Shattering and being shattered

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 19

Shattering and being shattered

The jnew year has begun at TVNZ. At last I can report that there was so much new on telly | over the week-end that our family lalmost turned into couch potatoes. Saturday, in particular, was a ‘‘really nice night’s entertainment," as Sandy Stone used to put it. We ! tuned In at “Whicker’s W'orld: Living with Waltzing Matilda" and tuned out after "The Dame Edna Experience!" We’re more accustomed to Whicker's saucy tales of bottom-tucking in Miami! He’s on plain exotic territory there. By contrast the Aussie experience just blew his finely tuned urban instincts apart, even though he did his best to edit it up for safe British consumption. As soon as Whicker asked whether the rainbow ended in Oz I had his scripting agenda in my sights.. He was out to find a frontier tamed by plucky British imperial stock, j His expectations were in for a rude bit of shattering. Take Jane Makim and her little son out on a station' in Queensland’s outback. There was the red bull-dust, the dog peeing oh the rusty tankstand, ! the corrugated iron flapping in the breeze. Who could resist intercutting it| with shots of pomp and circumstance in Westminster Abbey? "Great. telly," you could lhear an editor, saying- I ' r Whicker tried very hard Ito draw Jane on what | it felt like being "Fergie ... um ... Sarah’s sister.|’ She calmly: put him in his place and refused to play the game. On the one hand.' she was clearly finding the rural recession tough going, though Aussie homesteads, confusingly; pride jthemselves on; a dilapidated look. Oh the other ihand she was sey” to run 10 horses, so it was Hardly the j"Dad and Dave" scenej that Whicker was breathlessly drawing for us. ' Then we met a rather pompbus Anglo-Irishman in his stately home in Western Australia, I who contributed the opinion that ‘fit takes one Pom to smell another.” Finally we met a couple on a!far-flung Tasmanian

j i island? She writes romantic fiction. He was a World!War II hero. They live a happy subsistence life together. "Whicker tried desperately to make his own fiction of their lives. But they kept cracking his moulds because they (were so fiercely themselves and had done a lot ; of very down-to-earth thinking.

When she said, "I feel I know most of the answers now,"! you believed her. Whicker was. creating extraordinary | television despite himself. All his voyeu'ristic, hectic commentary wilted w’hen faced: with someone who could! calmly state that when,she died “John absolutely swears he'll put me on the compost heap to grow some lovely tomatoes.”!

Whicker may have been plain, shattered by his Aussie experiences, but Dame! Edna makes a fortune but of being plain shattering in "the old country.” -This time the format is a talk-show, Parkinson stvle.!

Barry Humphreys' art lies in the brilliant exploitation of screaming incongruity. Take his guest-list.

First. Mary Whitehouse, i Was I she being interviewed by a drag antipodean! clone of herself or by j a wicked-minded Barry Humphreys?

Cliff'Richards followed. "You’re clean, Mary. You’re squeaky. Cliff,” shrieked the Dame; Seaii Connery entered the set and told of his artmodelling days. "They came! at you with 4B pencils poised, poor boy.” Read what you will into it all! Then there were the jokes, at the expense of the medium. Dame Edna suggested a minute's silent contemplation. “It’s never been done on television before,” she chirped. "People switching from other channels will think that they are on the pause button.” Not only is she up with technology but also with "caring” social-workese. You’ve done well on the first 'show, Barry. Keeping it up will be harder. I mean that in a totally caring and compassionate way,' as you might say.