Ned Kelly, Without a Trace & Nip/Tuck

There is a lot of talk at the moment about Australian TV and film culture and our right to tell our own stories. What depresses me is that regardless of any free trade agreement, Australian audiences are not tuning into watch the wonderful dramas that are being made. Marking Time was brilliant television. Crash Burn was smart, contemporary and well written. My personal favourite, Grass Roots won 2 AFI's and MDA, as 3 AFI's testify, was a huge critical success. The ratings for all these shows would have to be described as disappointing. So, sure, fight the political battle that needs to be fought - but expect a bigger battle, the one for audience commitment to Aussie culture, to follow.

Ned Kelly is about as Australian as you can get and Besieged: The Ned Kelly Story (Channel 9) screens tomorrow at 2.00pm - a low-key timeslot for a documentary which achieves the mean feat of having something new to say about the Kelly myth. "I know my uncle always said that Fitzpatrick would never have gone to the house if he knew Ned was there. He had certainly been pursuing Kate. Whether Kate had given him any encouragement, I don't know." Ellen Hollow, Direct Kelly descendant.

It's interviews like these - with descendents of the Kelly gang and some of the policeman that fought them - that make the doco a stand out. The arguments between the families, who still live in Northern Victoria continue to the present day and Besieged reminds you that history isn't a static thing but constantly informs the present in unexpected ways

And what of Australian actors who are currently telling American stories? My critical analysis is that Anthony La Paglia rocks. As those who watched the gripping two part finale of Without a Trace on Channel 9 last week will know, La Paglia, and fellow Australian actor Poppy Montgomery, get better and better. And so does the show. In the course of this column I watch most new series and Without a Trace is one of the few that became a private passion.

There is no danger of such blurred boundaries with the star of Channel 9's new series, Nip/Tuck (Monday and Tuesday, 9.30pm), Julian McMahon, though this show is possibly so bad it's good. It's as if the (American) writers of the series sat down and thought: how do we totally piss of thirty-something Fitzroy Lesbian feminists who are committed to Australian culture and force them to write earnest and humourless reviews? I know! Let's have sexy, rich, plastic surgeons in Miami telling beautiful young girls what bits need surgery after they've had sex with them; let's have close-ups of the surgery; let's have them operating on gangster paedophiles; lets have women unbutton their blouses every time they see one of these blokes so they can have their breasts assessed; let's have teenage boys saying things along the lines of, 'girls like it cut. It's something to do with the smell'. Bring it on. Give me every crap sexist soap cliche you can fit into an hour of television and more. I can take it.

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