The many dimensions of television

This article first appeared in The on December 4, 2004

Could tiny strings vibrating in eleven dimensions be the ultimate explanation for everything? Could a theory, as explicated on SBS's series The Elegant Universe (Monday, 7.30 pm), that successfully unites the laws of the large - general relativity - and the laws of the small - quantum mechanics - and breaks a conceptual logjam that has frustrated the world's smartest scientists for nearly a century explain why Guy Sebastian can win Australia's highest rating Reality show Australian Idol one year and Casey Donovan can win the next? The only possible weblink slip up Sebastian would ever be involved in would be an accidental link to the Solid Rock Youth chapter of the Paradise Community Church, but for our favourite Goth from Bankstown, cyberspace transported us to the site (or, ahem, sight) of a fantastically well hung but long dead American porn star. All I can say is it's Gold, Gold Gold for Reality Television.

Web address slip ups aside I was delighted when Casey won - even if I had had to endure an entertainment vacuum akin to a Black Hole for three hours before she did so. If only string theory, with its associated idea of time travel and wormholes, were more advanced, it would have allowed me to race ahead in time rather than endure a hapless night spent channel surfing between Idol, Vanilla Sky and Cold Case.

If you are going through talent show withdrawal post-Australian Idol - and with 3.35 million viewers for the final of that show I assume there are a few of you - I would suggest you watch the daggier, friendlier, and eminently more enjoyable National Karaoke Challenge final tonight (SBS, 7.00pm). The show is savvy and simple - people sitting around in a pub watching their mates sing. The host, Maurie Annese, is low key, and more talented than the Australian Idol boys. He even dares to sing himself - and pretty well too.

From my watching of the Sydney and Darwin Heats it would seem that the relationship between audience enthusiasm and actual talent is one of inverse proportions - though Jun Yagong, the winner of the Darwin heat gave a fantastic rendition of 'Unchained Melody'. Darwin filled the Beachfront hotel to give us a good idea of how people outside big cities make their own fun. There were fewer people, if better singing, to be had at Sydney's Rooty Hill last week with the NSW's winner, Chris Mitai, doing a terrific Elvis impersonation. Victoria's Karioke finalist, Tanya Constance, won with 'Turn The Beat Around' and she, like all the other finalists is now placed to win $15,000 LG products. Also competing will be the South Australian winner, Peter Wallis, who sung 'Piano Man', Hobart's Ana Townsend who belted out the 'Greatest Love of All' and Western Australia's Kristen Smith who shimmied to 'Flashdance'. To encourage audience participation, a home viewer will also win $15,000 of prizes simply by voting for their favourite contestant. It's enjoyable, it's touching - and it only lasts half an hour.

But now, to segue back to the meaning of the universe, I would urge you to tune into The Elegant Universe just to remind yourself how really, really, insignificant human beings and their associated talent shows are in the great scheme of things. Which makes it all the more awe inspiring that people on a planet, in a universe that hovers on a membrane and is merely one of an infinite number of universes, can conceptualise such abstract theories and go onto make them into terrific television for people like you and me to watch.