Sunday, July 30

With all the hoo-hah about dual-citizenship I've been considering my own case.  I lived on Scotland for almost 8 years before coming to Australia, which is roughly 9% of my life.  So, on that measure, I'm 91% Australian.  But am I?

There's not a single Australian flag in my house, nor any Vegemite, and I don't drink beer.  I couldn't care less whether the Australian cricketers go on their tour to Bangladesh.  If a pampered, over-promoted, heavily-subsidised Australian Olympian wins a gold medal, I don't feel a surge of national pride.  I cringe if someone calls out 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie' and, as Bob Ellis suggests, I feel a bit of a dickhead when singing the national anthem.

Perhaps worse of all, I can't bring myself to watch Australian drama on TV, although that probably says more about the poor quality of the programs rather than my lack of patriotism.  I just don't like, or can't relate to the characters.  I can't stand Janet King, Rake won't be invited to my next dinner party, and the whole cast of Newton's Law are an embarrassment.

Jamie says the problem is that Australian producers try to be too inclusive.  It's not enough that a character has to be a successful female lawyer, she has to be a lesbian as well.  Every show needs a loveable rogue, somebody ethnic, maybe someone with Down Syndrome and a cheeky smile.  And Ernie Dingo has said he built his career on being the token black.  Producers try too hard to sort out the characters and the story is secondary.

Jamie also sent me an article about a US scriptwriter called Vince Gilligan who has worked on shows like Breaking Bad. 

'Gilligan said a small group of writers plotted every episode intensely before a writer subsequently penned the script itself.

“It’s a sequestered jury that never ends. We’re sitting around all day talking ad nauseam, talking about minute detail,” he explained.

“The breaking of the episodes is the hardest part and takes the most elbow grease. It probably takes on average 3 weeks to break each episode. Sometimes we’ve gone as many as 5 or 6 weeks."'

In Australlia, that process is only allocated two days at the most.  It seems the Australian audience is content to accept second-rate but I wonder how large the potential audience would be if the programs offered were up to scratch.

In the meantime, the 9% of my persona which is British still demands a diet of UK drama.  I'd be hopeless in parliament; clearly 91% is not enough to be truly Aussie.