Channel 10

This article first appeared in the Age on March 19, 2005

I know their rating third and it's not a good idea to hang out with losers, but I have a confession to make: I can't stop watching Channel 10. I don't mean there aren't good shows on other channels, there are. But they're the channel I've been turning to for both quality and guilty pleasures. Channel 10 aims for that dubious and hard to reach demographic (as analyzed in the Green Guide last week): 16 to 39. I am 41 and am wondering if my attachment to shows like The O.C. (Tuesday, 8.30 pm), Medium (Wednesdays -except over Easter - 8.30 pm), Battlestar Galactica (Wednesday 9.30 pm) and Medical Investigation (Thursday, 9.30 pm) reveals what young people might call a 'random'attempt to be 'down' with the youth of today. Yo.

Two of these passions I can understand. The O.C. is hip and very funny. It's aimed at teenagers and their equally sexy parents (who seem to all be 40 at the most) : it's smarter than shows like 90210 or Melrose ever were. Battlestar Galactica is also smart - an engrossing science fiction that works because it plays down the sci fi, and ups the sense of adventure and relationships between it's main characters.

By the time I get to Medium my taste is feeling harder to justify. Medium is based on the life of psychic Alison Dubois, a married mother of 3, who uses her dreams and 'feelings'; to solve crimes, particularly violent crimes against women and children. Two of her daughters have inherited her gift, but are too young to know what to do with it. The second episode of the season was so pro- Capital Punishment I swore I'd never watch it again. The thing is, Patricia Arquette, is a really good actress, and whether or not you believe that someone could commune with the dead in real life, you find yourself believing she can. In fact this show would be much more engrossing if it didn't insist it was based on someone real and just let us run with what is terrific fiction. Despite the sugary sweet (yet strangely passive aggressive) representation of her marriage and her relationship with her boss Devalos (Miguel Sandoval) at the District Attorney's office, Arquette herself is tough as nails, obsessive and strange. That, combined with her weird beauty, makes her a compelling performer to watch, and she carries the show, which is also well-paced and tense, with her.

Medical Investigation doesn't even have good acting to recommend it, and it is highly formulaic. What distinguishes it is it's engagement with issues that are on everyone's minds: disease. As bird flu looms and there is more and more talk of an impending pandemic Medical Investigation takes the formula of shows like CSI but instead of a crime scene there tends to be disease clusters, and the agents at the National Institute of Health have to race against the clock to discover, for example, whether they have an epidemic on there hands, or just a case of college kids sharing a batch of bad party drugs. Dr Stephen Connor (Boomtown's Neal McDonough) imagines his way into the lives of the sick and imagines what it is they have eaten, done, or been in contact with, that has caused their illness - thus leading to lots of pseudo reconstructions of events. This week the flu virus mutates in someone who is undergoing radiation treatment in a small country town and there are fears it is a version of the Spanish Flu that killed millions around the world in WW1. Dude, its like, totally awesome.

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