White Collar Blue, Marshall Law, MDA, Stingers, Young Lions & The Forsyte Saga

This column first appeared in the Age on August 17, 2002

Enough with the cop shows! The legal dramas! Of the cops whose partners are murdered in the first episodes of new series so as to leave them grieving in a way which allows for the adequate pacing of sexual tension between key cast members!

Two new Australian dramas started last week - White Collar Blue (Channel 10, Monday, 8.30pm) and Marshall Law (Channel 7, Tuesdays 9.30pm). The Tuesday 9.30 timeslot is overcrowded with Marshall Law going up against ABC's MDA and Channel 9's majorly revamped Stingers. Stingers has introduced Gary Sweet as Detective Senior Sergeant Luke Harris, the new head of Special Investigations and Rebecca Gibney as Ingrid Burton, a criminal defence lawyer. The show has also shifted from film to video. The producers claim the move to video may improve Stinger's style as it tended towards the dark and moody, but I must say that was one of the things I always like about the earlier series. To cap it the week off there is that sexy young new kid on the block, Young Lions (Channel 9,Wednesday, 8.30pm).

Throw all these shows into the mix and we're going to be breeding an audience of viewers who start to think that 50% of the Australian workforce is police, 20% are lawyers, 15% doctors and 15% truck drivers, drifters, prostitutes, drug dealers and 'other'.

I don't mean to sound churlish as on there own merits all these shows have a good chance of finding an audience. Certainly all of them have impressive casts. Alison Whyte and William McInnes are fine comic actors and may well carry Marshall Law into the hearts of many. It has, quite rightly, been accused of being overly light and fluffy, but the script is sharp.

Peter O'Brien who plays Joe Hill, the blue collar in White Collar Blue, is real laid back star material and could make this show a not to be missed. Set on outer Sydney's southern beaches, it looks really good, too. Stingers has always had a grungy charisma, courtesy of Peter Phelps and Melbourne's downbeat charm. As for Young Lions, set in Sydney's King Cross and inner west, my initial enthusiasm for this has started to wane as the melodrama gets laid on thicker and thicker as the weeks go by.

Each of these shows claims to be a 'different' take on an 'old' genre. Yes, Marshall Law is a comedy. Yes, MDA is a legal/hospital crossover. Yes, White Collar Blue has a less manic pace than American cop shows. All of these shows can legitimately lay claim to having a distinctly Australia feel. But after a week of viewing and reading articles about the differences between these shows, it was their similarities, which overwhelmed me.

In Victorian times it was being a gentleman which counted but even so we even have a soulless lawyer at the centre of The Forsyte Saga, a six part series beginning on the ABC this Sunday night at 8.30pm. Written for television it isn't exactly classy but it certainly has a racy charm that distinguishes it from other (more historically accurate?) dramas.

It's the 1870's but adultery and separation and contemplated almost as often as they are in contemporary Australian cop shows. Irene Forsyte (Gina McKee), the beautiful woman on whom the family's fortunes turn, is married to lawyer Soames Forstye (Damien Lewis). She is indeed captivating, though she looks more of this century than the 1800s and is the subject of a startling post-coital douching scene which I haven't seen the like of before in a costume drama. Perhaps it is a case of the producers' modern sensibilities coming through. But it still provides some good old-fashioned soapy entertainment.

Posted by Sophie at 09:48 AM