It may not have delivered on the return of Spicks and Specks in 2013 (that’s now coming next year thanks to the casting getting sorted) but our ABC absolutely smashed it in the free to air stakes again this year. Drama, comedy, documentary, News, current affairs, kid’s programming… it’s all there and it was all amazing.
It’s an embarrassment of riches…
HITS
ABC1’s Monday Night line-up: Australian Story, Four Corners, Media Watch, Q&A – Ever dependable, always surprising, completely entertaining.
Redfern Now S02 – The best free to air drama in 2013. No question.
Dirty Laundry Live – Lawrence Mooney and Brooke Satchwell dragged all sorts of crazy fun people along for a ride through trash mags on LIVE TV. Words were said. Strange, special words. Controversial words. So many fun words. (P.S. Saatchi deserved it.)
Doctor Blake Mysteries – Craig McLachlan offered a compassionate Dr Lucien Blake who always seemed to know there was more to the story than the cadaver that lay before him. A welcome return to ABC1 in 2014.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries S02 – More Phrynne meant more murder and more Friday night drama wins for ABC1.
Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery – Julia Zemiro. Julia Zemiro. Julia Zemiro. Julia Zemiro. Julia Zemiro.
Head First – Sabour Bradley pleasantly surprised everyone with this series of documentaries.
The Time Of Our Lives – McInnes. Karvan. Clark. Jacobsen. Curry. Vergara Moore. Judi McCrossin offered a script good enough to draw a cast this good who somehow made it better.
Cliffy – Australia’s very own shuffling potato farmer shuffled past for one more run. Kevin Harrington did a great job as the gumboot-wearing champion.
Gruen Nation/Planet – The ABC’s marquee program smacked down the election and then continued to smack down the advertising industry in the most enjoyable way.
The Hamster Decides – Surely every election year is like Christmas for the Chaser.
Ja’mie: Private School Girl – Chris Lilley proved that a 16 year old girl played by a 35 year old man can deliver simultaneously the cringiest and funniest moments in TV.
7:30 – Want a solid political interview? Leigh Sales is the woman for the job.
Upper Middle Bogan – Australia’s Arrested Development.
It’s A Date – Peter Helliar’s gorgeous comedic series that showed great comedy can be found in situations full of heart. A stellar cast and superb writing talent makes it rewatchable at any time.
Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell S02 – Season two only made it better.
The Checkout – When Craig Reucassel and Julian Morrow got mixed up with Choice Magazine it wasn’t because of their sketches but rather to make them champions of the people. I know, right?!
The Agony Guide to Life – It’s completely disarming in its charm and with such a simple premise makes you wonder why you never though of it before Adam Zwar did. Bastard!
Redesign My Brain – Todd Sampson expanded his ABC empire and women around the country swooned as he took his shirt off. Also, science!
The Roast – 10 minutes of biting News satire five nights a week made by people who don’t know any better. More ABC2 gold.
Twentysomething S03 – Josh & Jess finally sorted everything out. Well, in their own special way at least.
Shitsville Express – Take four aspirational, politically motivated young people and add more than a dash of Joe Hildebrand and hang on for the ride.
Steam Punks – SCIENCE IS FUN! Paul Verhoven managed to entertain, educate and horrify kids all while keeping The Machine at bay.
Kitchen Cabinet S03 – Given a special political turn at the end of the season thanks to episodes with the then Opposition Leader and PM. Amazing what a chat over food around the kitchen table can do.
Good Game/Good Game SP/Good Game: Pocket Edition – Bigger set, bigger games, bigger profile. Hex, Bajo, Goose, D.A.R.R.E.N. and co continue to offer the best gaming show on TV.
One Plus One – Janet Hutcheon offered some amazing interviews this year in a most under-rated program
The Day Of The Doctor/Doctor Who – Be it fast-tracked or simulcast the ABC’s delivery of the Doctor has been superb. The celebration of all things Whovian leading into the broadcast of the 50th anniversary ep was a great used of cross-programmed channels.
Adam Hills Tonight – The greater inclusion of Hannah Gadsby in this season helped embed this great variety show and show Australians still have an appetite for it. A shame it won’t return (by Hills’s choice) in 2014.
