Year of the expletive

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 11

Year of the expletive

There are many ways of deciding on the country of origin of television programmes. One can listen to accents, look at clothes, architecture and interior design, or one can consider general life-style. If all this still leaves doubt, then it is possible to take the easy way and read the answer in the credits. However, the less obvious and more interesting technique is to count the expletives. The ascending order of television swearing ranges from the U.S.A, (next to none), through Great Britain and New Zealand to Australia (almost nothing else). Thus it was quite clear that “Waterfront” was made in Australia about Australians. Just in case it was not obvious from a strine whine that could saw through wood, the swearing clinched it. And just to make it absolutely crystal, the entire six hours or so began with “1928’s been a bugger of a year,” which is a singular first line. I must confess to a general dislike of mini-series, mainly because they dominate the screen so intensively. If, like “Beulah Land” they are poor, they beggar choice for a few evenings. If they are good, like most of “Masada,” they also cut out choice by making it difficult to watch anything else, and suddenly a great swathe of the week has disappeared. It happened 10 days ago.

A few minutes watching “The Last Bastion” and the hooks were in. It seemed to give a genuine insight into a bit of Australian history. In spite of a fine cast, “Waterfront” was not quite as good as “The Last Bastion,” but unfortunately it was just good enough to keep the attention. At times, it even had the possibility of being better than good. One of its problems was a heavy hand on the stereotypes, as well as the swearing. Bosses had thin moustaches and workers had cloth caps or trilbies. Union leaders came from the north of England. There were colourfully pretentious drawing rooms with monochromatically pretentious people in them. There were brown kitchens with colourful salts-of-the-earth stumbling drunkenly through them. Everything was too busy, particularly in the first of the three episodes. There were many sequences of Jack Thompson and Ray Barrnett talking straight with their heads tilted back so that they could see under their trilby brims. Then it was off to Turin to see a few prospective immigrants and quickly back for a bit of scabby strike-breaking. Meanwhile, posh immigrant Anna Chieri sang arias and her professorinal dad tried to make sense of the niceties of Australian society. The series depicted an extremely crude existence,

with fists ready to fly at the drop of a misunderstood word and boots ready to express the gentle feelings of the locals for the Italians. The Australians spent most of their time shouting insults at one another, and at everyone else, and in fight-

ing. The Italians did much the same, with subtitles. Somehow though, as the hours passed, “Waterfront” increasingly compelled the attention, particularly when more of the Italians learned Australian. As well as giving another brief run down

on a bit of recent history, some of the lines in the series also provided some nicely epigrammatic summaries of the Australian condition. How about the graphic “Rushing around like a bandicoot on a burnt bridge”? And “May I get you some wine?” “I’ll give it a go, ta.” Best of all though,

from what looked like a male to what might have been a female, was: “If I marry you, it’ll be because you’re the best mate I’ve ever had.” It was definitely a bugger of a year.

Tailpiece. It would be marvellous if all New Zealanders (and everyone else) expressed themselves with the same precision and subtlety and with the same feeling for language and ideas as Dr Ngahuia Te Awakotuku. In interviewing her for “Power and Powerlessness,” Marilyn Waring could not go wrong.

[ Review j I Ken Strongman 1