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Ready For This, ABC3, 6.20pm
This is the first time I’ve sat down to watch an episode of Ready For This, and, given it’s a show aimed at teens and tweens, my expectations were not high. However, it turns out to be high-quality, home-grown drama driven along by its talented young cast. This should probably come as no surprise when one considers the people behind it, Miranda Dear and Darren Dale, of Blackfella Films (Mabo, Redfern Now). The set-up, while a little artificial, is a useful narrative device, placing a group of Indigenous kids with different talents in an inner-city Sydney hostel while they attend a nearby school. The storylines explore issues such as bullying, racism and sexuality, but without beating the viewer over the head with a heavy-handed message. Aaron McGrath takes a starring role in this episode as Levi Mackay, a promising AFL player trying to come to terms with the reappearance of his father, who has just got out of prison. Ready For This stands out as high-quality drama, apart from any positive sentiments that might lie behind it.
X-Factor Grand Final part 1, Seven, 7.30pm
The phrase ‘‘X-factor’’ suggests that certain je ne sais quoi that makes someone or something stand out. It’s an indefinable quality one knows when one sees, and, in this context, it could also be labelled ‘‘star quality’’. Whether television’s X-Factor was ever about finding that elusive sparkle is moot, but the show has drifted so far from that original premise as to be almost unrecognisable. It’s not that there is anything wrong with the two performers who will duke it out in the two-part final, which concludes tomorrow, but there’s not a lot to choose between any of them. The contestants’ backstory and the show’s constructed narrative centring on eliminations and team rivalries take precedence over identifying talent. The chance of the process uncovering a new performer with the X-factor that marks them out as different and worthy of closer attention is negligible. It’s an enjoyable circus, but not much more than that.
American Horror Story: Hotel, Eleven, 9.30pm
Poking around in the long-sealed basement of the Hotel Cortez was never going to end well. In fact, itmight have been best for all concerned if they had left it well alone, which Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson) doesn’t. Obviously.
Nick Galvin
PAY TV
Moonbeam City, Comedy, 8.30pm
The whole Miami Vice thing continues to suffuse the zeitgeist of a generation too young to have seen the show when it originally aired on television. From video games to adult cartoons, the neon lights and fluorescent fashions of 1980s Florida are allthe go. Sadly, this particular cartoon comes off as a cheap knock-off of Archer – and it certainly doesn’t benefit from comparison to that series’ drum-tight, gag-dense writing. Tonight, playboy detective Dazzle Novak (Rob Lowe) finds himself in more strife with his boss, Pizzaz Miller (Elizabeth Banks), while cowardly rich-kid cop Rad Cunningham (Will Forte) tries to ingratiate himself with the local zillionaires in ridiculous fashion.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
John Grisham’s The Rainmaker (1997) ONE, 9.30pm
A working-class lawyer takes on a health-insurance industry with little interest in keeping its clients alive. This adaption of a John Grisham bestseller is beautifully directed by Francis Coppola, well acted (especially Matt Damon) and just a bit dull.
The Cars that Ate Paris (1974) SBS 2, 10.20pm
When editor of Cinema Papers, Iflew to Bathurst and was driven to the town of Sofala by Jim McElroy, who with brother Hal constituted one of Australia’s most energetic and skilled producing teams. I was there to watch the filming of Peter Weir’s debut feature, The Cars that Ate Paris, a horror thriller about motorists taking an enforced detour into the outback town of Paris, never to return. I spent several hours with Weir, who was known in the industry for a series of short films, including Homesdale. Though deeply impressed by his knowledge and passion, I felt sure the film would be a complete dud. (I had the same fear when producer Byron Kennedy first showed me the colour negatives of another car horror movie, Mad Max.)
When I finally saw The Cars that Ate Paris at its premiere screening at the Melbourne Film Festival, where the audience laughed and jeered throughout, my worst fears were realised: a fascinating director had made a shocker. Though a few counterculturalists took a positive view, the film failed to please audiences. Today, it doesn’t matter what one thinks of The Cars that Ate Paris (and, sadly, I still don’t love it as I would like to), because history has been written and it stands as the first mainstream step of one of Australia’s greatest filmmakers, a man of craft and vision, with a rare and unique cinematic sensibility, who subtly beguiles us with his terrors. Unlike many a maverick director whose first film is a peak never to be equalled, Weir has matured continuously and only a fool would suggest his greatest work is not still to come (though how TheTruman Show can be topped is difficult to imagine). For some, Weir’s career began with his short films, but for most of us it is TheCars that Ate Paris, a film like Mad Max that is as important to world genre filmmaking as it was to the man who charts the horror and beauty on the edges, and in the fissures, of the ‘‘civilised’’ world, be it an outback NSW town, a rocky Victorian outcrop, an artificial world or the snowscapes of Siberia. I don’t think Weir is celebrated or treasured anywhere near enough.
Scott Murray