CONCEDED PASSES
Paper Giants: Magazine Wars – With the first season we cared about Ita. We knew about her. We’d seen her on the TV and stuff. Dulcie Boling and Nene King? These were names in magazines our parents used to read. As interesting as they might have been and as good as the cast were the story was lacking.
Tractor Monkeys S01/S02 – The first season was bad. It just felt underprepared and rushed to screen, and suffered from a case of the bad edits. The second season improved a lot but it still struggled to gain traction. “Here’s a game we like to call…”
The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide To Knifefighting – It had it’s moments but wasn’t a patch on A Moody Christmas. Lots of interesting things were tried and a few worked. Thank goodness The Moodys get a second run next year.
MISSES
Serangoon Rd – It looked luscious but lacked the substance to back it up.
ABC Companion App – Did you try using it? No, neither did anyone before they released it.
Overall result: Solid A. Again the ABC proved it’s willing to deliver amazing content made by some amazing people. This is our eight cents a day plus inflation plus GST hard at work – it’s brilliant and we all get to be the beneficiaries.
Decent assessment. Best performing network by far!
However, one major omission. ZERO support for Australian Windows Phone users. Their iView website does not work on IE on our phones.
They have NO WP8 Apps – ZERO (out of 38 in their portfolio). And their Radio streaming also doesn’t work on WP.
Not good enough – not “ourABC” at all. WP share is growing faster than anything else. Telstra have been moving in some months up to 20% of their business device sales share overall in WP! The highest selling single mode budget smartphone in it’s $ bracket is the Nokia Lumia 520 (WP8).
C’mon ABC Ef for this score (EPIC FAIL).
Sheeds.
Hi Sheeds – I can understand that you’re concerned over a lack of WinPhone apps as you are a dedicated user. You’d not that the ABC have only just announced an official iview app for Android coming in 2014! While WinPhone’s market share may be increasing it’s still single digits compared to Apple and Android devices and so it’s understandable that the ABC channel their funds to develop apps for the most popular devices.
That said, continue to fight the good fight (even if there aren’t many of you)… 😉
I don’t necessarily agree with your logic, but you argument has some merit.
Having said that according to recent statistics (which are for some reason I found on a site called LatinosPost)
http://www.latinospost.com/articles/32065/20131204/ios-vs-android-windows-phone-market-share-australia.htm
Android has lost 5.5% market share in 3 months while Windows Phone has gained 3.3%, the most of any platform.
Now while WP still only has 7.3% total share, with the estimates in Feb from ACMA that there are over 8.5 million adult smartphone users in Australia, that means that over 620000 potential users from the fastest growing mobile platform at the moment are being ignored.
With multiplatform development tools quite common these days, there is really no excuse for ignoring Windows Phone, the bulk of the development is done on the common components anyway, with the Platform specific stuff being only a minor part of the actual development (assuming that this is how they operate in regards to development)
As a taxpayer funded organization, they should be developing for as many platforms as the taxpayers are using (within reason of course)
Hi Shurp – “within reason of course” is the great delimiter. For all the reasons why the ABC should be developing apps to please 620,000 people it doesn’t acknowledge the very, VERY large market ownership of iOS devices. I completely understand why anyone would develop for the iOS platform primarily – though I can’t speak to the ABC’s development schedule I stand by what I see as their rationale. There’d be hell to pay if they spent a large sum of money developing something that only 2.7% of the entire population would want to use… Much easier to validate for 37% of the population and maintain their status as the Network leading the digital broadcasting age in Australia.
Very true.
It all comes down to their development process, if they are doing cross platform development properly, which if they are developing for IOS and Android, they should be, then it wouldn’t require a large sum of money to port things to Windows Phone.
If they are building everything from the ground up for each platform (which is definitely a possibility), then developing for Windows Phone may not be the best plan (yet).
They could at least update the web based stuff so that WP devices can access them, of course with iView running on Flash then that may not be feasible either (in which case it would probably be cheaper to make an iView app)
Flat out ignoring the No. 3 platform, which currently has the highest growth in the market doesn’t seem like the best approach in my opinion.
Hi Shurp – I think it’s pretty obvious how they are developing, and it’s not in parallel. These here are crazy times.