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Television

‘Louie’

A Modern Mensch

By Elmo Keep
With his cult comedy series, Louie, the American comic Louis CK, last name Szekely (si-kei), of Mexico City, has enjoyed the rarest kind of success: critical and commercial acclaim and almost unimaginable levels of financial gain while maintaining fidelity to a vision – without selling out. Rounding out a year in which he landed the coveted hosting gig on Saturday Night Live, won two Emmy a
‘Breaking Bad’

Meth and Madness

By Robyn Davidson
It is well known that mail is sent by the bucketload to the fictional town of Weatherfield, England, addressed to characters from the long-running television soap Coronation Street as if they were real people. It is difficult to comprehend such stupidity. Until you become addicted to Breaking Bad, the HBO television series. Then you understand. Here are snippets of conversation from my Skype
'Girls'

A Heavy F*cking Situation

By Anna Goldsworthy
The second episode of HBO’s new comedy series Girls begins with a sex scene. “I knew when I found you, you wanted it this way,” pants a pale young man in a half-lit room. “Found me where?” asks the young woman beneath him. There is an amateurism to proceedings, a gonzo-porn awkwardness. “In the street, walking alone. You were a junkie and you were only 11, and you had your fucking Cabbage Patch lunchbox.” As further indign
'Downton Abbey'

It’s Complicated

By Anna Goldsworthy
There comes a time when a television series is no longer a simple pleasure but a type of illness: when you cast a sheepish glance at your partner at midnight and he responds with a brusque, shamefaced nod before pressing play for the fifth time; when the theme music continues to echo through your head well into the following morning, lending the housework an
How a new show is creating drama

The Shire versus Australia

By Nick Bryant
From the lounge room of her luxury waterfront home, Mayor Carol Provan looks out through her bi-fold doors on to one of the prettiest views suburban Australia has to offer. On the horizon are the paperbarks and eucalypts of Royal National Park – the world’
Meeting Andrew Fraser

Line of Appeal

By Jack Marx
There is perhaps no justice quite so poetic as when an errant lawyer goes to jail. Like the image of a prancing matador being hoist to the heavens on the horns of a bull, the barrister trading his cape for prison garb somehow tells of a world where justice kno
Meeting Alex Dimitriades

The Kid Grows Up

By Peter Robb
Nearing 40, a man’s body begins to die. The body knows this. So does the mind, though it can take a long time before the mind knows what it knows about the body, and longer still to become reconciled to mortality. Between first intimation and final acceptance come ang
'Mad Men: Season Four'

Quaint Misogyny

By Kirsten Tranter
Let the cocktail theme parties begin.Season Two is still showing here on SBS but in July the fourth season of the award-winning cult series Mad Men started on American cable. The title refers to the advertising men of Madison Avenue, New York, in the early 196
'Tangle' (Season Two) and 'Spirited'

Connective Tissue

By Delia Falconer
All the bullies I remember from school had Ben Mendelsohn’s build: heavy-legged, thick-armed and slightly soft around the middle. Or perhaps it only seems that way because the actor played Tangle’s bully, sociopathic builder Vince Kovac, so well. Mendelsohn’s port

Good Neighbours

By Alan Saunders
Eugene Kamenka, supervisor of my doctorate at ANU, expert on Marxian thought and a man who would never have thought his name would appear in an article about the twenty-fifth anniversary of Neighbours, once, in his youth, found himself giving a lecture (probab
John Safran's 'Race Relations'

Border Crossings

By Alice Pung
The Torah says that we do not see things as they are. We see things as we are. In our everyday relationships, we take ourselves as the yardstick of normality – of rationality, leniency and consideration. The Dhammapadda tells us that conquering others is sim
'Underbelly' and 'The Wire'

School for Gangsters

By Alan Saunders
“Was that like a movie or what?” says one young thug to another after a shoot-up at a petrol station. We’re in the middle of the Melbourne gangland killings, as depicted in the TV show Underbelly, and the dialogue reveals two things: that the writers of Underbelly

‘Big Love’, Season 2, SBS Television

By James Bradley
It's easy to imagine the pitch for HBO's polygamist drama, Big Love: Everything a normal family faces, times three. It's a neat formula, and it captures much of the pleasure of the series, which centres on the ever-expanding family of the Utah businessman and polygamist Bill Henrickson and his three wives, Barb, Nicki and Margene - a family which, for all it
Flight of the Conchords

Winging It

By Luke Davies
Two friends walk along a New York street as the camera tracks backwards with them. We catch them mid-conversation, or perhaps they are just used to throwing random thoughts out to the heavens. "Man," says Jemaine, the nattier dresser and taller of the two, with thick black hair and outrageous sideburns and Jagger lips. "Back in New Zealand, I was getting it on with lots of chicks." Bret, whose

‘Skins’, Season 1, SBS

By Rachel Hills
Series Six of 'The West Wing'

A Change is Gonna Come

By Anna Goldsworthy
Recent British TV Comedy

Grotesque: After the Grand

By Guy Rundle

‘Big Brother’ Channel Ten

By Rowanne Couch