Parkinson & Fireflies

This article first appeared in the Age on March 20, 2004

As those of you who watched will know, watching Michael Parkinson being interviewed by Andrew Denton on Enough Rope (ABC, 9.30pm, Monday) was awesome television. As we've suspected, Denton is a world-class interviewer and Parkinson is man you could listen to for hours. Intrigued by his comments about his interview with Meg Ryan going of the rails this week (ABC, 8.30Pm) I watched, expecting to see a full Hollywood tantrum in action. But Parkinson can be, by his own admission, a bully, and that's what you see tonight: Parkinson at his worse, bringing out the worse in someone else.

Yes, Ryan is tense, but Parkinson is clearly infuriated by someone who won't respond to his charm. Denouncing Meg Ryan's advocation of truth over romance as cynical, he then goes on to say he preferred her when she made romantic comedies, and to suggest she is only making films like In the Cut because she's damaged by her divorced. Her brittle American style (she calls him dude) is vaguely offensive, but his condescension is worse. I'm with Meg when Parkinson asks her what she would do if she was in his seat, interviewing such an uncompliant interviewee. 'Call it a wrap', she says.

At the beginning of this last summer I took a day trip down to Aireys Inlet. The day ended in smoke, fire and a road closure. This kind of simmering is what Australians are getting use to and the pilot of Fireflies captured the tension of long, fire-ridden summers. While not every episode has done that since, many of them have and I don't understand why reviewers are so down on the show. Fireflies (ABC, 7.30pm, tonight) captures an experience unique to Australia and is all the stronger for it.

The fire fighting sequences are extremely well done.The acting is terrific - Nadia Townsend is a stand out as Fifi, a volunteer in the Lost River Rural Fire Brigade. But the reals stars are Libby Tanner as Lilli and Jeremy Sims as Tim Backa, the local Fire Captain. John Waters gets stronger as Lilli's husband as the series goes on (there are 22 episodes in all). But ultimately, this show isn't about stars, it is about community.

There are problems. Several of the characters are hammy and over determind. I am thinking of Perry's daughter Taz (Hayley McInerney) and Uncle Jeffrey. The character of Backa's Russian wife Svettie (Natasha Novak) is a disaster, but gets better. Certainly there is too much emphasis on the survival, or otherwise, of her shop. We don't really care. But there is a lot else in the show to care about.

While the series has hasn't done so well with the older audience a lot of younger viewers are tuning in. Fireflies' average audience to date is 851,754. Keeping in mind that MDA had an average audience of 567,144 that is a pretty a respectable figure. When it moves to its new Thursday, 8.30pm timeslot this week, it should do even better. While Fireflies mightn't be setting Australian TV on fire, it still has a lot of spark.

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