The Partridge Family & Dr Who

I loved David Cassidy, and by extension, The Partridge Family. So you can imagine my excitement that Channel 10 was screening, Come On Get Happy: The Partridge Family Story (9.00pm tomorrow night). Unfortunately for me, the focus is not on Cassidy, but that cheeky red head, Danny Bonaduce who, as an adult, had an ongoing battle with drink and drugs. Given what we see of his home life it's no surprise - his story is a sad one. His father became jealous of his success and beat him. His mother is loving but overly invested in his success. This all means that Danny is looking for a normal family and, in a bizarre Hollywood twist, he finds it with his pretend family, The Partridges.

If you were a fan I'd watch this, but it doesn't stand up using other criteria. Bonaduce, who produced the film, is big on keeping things light and anecdotal despite his own struggles, and thereby misses the story. He sends up the cheesiness of The Partridge Family as a show, but that cheesiness extends to the portrayal of his 'real' life. Really, it's all one cheesy blur, albeit an entertaining ones. This would have made a great punky film a la Sid and Nancy, one in which the TV family was encased in a snowdome surrounded by the sometimes ugly imperfection of people's actual lives - but this movie just doesn't go there. Did you know, for example, that David Cassidy used to put a particular part of his body through his wrought iron gates to be attended to by his queuing fans? Well that's the kind of thing you wont see anything of tomorrow night.

Perhaps to get the best of TV we must get in our tardis and travel back further in time, past 1974 and the death of a fan at a David Cassidy concert, back past 1970 when the young Bonaduce auditioned for his role. We must go far back, to November 1963 and the UK to get the real deal: Doctor Who (or, as my spell check suggests I call him, Dr Whom). I eschewed all other weekend viewing for watching tapes of this and I would suggest you do the same and get out the video on Monday through Thursday (ABC, 6 pm). As a kid I'd watched it during the Jon Pertwee days (1970 -1974, the same life span as The Partridge Family) and had no idea how good the first season was. Yes, the show has some startlingly silly costumes, but it is also compelling and the grainy black and white it's shot in intensifies the otherworldliness of it all. Jon Pertwee played a nice doctor - but William Hartnell certainly doesn't, kidnapping his granddaughter's schoolteachers and regularly risking people's lives. So for all that it's in black and white it is the moral ambiguity of grey that dominates - though if you tune in next week you get to see the first appearance of the true, if somewhat tinny, face of evil: the Daleks.

Permanent Link for this Article