They say you are what you eat. If this year’s television diet is anything to go by, we’re going to develop a taste for the overly buffed, salivate over muscle cars, digest the bitterness of organised crime and be too full for our families…

The Seven Network
LOW: Gladiators
Maybe I’m being overly dismissive, but I can’t really see the new series of Gladiators contributing anything particularly exciting to Australia’s 2008 menu. The fanciful performances of the combatants and the mock-shocked presenters are typically strained and the entertainment, if any, relies solely on the potential for the real injury of entrants. Think Nero’s circus maximus meets WWF. If there is any positive it will be the ideas it passes on to youth group leaders for Friday night games. Otherwise, the only viewers being mentally challenged will be those who thought the ‘Bring back the biff’ t-shirts were a good idea.

HIGH: Packed to the Rafters
This is an Aussie drama that stands a good chance of making us think about our modern family make-ups, though the questions may be too close to home (pardon the pu). Packed to the Rafters is a drama based built around Dave and Julie Rafter (Erik Thomson and Rebecca Gibney), baby-boomers on the verge of retirement with three adult children. Consider the dilemmas that emerge when said off-spring each see the need to move back home due to various life-struggles. For decades Australians have been developing an unhealthy obsession with the day the kids are finally ‘off their hands’ leading to the idea that parenting is a limited responsibility. Hopefully Seven’s new drama will provide opportunities for us to consider just what a good dad God is.

The Nine Network
LOW: Secret Diary of a Call Girl
This imported English drama has already made huge waves across the intervening waters. It is based on blogs posted by a prostitute known as Bel de Jour, recounting in explicit detail her experiences servicing the UK’s middle classes. The television series starring Billie Piper of Doctor Who fame contains similarly explicit material. However the real concern is the glamour the program is likely to lend to the trade. Belle has respectful, good-looking clientele, is never bothered by the police and earns substantial returns for the fun she appears to have. There are gritty sides to various episodes, but the criminal aspects and the dangers associated with prostitution are largely edited out. Predictably some nitwit will get up and talk about how empowering such a series is for women both in an out of this sad situation. Would said person be prepared to demonstrate the strength of their convictions by trying the profession for themselves? Unlikely.

HIGH: Underbelly
There series of underworld assassinations that captured the attention of Australians for the better part of a decade is likely to make captivating television, so long as the producers don’t let their imaginations run wild. The 13-part mini-series by Screentime is based on the book Leadbelly: Inside Australia's Underworld by The Age journalists, John Silvester and Andrew Rule. It’s a massive foray into Australian drama with a substantial cast aimed at helping Nine reclaim its number one status. The way in which Melbourne’s seemingly untouchable crime families spectacularly self-destructed certainly lends strength to Leviticus’ timeless assertion: beware, your sins will find you out. My hope would be that Underbelly doesn’t descend into caricatures like ‘loveable rogue’ and ‘evil psychopath’, at once softening and desensitizing us to the real ordinariness of sin and its deceptive potential to lead any of us on to the most despicable acts.

Network TEN
LOW: Swingtown
Marketing wordsmiths have continued their onslaught on the English language and combined ‘drama’ and ‘comedy’ to create ‘dramedy’ to describe this US import. It’s one collision you’ll probably want to avoid. According to the marketing guff, Swingtown “…peeks into the shag-carpeted suburban homes of the 1970s to find couples revelling in the sexual and social revolution that introduced open marriages, women's liberation and challenged many conventional wisdoms.” That might be enough said, but the real question will be whether those ‘conventional wisdoms’ are successfully but unrealistically overturned. Real life has demonstrated that the liberation gained in this part of history has had the added benefits of freeing us from stable relationships, nuclear families and a sense of community. Since the producer, Mike Kelly, also consults on The OC it’s unlikely we’re going to learn anything helpful here.

HIGH: Kenny’s World Toilet Tour
One-trick pony you say? If I were Shane Jacobson I’d be worried. But the star of the hit Australian comedy about a man in charge of port-a-loos seems the obvious choice for a tour of the world’s toilets. The project sounds banal, and its placement on TEN is not encouraging, but there’s actually something quite equalising and down-to-earth about a view of the world that begins with the realities of the human condition – even a king has to go to the bathroom.  It could be a welcome anodyne to the overly polished characters that often populate television dramas and histories. So long as it doesn’t get bogged down in juvenile humour (again, sorry for the pun) it may be as sobering as it is informative.

ABC
LOW: Family Brat Camp
I’m generally fairly scathing when it comes to programs that promise to fix your family problems, but only deal with one side of the equation. The predecessor to this series, Brat Camp, was a prime example. There, problem children were sent off to American desert locations to suffer until they’d learnt to value the homes they’d left behind. I’m not doubting that some of the lessons were valid, but I wasn’t sure how removing kids from the very situation they’re failing in, and ignoring the parents who are at least partially responsible for it, was likely to produce a positive, long-term result. This new series seems to address some of those concerns, taking both troublesome teens and suffering parents off into the wilderness to bond or break together. However, again, it’s hard to see how it will really result in anyone learning the sort of skills that will help them behave responsibly in the environment they’ve left behind. Character is more likely the result of time, time, time in far less picturesque everyday locations.

HIGH: Jane Austen Fourplay
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if the ABC deserved two ‘lows’ when I read the media release for this series. On the up-side, the public broadcaster is doing what it does best, providing access to high quality productions of four more morality tales from the pen of Jane Austen. However the accompanying description, ‘bodice-ripping frenzy of costume drama delight’ and the obviously sexual reference in the series title leaves you wondering. Still, the fact that productions of Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion will be arriving on the small screen this year gives some hope. Mansfield Park, for one, will provide a tale about the true nature of attractiveness in an age where appearance and income are all that seem to matter – that’s the 19th century rather than the 21st but hopefully the lesson won’t be lost.

SBS
LOW: Skins
As if Sex in the City and Californication didn’t go far enough, SBS is happy to present sex-based drama that details the antics of British adolescents. Dawsons Creek with cockney accents? Maybe. But is it a reflection of reality or a load of wishful thinking from older producers? Nicholas Hoult plays the pumped up, manipulative ‘fixer’ for a wayward group of friends in a world of drugs, dance and rebellion. But as another reviewer puts it his character “…is overwritten with all the intellectual precocity and sexual confidence of a coke-snorting city banker twice his age.” I’m not suggesting there isn’t plenty of promiscuity amongst the teens and tweens, but you have to wonder how much programs like this act as self-fulfilling prophecies. Extremes like these arguably move the ‘middle ground’ of acceptability for younger audiences.

Open House TV and Media reviewer Mark Hadley, from Anglican Media