Frontline (Australian TV series)
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Frontline is an Australian comedy television series which satirised Australian television current affairs programs and reporting. It ran for three series of 13 half-hour episodes and was broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1994, 1995 and 1997.
Production
The series was written, directed, and produced by the tight-knit team of Jane Kennedy, Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch, and Santo Cilauro. They had met at the University of Melbourne and after creating and performing in the popular ABC comedy series The D-Generation and The Late Show and a stint on radio they created Frontline (as well as Funky Squad between seasons 2 and 3). After Frontline they moved into feature films, making several popular Australian movies including The Castle and The Dish, and for several years they have hosted the popular panel discussion show The Panel.Kennedy, Sitch, Cilauro also acted on the show, as well as Tiriel Mora, Alison Whyte, and numerous other notable Australian actors appeared in guest roles. Gleisner also appeared in a regular cameo role as a photocopier repair man.
The series was partly inspired by a 60 Minutes special 'Has the media gone too far', not Drop the Dead Donkey as some have suggested.
Setting
The series followed the fortunes of a fictional current affairs show, Frontline, and satirised the machinations of the ruthless producers, the self-obsessed airhead host, and the ambitious, cynical journalists, all of whom resort to any sort of underhanded trick to get ratings and maintain their status -- including the use of hidden cameras, foot-in-the-door, bullying interview techniques and cheque-book journalism -- not to mention ingratiating themselves with the all-powerful network bosses -- while all the real work is in fact done by their long-suffering production staff.
What gave the show its special edge was that the stories and the actions of the characters were often thinly-disguised parodies of recent real events and real people. In particular it parodied the Nine Network's A Current Affair and the Seven Network's Real Life (up to 1994) and Today Tonight (1995 onwards).
The dim witted, egotistical host of the fictional show, Mike Moore (played by Sitch), parodied current television hosts and journalists. Sitch has claimed that none of the characters were directly based on a single person, and indeed the character of Moore was a combination of well-known characteristics of several high-profile television figures. Moore's personality and his antics embodied similarities with A Current Affair host Ray Martin, Martin's predecessor Mike Willesee, and Real Life host Stan Grant.
Parallels might also be drawn between Frontline and ABC's Media Watch. Much of the real life journalistic misconduct reported on Media Watch later appeared on Frontline in fictionalised form, and one episode of Frontline involves a Media Watch episode critical of the show.
Characters
Major characters
- Mike Moore (Rob Sitch) anchors Frontline. He is a dim-witted narcissist. Many gags centre around how easily he is manipulated by his executive producer, the most typical case being when Mike refuses to present a story and then be convinced to run it by either an appeal to his supposed fearlessness or his supposed journalistic integrity. In the first two series Mike's position is constantly under threat from Brooke, who has a better press profile, but by the last series he has been cemented as one of the network's most valuable stars and considerably more effort is made to pander to his whims. While Mike is usually portrayed as simply dumb (for example, in A Man of His Convictions in series 2 he writes a letter to media commentator Stuart Littlemore full of simple spelling and grammatical errors) he occasionally surprises his colleagues with his sneakiness: in Give 'em Enough Rope (series 2) he accuses the network owner in a live interview of contravening the Broadcasting Act after first getting the owner to publicly commit to allowing him to ask difficult questions without threatening to his job.
- Brooke Vandenberg (Jane Kennedy) is a reporter on Frontline. She is ambitious, amoral and publicity hungry. While there are constant rumours that she has affairs with male celebrities in order to build her profile in at least some cases she simply creates the rumours herself: in The Desert Angel (series 1) she confesses to Pat Cash that she started a rumour about having an affair with him. Like most of the employees of Frontline, she has no ethical problems with any action the show takes to get a good story. In A Hole in the Heart (series 3) she discovers she is pregnant to a former boyfriend and is bribed into having an abortion by a new hosting offer.
- Martin (Marty) Di Stasio (Tiriel Mora) is a reporter on Frontline. He is Mike's major antagonist on the team, often baiting him about sensitive topics, such as the supposedly anti-Semitic golf club of which Mike is a member (A Hole in the Heart). He is the most experienced journalist on the team: a few references are made to his being the winner of a Walkley Award. Like Brooke, he is uncritical of the show's journalistic tactics; in fact he is usually the confidant of the executive producers, and the one they can trust to do what is needed to get a good story. His position on Frontline is more tenuous than that of Mike or Brooke: in Dick on the Line (series 3) he tells Mike and Brooke that at his age he signs his yearly contract immediately and doesn't mess about negotiating.
