The Waiting Man

Related to my last post, here's how I remember colour TV coming to Australia...



The Aunty Jack Show was a kind of Australian hybrid of Monty Python, The Goodies & All In The Family, only with more shameless parochial references & without anything like the budget of any of those influences. The effect of Aunty trying to hold down the rising colour & managing to remain B&W while the other cast members went colour, probably blew the meagre budget for that week... but it's my enduring memory of the time - priceless

We've been re-watching Twin Peaks over the last month or so, having picked up the box set with the first 2 seasons from the 90s, the Fire Walk With Me movie & the new series that came out a year or so ago. We're into the second season from the 90s &...

Boy, oh boy, is some of the acting absolutely awful - something you'd expect from the then newcomers who were playing all the 'teenage' roles, like Lara Flynn Boyle & Dana Ashbrook - but veterans like Piper Laurie & even Jack Nance seem to have regressed to 'first day in high school drama club' standards. I don't know if it's deliberate or not... maybe it's a subtle dig at those daytime soap operas like Days Of The Bold & Restless & their unbelievable plot twists & contortions & especially their wooden (or these days - plastic) actors. After all, in TPs first season, there was always a soap opera playing whenever a TV was in the scene called 'Invitation To Love', with the same awful acting on display. So maybe it's a very David Lynchian joke...

I've just done a quick Google & apparently it is a deliberate style - meant to take the stereotypical facile, sterile characters of those daytime shows & expose them to some really dark & weird stuff. That does explain a lot... I thought time just hadn't been kind to the series over the years. I remember watching it back in the 90s & being amazed, confused & utterly hooked. There wasn't anything like it on television... That's how I sold the show to Long-suffering Partner & I've been cringing occasionally, when the show veers a little too close to the cheese. Knowing it's deliberate may soften the blow...