Alias & Outback House

This column was first published by the Age on June 11, 2005

Like the good folks of Outback House (Sunday, 7.30 p.m, ABC) I will soon be without TV for three months and am heading off overseas armed only with the second season of Alias. While Alias pretends to be about the succession of amazing wigs and stunts, what it's really about is family life, twenty-first century style. At the end of the first season Sydney was held at gun point by her presumed-dead Russian double-agent mother. At the end of the second season Sydney realized her housemate was an evil clone and fought her until they were both presumed dead. A presumption that meant that in the last minute of the season her CIA partner and lover Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) flew to Hong Kong, where Sydney had mysteriously awoken after the fight, to tell her that he thought she'd been dead for 2 years and he'd married Lauren (Melissa George). By the third season it became clear that Lauren was a double agent, just like Sydney's mom, and that Vaughn would be forced to kill her, just like Sydney's dad, Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) would be forced to kill his wife - again . Talk about going for men like your father. Every character in Alias is so weighed down with issues it's amazing they can do all the high-flying things they have to do just to get through the day. Season four of Alias was originally scheduled to begin last week, but now it seems will return some time in August. I highly recommend it.

It's relationships 19th Century style in Outback House, the ABC's new historical reality series which is set in NSW, 1861. Sixteen people have been selected to live the life of a squatter, his family, domestic servants and station workers in the remote valley of Oxley Downs. Paul and Juli Allcorn, along with their three daughters Persephone, Pierette and Portia are the squatter family. The girls, despite their old fashioned names, are modern kids and do what any self respecting children do when denied their toys, friends, TV and junk food - they refuse to eat. Clearly the dubious rewards of being reality TV stars have not been fully explained to them. Paul and Juli attempt to run the station in a way that acknowledges the 21st sensibility of the participants but what this doesn't take into account is that some people have joined up because they relish the idea of having class-power and the overseer, Glen Sheluchin’s, enthusiasm for being an old-fashioned boss does not go down well. The station cook, Carolina Francese has an 'anger management problem', which makes things tough for the two maids: Claire Williams and high-school student Danielle Schaeffer, from the local Wiradjuri tribe. Bernie Kennedy and Dan Hatch are the shepherds and it is the sheep that provide the focus and drama for the first episode. Many of the lambs are dying and Bernie's attempt to hand rear them is very sweet. His junior shepherd, Dan, has been chosen, I suspect, for humiliation value, as they guy is sobbing within 24 hours.

Despite it's educational and entertainment value Outback House gives a squewed version of our history, describing squatters (in the press release) as the people who 'succeeded in conquering this stark and unforgiving land'. The Aboriginal experience as domestics is represented, but I suspect there won't be any mention of the more violent implications of frontier life. Perhaps a re-staging of the massacres of Aboriginal people that were part and parcel of land clearing? I suspect that might be just a bit more reality than Reality TV can stand.

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