Twenty years after it began on Australian TV, Big Brother (Monday on Seven) is now a very different show. It has moved with the times, is much faster-paced and physical challenges and playing the game to win now take precedence over making friends.
This year, Big Brother is bonkers, and that’s a good thing. There’s a lamb-loving farm girl, a colour-blind painter and a cocky real estate agent that looks like Tab Hunter when he filmed Polyester with Divine. Seven needs a reality hit and with MasterChef (10) looking a bit undercooked, Big Brother is perfectly timed to pick up the slack.
Reckoning (Wednesday on Seven) is an Aussie-made crime drama from Playmaker that screened on American TV in 2019. It stars Aden Young, Simone Kessell, Jacqueline McKenzie and Robert Mammone, and while it’s fun to see Sydney’s northern beaches standing in for some random US town, the storyline is not so amusing.
Reckoning is about as cliched as you can get because it’s yet another drama about a serial killer murdering young women. Why is it that commercial television keeps making the same shows over and over again, while streaming services are finding novel new ways to fire up old genres?
Reckoning
Them (Amazon Prime) is a creepy new horror series about a black family that moves to an all-white Californian suburb in 1953. With unbridled hatred from the neighbours, and something strange lurking in the basement, who needs another serial killer when a racist housewife can be way more frightening?
Seven has snatched the 93rd Academy Awards (Monday on Seven) from Nine after a year when most movies were streamed instead of being shown in cinemas. It’s a pretty diverse line-up this year and it will be fascinating to see who wins.
As Neighbours (10 Peach) investigates racism claims, Hollyoaks (Channel 4) just aired an episode in response to the claims made against them. It brilliantly showed how white Grace (Tamara Wall) got preferential treatment over black Martine (Kéllé Bryan) and the episode has since been uploaded to YouTube (under Full Unconscious Bias Episode Hollyoaks) with additional commentary from writer Kara Marie Stewart and director Eden Kelman.
In dialogue that pulled no punches, Martine said: “People have the cheek to tell us racism doesn’t exist in this country but it does, yes it does. All I ask is that you consider the ways you might be part of the problem, because there’s no shame in asking yourself, how can you do better?” Indeed.
See also:
Mercado on TV: Wake-up call about lack of diversity on Australian commercial TV
Mercado on TV: From Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown to Adam Liaw and Daryl Somers