Green Guide 28 Jan 2010

This is the last of my columns for the tv guide in The Age (Melbourne).

Copy follows.


TELEVISION is a fickle friend. This week I have experienced sublime, soul-touching highs and horrific, cringe-inducing lows. Australia Day, in particular, was grotesque. I love my TV but on our national day, television said to me: ''Go outside, charcoal a sausage, bury it in tomato sauce and white bread and stop flicking channels.'' I should have heeded the call, because television did some terrible things to my eyes and ears that day.
Australia Day is all about being Australian, so I thought it would make me feel proud and patriotic to watch sport. Some kinds of patriotism, however, are ugly. Southern Cross neck tattoos, for instance, and attempting to watch tennis or cricket on commercial television. I understand the need to cross-promote programs, and I know that advertising and sponsorship ensure these events stay on free-to-air TV, but is there a more subtle or natural way of doing it?
The Gatorade heart monitor, a cornerstone of the cricket coverage on Channel Nine, may be the most incomprehensible sponsorship I have seen. Why do we need to know Shane Watson's heart rate? Does it have some kind of impact on limited-overs cricket? As for the giant bottle of Gatorade that gets wheeled out on to the pitch at various points in the match, the sight of it made me contemplate a three-day bender, to cultivate a hangover worthy of that much sports beverage.
The situation on Seven's coverage of the Australian Open is no better but on that channel it is the cross-promotion that is the biggest cause for concern.
Brief on-screen teasers for the shows that will premiere on Seven ''after the tennis'' spur the jaded announcers into bizarre solicitations for shows they've probably not seen, nor care about. There is a peculiar timbre that creeps into the voice of a former tennis champ when extolling the virtues of My Kitchen Rules or Cougar Town; they remind me of the look on my dog's face when I make him wear clothes. Like my dog, I imagine that Jim Courier and John Alexander OAM are saying to themselves: ''You feed me, so I can't really refuse this request, but this is a little bit humiliating.''
Does this kind of heavy-handed promotion work? I was vaguely interested in Cougar Town but the shouting tennis fans, digital billboards and constant ''sneak peeks'' have made me go a bit cold on the idea. Courtney Cox's paralysed forehead and swollen duck-lips have interrupted my enjoyment of the tennis so often I have developed a Cougar Town twitch. It's like aversion therapy.
I foolishly tried to escape the tyranny of touting on the cricket and tennis and flicked over to Ten, where I discovered there was something more embarrassing than Roger Rasheed waxing lyrical about Desperate Housewives.
Ten screened a hidden-camera show from the US called I Get That a Lot, where celebrities go to work in the retail and service industries and pretend they aren't actually celebrities. Apparently it's hilarious, or so the recorded laughter would have us believe.
Paris Hilton manning a petrol pump, Gene Simmons from Kiss as a psychic healer and Snoop Dogg parking cars. The question most asked by the public is: ''Why would so-and-so be working here?'' That question was never answered.
The celebrities on hand were generally incompetent at their various roles, be it cable-TV chef Rachael Ray as a dry cleaner or skateboarding legend Tony Hawk as a sales assistant, so the only other reason could be for comedy or entertainment purposes, neither of which were on display.
I Get That a Lot was a well-timed and sobering counterpoint to the Hope for Haiti Now telethon that screened at the weekend. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts and a host of other famous names told heartbreaking stories of the loss and devastation in Haiti, CNN's Anderson Cooper reported live from the country and the likes of Christina Aguilera, U2, Stevie Wonder and Madonna performed songs to no applause and no audience.
It was a sombre and well-intentioned program and I even found myself in tears once or twice. Most affecting was the much maligned Halle Berry, who told the story of a toddler buried under rubble for eight days before being rescued.
Whether she is a spectacularly talented actress or just incapable of remaining unaffected through telling such a harrowing tale, Berry's eyes started to fill with tears and I cried right along with her.
Nicole Kidman had a similar reaction to the story she told and there was visibly some moisture in her eyes but the rest of her face was doing something else entirely and I became unnerved and a little frightened.
I wondered at that point if I could possibly donate some extra money to save Kidman's face.
Hope for Haiti Now screened for two hours without commercial interruption and without anyone trying to tell me to watch anything else on the same network that three days later put Paris Hilton in a petrol station. Television is, indeed, a fickle friend.