- Emma Ward (Alison Whyte) is a senior producer on Frontline. She questions the show's practices most frequently. For example, in Heroes and Villains (series 2), she is the only member of the team to have read the supposedly racist book the show is attacking and objects to their incendiary treatment of its author. Early in series 2 and 3, the executive producers of the time approach Marty and ask him to explain Emma. Marty explains that while she has moral qualms like Mike does, she is more difficult to handle because she is intelligent. In the earlier series, Emma can be naive: when Brian is fired in One Big Family (series 2), she hopes to become executive producer, despite being only 25 years old and inexperienced. However, Emma, despite often objecting, is usually party to ethically questionable practices and occasionally finds them amusing, as in A Hole in the Heart, in which she allows Prowsey to yell at her and pretend to fire her over one of the show's decisions when in reality she is receiving a large pay rise in return for her part of the act.
- Brian (Thommo) Thompson (Bruno Lawrence) is the executive producer during series 1.
- Sam Murphy (Kevin J. Wilson) is the executive producer during series 2, hired immediately after Brian is fired.
- Graeme (Prowsey) Prowse (Steve Bisley) is the executive producer during series 3, hired after the producer who took Frontline to the top retires. Prowsey is much more aggressive and unpleasant than his two predecessors. He has a bad temper, is unpleasant to the staff and is unashamedly sexist: groping the female staff, dismissing bulimia as a "chick thing" and writing off Brooke's bad moods as PMS. He is however, like his predecessors, capable of being charming when needed to deceive Mike, placate Emma or feed Brooke's ego.
- Geoffrey Salter (Santo Cilauro) is the network's weatherman and Mike's closest friend at work. Geoff usually appears in private conversations in his office with Mike. Geoff is determined to be a sycophant of Mike's but is actually very bad at it. In trying to guess what Mike wants him to say, he often guesses incorrectly and takes a line critical of something about Frontline which Mike is eager to hear him defend, only to be shouted down by Mike's cries of "No Geoff no!" Often this is the catalyst for Mike to question the reassurance he has been given by a producer that the story of the moment is being ethically pursued.
- Domenica Baroni (Anita Cerdic) is the office receptionist, and the only person in the office who truly admires Mike. Her increasingly bizarre hairstyles are a running gag, culminating in Give 'em Enough Rope, when she is completely bald and festooned with ribbons. Her reactions to the show usually reflect the target audience's responses. She is a reluctant and sometimes traitorous party to the office's determination to keep Mike away from production meetings.
Minor characters
- Kate Preston (Trudy Hellier) is a producer. While Kate is friendly with Emma, who seems to have a more senior position, Kate has fewer ethical qualms about stories.
- Shelley Cohen (Linda Ross) is the executive producer's secretary.
- Jan Whelan (Genevieve Mooy) is the network's head of publicity in series 1 and 2. Jan refers to everyone as "poppet" and "darling" and has extravagently camp mannerisms, but is in fact practical and efficient.
- Trish (Lynda Gibson) is the network's head of publicity in series 3.
- Stuart (Stu) O'Hallaran (Pip Mushin) is the office's main cameraman and shoots most of Brooke's and Marty's stories. He, Marty, and Jase are all friends and frequently make fun of Mike.
- Jason Cotter (Torquil Neilson) is the sound recorder who works with Stu. Jase is not actually heard speaking until series 3 despite appearing in most episodes in series 1 and 2.
- Elliot Rhodes (Boris Conley) is a comedian and musician, performing short musical sketches about current events at the end of Friday night episodes of Frontline. Mike detests his act but is required to laugh uproariously and compliment it on air every week.
Special guests
Frontline frequently had celebrities, unusually including major Australian politicians, appear as themselves, often but not always as interviewees. The most memorable appearance is that of Pauline Hanson in The Shadow We Cast (series 3), in which she turns her famous "please explain?" line on Mike. Noel Pearson appears as an interviewee later in the same episode. Other appearances include: John Hewson in The Soufflé Rises (series 1); Pat Cash in The Desert Angel; Cheryl Kernot in We Ain't Got Dames (series 1); Bert Newton in This Night of Nights (series 1); Glenn Ridge in Add Sex and Stir and Office Mole (series 2); Molly Meldrum in Add Sex and Stir, George Negus in Add Sex and Stir and Dick on the Line (series 3) and Ian Baker-Finch in A Hole in the Heart.
