Wizardry of Aus

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 15

Wizardry of Aus

Ken Strongman on television

What a welcome home: a four-part, mammoth mini-series from the country that makes them with all the flair of a onelegged emu — Australia’s “Sword of Honour.” It seems to have been writen by a fourth-former working in a newly consructed language which contains only cliches. It is the sort of thing which ends by sounding like the worst type of avant-grade underground poetry, without the obscenities. It began badly enough, with a pre-wedding night on a farm, with fun-loving young girls (as they used to be called — and gay (as they used to be called) young blades from Duntroon. Whilst the latter drank themselves silly and fell in the mud, the former looked on with giggles prompted by an unhealthy mixture of boys-will-be-boys and lust. And then it became worse.

During the first 30 minutes, minus the introduction and the advertisements, there was a passing out parade, two parties, a hangover, family relationships, a wedding, someone being thrown from a horse and said horse being shot. By half past eight, it seemed to be midnight and the thought ran strong that there were still seven and a half hours to come. At the same rate this could be enough to deal with a

One of the problems is that they seem to keep running out of film. The sequences are half as long as they should be to achieve a reasonable pace. Perhaps this is just as well since the images they embrace have true trans-Tasman subtlety. This is the sort of television made into what someone believes to be an art form by camera angles designed to dwell on most of the orifices of the head, or which occur from fixed positions in the top and bottom corners of large rooms. The dialogue is delightfully consistent with the events. “She’s had that horse for years” ... “I’ll

do it.” Guess which one had the sword of honour? "Life is such a random thing. It could have been me.” Pity it wasn’t; the horse was definitely more prepossessing. Then it was stright into “It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it?” No-one actully said, “Life’s a funny old thing,” but the brighter ones looked as if they wanted to.

Gradually in the first episode it emerged that “Sword of Honour” is about love in the times-they-are-a-changing 1960 s in Australia. "I haven’t been up here since I left high school” ... “I never felt like this before.” “Like what?” “Like going to university is not the most important thing in the world.” Then it is over to the all boys together again over the assault course. "Go round again ... twice. Move.”

After a while it all began to settle down a bit, with young Tony in the military and Essie at the university. Essie is doing a fair bit of bottom-lip-biting and Tony divides his time between cricklyeyed smiling and exercising a cruel streak over his men, his big black ’tache rampant. Will Essie be thrust into too much sophistication by Melbourne? Will Tony’s cruel streak come home? Will they find a new orifice on which to train the cameras? A little later on the

same , evening, Wally Lewis and his little friends showed us that Australia has some proper subtlety after all. The thundering balletic thighs of the front row pointed to the charm they are capable of, but all their pirouetting was of no avail.

Tailpiece. Not all television is as bad as Australian mini-series. Be warned by last week’s report of one effect of television watching in South Africa. Sadly, for four days a husband did not notice that his wife sitting in front of the television screen was dead. What must their programmes be like?