you saw these usually credible crime busters tricked out alternatively as a vast, red tomato and a giant pineapple, you knew the silly season had finally arrived.