This was published 4 years ago
ABC's Old People could teach TV's attention seekers about authenticity
A few weeks ago I lamented the lack of originality when it comes to Australian television content, but things appear to have turned around – though not necessarily in the right direction – thanks to several of Sydney's most tireless attention seekers.
Roxy Jacenko in I Am .... Roxy, in which the Sydney PR maven shows off her seemingly fabulous and rich lifestyle.Credit: NETWORK TEN
Let's start with the good news first: the ABC's brilliant Old People's Home For 4 Year Olds.
While not an original idea (Britain's Channel 4 first aired the concept in 2018), the Australian version, beautifully narrated by Annabel Crabb, lobbed onto our television screens with little fanfare but quickly won a legion of fans.
Old People's Home for Four Year Olds gets preschoolers to interact with the residents of a retirement home. Credit: ABC
The show is a potent mix of sadness and joy, but underpinning it all is something the other "reality" TV shows currently on air lack: authenticity.
It is simply impossible to script a four-year-old (who is too young to understand the artifice of shows like The Bachelor), just as it is for a 94-year-old (who is too old to care).
Co-produced by ABC and Endemol Shine Australia (the maker of MasterChef, Married At First Sight and Ninja Warrior), the series brings together a group of older retirement home residents with a group of pre-schoolers to see if this inter-generational contact can improve the health and wellbeing of the older people, thus helping them to lead happier, and healthier lives.
There's not a rose or breast implant in sight, but rather heart-rending moments between little children full of life face-painting, singing, laughing, holding hands and capturing the hearts of older, largely forgotten souls who had mistakenly written their lives off.
It's absolutely beautiful.
In its first week the show pulled in a modest, albeit still respectable 685,000 viewers.
But as the show became water cooler talk around the country, 910,000 viewers tuned in for the second episode, which became the 10th most watched program across the country on the night. It beat the re-birthed SeaChange on Nine which attracted 761,000 viewers, and thoroughly demolished Seven’s predictably derivative new reality dating show The Proposal which was seen by 453,000.
The ProposalCredit: Seven Network
Top marks ABC, let's hope there is much more to come.
Now the not so good – the offerings on Ten's pilot week.
I will admit to having watched the vapidity of Sydney's Crazy Rich Asians all the way to the end. But this show is not really about cliched cultural stereotypes; instead it is about how a Moroccan-born Mr Fix-it named Karim Gharbi has finally managed to fulfil his dream of getting his mug on the box.
Concierge Karim Gharbi looks after businesswoman Lulu Pallier and charity princess Crystal on Sydney's Crazy Rich Asians, part of 10's Pilot Week.Credit: Network 10
Gharbi, a likeable chap who sounds an awful like "Fronk" the wedding planner in Steve Martin's classic Father Of The Bride, is no stranger to me. He's been around the Sydney scene for many years, having worked as a club promoter and dabbled in celebrity management.
These days he works as a concierge for hire for the rich and fatuous. Gharbi invited the cameras to film his days working a butler/babysitter/shrink for a group of pampered Sydney Asian women and a Hong Kong playboy with a penchant for hamburgers on the high seas.
Between organising a dog fashion show, fixing up one of his clients with a boyfriend and growling at his personal assistant, Gharbi (along with a spoilt pooch named Manolo) stole the show. However the whole concept, while offering a few moments of amusement, was hilariously scripted and oh so contrived – especially when purse-lipped Karim with his bullet-proof bouffant threw a hissy fit and flung his mobile onto the red carpet.
He made MAFS' Ines Basic look like Meryl Streep.
"I would LOVE to do it again," Gharbi enthused to PS three days after the show had aired and insisting he had "no idea" how it rated.
Well the results are in and sadly it looks likely Sydney's Crazy Rich Asians was off the boil quicker than a packet of Two Minute Noodles. Just 175,000 viewers tuned in, which is about the total population of Dubbo, Tamworth and Albury combined.
One of Gharbi's old mates is Sydney art gallery owner Christa Billich, another acquaintance of mine, along with her husband, artist Charles Billich. Indeed a few years ago I travelled with them to their good friend Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills for his annual 4th of July party. To say they are a kooky couple of swingers is an understatement.
In reality show My 80-Year-Old Flatmate, Christa Billich looks for a millennial to share her inner-city penthouse. Credit: Network 10
Christa stars in her own pilot on Ten, My 80 Year Old Flatmate, which is about homeless Millennials moving in with wealthier octogenarians. After watching it I wondered if perhaps Christa – who insists she is still in her 70s, telling me she fibbed to producers to get on the show – would be better off finding a room on the ABC's Old People's Home.
The show was not without its merits, but you can only watch so much narcissism on the telly, which is bad news for I Am Roxy.
To be honest, I only watched the promo for Roxy' Jacenko's show. It featured her "shrine" lined with a couple of million dollars worth of expensive handbags under spotlights.
"People buy art for their walls, I buy handbags," she gloats to the camera.
That was more than enough for me.