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The hard sell

By Paul Kalina
May 30 2002

It's been described as "Charlie's Angels on horseback" and "Flying Doctors with cows". Some reviewers have been struck by the theme of female empowerment, others intrigued by lesbian undercurrents. Nobody has failed to notice the landscape nor the uniformly attractive women in the cast.

In case you're wondering what show these remarks refer to, they are but some of the comments to have surfaced when McLeod's Daughters launched in April on pay TV networks across Asia.

When Nine's popular prime-time drama was presold to the worldwide Hallmark Channel last year, several precedents were set.

For starters, it was the first time an Australian drama series (as opposed to a miniseries) had been acquired for distribution by the family-friendly Hallmark network.

More importantly, Hallmark has launched McLeod's Daughters in Asia (ahead of the prime US market), in what programming executive Kirstine Layfield admits is "a test case" for both the network and those markets.

If the launch is successful, and so far the indications are positive, it is set to become one of the few Australian-made series to date to crack the massive Asian television market, gaining access to up to 14 million homes across Singapore, Thailand, India, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

According to Maria Sechos, a sales executive with Southern Star, one of the principal sellers of Australian film and television programs, there are many challenges when it comes to attracting Asian broadcasters to Australian television drama.

Across the board, sex, violence, religion and culture are the main obstacles, she says, though sensitivities vary from country to country. Ghosts and spiritual themes might cause rejection by a Chinese broadcaster, while sex may prove difficult in a Christian country such as the Philippines, she explains.

Language carries its own problems. Some genres don't survive dubbing - comedies, for instance, which also tend to be highly colloquial in style and substance (think Hey Dad!) - while Australian accents become an issue on the many English-language channels that broadcast across the region.

From Sechos' perspective, action series work the best, Southern Star having sold Water Rats, Murder Call and Cody into Asia, though even a series like Murder Call might find specific episodes dealing with such topics as sexual violence being trimmed or shelved.

Even our internationally acclaimed children's dramas struggle to find favour with young Asian audiences, children finding it difficult to relate to caucasian faces.

In fact, Southern Star recently closed its first format sale, selling the Hi-5 format to South Korean television, where local performers will faithfully re-enact Hi-5 scripts and songs.

Though animation lends itself to dubbing, our programs are no match for high-end Japanese animation, which dominates the terrestrial ratings right across Asia.

Those factors, coupled with the lower licence fees paid by subscription broadcasters in Asia, make these markets lesser priorities than those of the US, the UK and Europe, says Sechos.

Hallmark believes that McLeod's Daughters will deliver - from the broadcaster's point of view, this means viewers, advertising and promotional tie-ins - and is confident it will acquire the second series, now in production in South Australia.

The network has given it the high-viewing Saturday night slot, and has spared little expense in promoting the program.

Laxmi Hariharan, Hallmark's marketing director for the Asian region, believes there are several reasons that McLeod's Daughters will be popular with local audiences.

"It has a lot of attitude and interesting themes running through it, but at the end of the day it's all about family values, which is what Hallmark stands for and a value people in Asia are very conscious of."

Hariharan also believes that the show's focus on female characters and self-determination captures a growing tide of women's empowerment. "This is purely my observation, but across Asia there are a lot more publications being launched that are aimed at women, newspapers are coming out with supplements aimed at teenage girls and older working women.

"In general, I think an Asian woman is a lot more aware of her individuality, her role in society, and the various roles she plays. Women are driving viewership, so it's a good time for us to have something like this on."

Hariharan defines Hallmark's as a broadly targeted, family-appeal audience, though she anticipates that McLeod's Daughters will skew around a slightly younger, 25-40 age bracket.

Yet "Australian-ness" is not writ large on the marketing campaign devised for the program's launch. On the contrary, as the poster with its connotations of a distaff western suggests, "the fact that it's Australian is incidental", says Hariharan. "It's about these wonderful individuals and then as a backdrop there's the South Australian scenery."

Having worked on campaigns for SeaChange and On the Beach (Hallmark has also in the past aired Halifax f.p.), Hariharan believes that content rather than place of origin is the primary factor in assessing a show's appeal to audiences. "On the Beach had this very unusual storyline and strong stars (Bryan Brown and Armand Assante). McLeod's has attitude, which is what caught our fancy."

Kirstine Layfield concurs. "Stories that resonate with the public fall under the banner of 'great stories'. When we pick up something like Halifax it's because it's a very good, police-type investigative drama without being overly violent, gratuitous or trashy.

"When you take everything away there's a great story; those stories, no matter where they are from, travel very well."

What Asian critics said about McLeod's Daughters:

"Check out the five beautiful girls on screen - women get empowered by it, men get turned on by it. It's a winning formula, really."

"Hold your horses, this is not about lesbianism."

"Straight out of the Australian wilderness."

"If you are an advocate of 'power ladies', McLeod's Daughters would be the show to catch. The women of Drovers Run share the same dreams that all women share. Deep in their hearts, they are all heroines in their own ways."

"Charlie's Angels on horseback."


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