Other guest stars appeared in mock-ups of their own shows: Mike Moore appeared on fictitious episodes of Burke's Backyard with Don Burke, and The Footy Show with Sam Newman; and Stuart Littlemore, who at the time was hosting the media commentary show Media Watch, appears in several fictitous episodes as a critic of Frontline.
Series
Series 1
The 13 episodes of Series 1 first aired in 1994. In series 1 Frontline is a struggling current affairs show competing with dominant players for audience share. In series 1, unlike subsequent series, episodes tend to end with a moment of poetic justice, punishing the characters for their actions. In one memorable episode, The Siege, featured an incident in which Mike finds himself negotiating by telephone, live to air, with a gunman who is holding some children hostage – this was a thinly veiled parody of a very similar and highly controversial real-life incident, in which Mike Willesee interviewed gunmen and hostages on-air. [link] Later in the episode a now confident Mike begins to talk to a second kidnapper, only for him to immediately kill his hostages.
Poetic justice occurs again in The Desert Angel, in which a beautiful young woman goes missing in the desert. Frontline run a tribute on her, making up lies such as she was a straight-A student. When she is found alive, Frontline think that they have hit the ratings jackpot when they clinch the interview, but are utterly embarrassed during the interview when it turns out she is a mediocre student with a speech impairment.
A scene in The Invisible Man, in which Moore performs an embarrassingly bad version of Eric Clapton's Tears In Heaven while accompanying himself on guitar, is considered a clear dig at Stan Grant#redirect , who is an amateur musician. It was claimed in the media at the time#redirect that Grant hated the show, was convinced that Mike Moore was a caricature of him and supposedly forbade any mention of the series in the Real Life offices.
The first series of Frontline was, unfortunately, the final screen role for renowned musician and actor Bruno Lawrence, who played the fictional series' devious, golf-loving producer, Brian Thompson. Lawrence was diagnosed with inoperable cancer shortly after the end of the first series, while he was working on the Australian film Cosi and he died on 10 June 1995.
Episode Guide
- Series 1
- The Soufflé Rises
- The Desert Angel
- City of Fear
- She's Got the Look
- The Siege
- Playing the Ego Card
- We Ain't Got Dames
- The Art of Gentle Persuasion
- The Invisible Man
- Add Sex and Stir
- Smaller Fish to Fry
- Judge and Jury
- This Night of Nights
- Series 2
- Series 3
Production strategies
Frontline broke new ground for Australian situation comedy, by adopting some innovative production strategies. Its rapid production schedule was inspired by Drop The Dead Donkey, where each episode was written and taped in a single week and scripts were closely based on the real news stories of the preceding seven days.
The Frontline scripts were likewise written and the series filmed with a short period, often within a single week. It was a fully collaborative effort, with Cilauro, Kennedy, Gleisner and Sitch all sharing writing and directing duties, and the cast all contributing ideas during all stages of production. While the show appeared in several instances to be commenting on recent events, these are all merely co-incidences, as episodes were delayed by several months; however, the target of the show's satire, Australian current affairs, regularly recycles story formats, and in some cases the particular story format addressed in an episode had appeared as a current affairs story within the last week, sometimes even on the same day as the episode went to air.
To create a heightened illusion of grainy documentary realism, footage was taped on hand-held Hi-8 video cameras (usually operated by Gleisner and Cilauro) then transferred onto film and finally transferred back to videotapeFrontline: the story behind the story ... behind the stories (1995). Melbourne: Penguin. ISBN 0-670-86768-3 (see: Kinescope).
Other airings
In 1997, Channel Seven bought the rights to the series[link], however they only aired a handful of episodes. The Comedy Channel has shown the series as late as 2005.
In America, Frontline was shown as either Behind the Frontline on cable or as Breaking News on PBS (which already has a serious show entitled Frontline).
Impact
The series was extremely popular throughout its run, winning a Logie award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Comedy, and a Sydney Morning Herald industry poll rated it #2 in the 25 all-time greatest Australian TV shows.
Six episodes from series one are now a core text on the English Advanced syllabus in New South Wales for Module C: Representation and Text: Elective 1: Telling the Truth. The episodes are Playing The Ego Card, Add Sex and Stir, The Siege, Smaller Fish To Fry, We Ain't Got Dames and This Night of Nights.
Reference
External links
- [Frontline website] (Extremely Out of date circa 1997)
- [Interview with Rob Sitch on the Tenth Anniversary of Frontline]
- [Frontline DVDs at the ABC shop online]
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