Disaster is Such a Harsh Word.

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

When it comes to natural disasters Australia does its best work in summer. Fire and floods, droughts and cyclones are the curses that bedevil us here in the land down under and they mostly come or are at their worst in summer. Actually the deadliest natural events historically in Australia are heatwaves beating floods, fires and cyclones.

We have a go at earthquakes but we are in the minor leagues and therefore despite our massive coastline we have little trouble with tsunamis. Avalanches, land slips, volcanic eruptions are all pretty much off the table too. Obviously our natural disasters are linked to weather which means that climate change is making these disasters either more frequent, more intense, longer lasting or all bloody three at once. So basically going forward for at least the next thirty years we are probably going to cop a flogging which given how we treat this planet is both hardly surprising and, if you could say such a thing about extinction well deserved.

Surprisingly we don’t use these natural events very often as a basis for homemade TV series or movies. We seem to prefer to focus on them in documentaries and thankfully the Australian entertainment industry has pretty much left the disaster movie to Hollywood. Our environment has certainly played a key role in landmark movies like Wake in Fright or Crocodile Dundee but that is the Australian landscape and typical weather instead of extreme climatic events.

Given our historical mythmaking of the outback and the bush and our more recent and relevant romance with the beach you would think there would be more product in this area by now. In the end Australia, the real Australia lives and breathes in suburbia and so it is no surprise that our most successful and relevant TV shows and movies mirror that. Kath and Kim, Lantana, The Castle, Home and Away are all cases in point. And yet all of the above disasters can have a devastating effect on beaches, cities and suburbia, just as much if not more than in rural areas.

So where are our versions of blockbuster disaster movies like San Andreas or more subtle dramas like The Ice Storm and The Impossible?

The ABC’s recent drama series Fires centred on the huge bush fires that burnt over the summer of 2019 and 2020 is perhaps the first local production that fits the criteria and it sets an excellent standard. I fear Fires may have largely slipped by given the amount of content that is being pumped out at us through the pay to view networks like Netflix or Stan. That would be a shame because we don’t produce anywhere near enough quality drama that addresses modern Australia concerns, unfortunately we seem to to prefer the low cost junk food of reality TV.  Some commentators have said it was too soon to make the series given the size of the tragedy. A few others thought it only average TV but I disagree.

There are six episodes of Fires with each having a self-contained story but two characters, both young volunteer firefighters appear in almost all the stories. The stories themselves convey viscerally the danger, the fear and the sense of loss as the infernos bear down and in some cases roar through houses and towns. There is a lot of real life footage from the fires and it is interspersed skillfully building a real sense of foreboding and threat. The actors, a mix of the well-known like Noni Hazlehurst, Miranda Otto and Richard Roxburgh and newer talent like Eliza Scanlen are excellent. The acting of the children in all the episodes is especially good. The acting and the quality of characterisation highlights the danger and pain of having to make tough but necessary decisions in a crisis and the implications on relationships that those decisions and the fires bring.

All in all I enjoyed the emotional roller coaster that is Fires and compared to some of the other more highly publicised drama series that have been shown recently like Nine Perfect Strangers I think it is far superior and more importantly a locally made product. Check it out.

If you are the Cleon Emperor in the year 12067 and someone blows up your star bridge on planet Trantor well that is a disaster too. If you want to find out what happens next tune into Foundation on Apple TV. This sprawling Sci-fi series based on the classic Asimov novels has had plenty of dollars thrown into the production. So if starships and rebellions on the outer reaches of the galaxy turn you on you should check it out.

For me the tone of Foundation is just right, not too corny cowboys and Indians like Star Wars but still enough dirty deeds and adventure to make me dream about whether if someday, one day we might really be out there colonizing worlds and spreading good cheer and bad vibes the human way.

Annika is a lovely name and also the title of a new BBC crime drama starring the wonderful Nicola Walker. She is a cop solving murders of course and this show is good fun and best enjoyed if you don’t think too hard about it. There are a few too many cop show clichés but all the cast are good, the Glasgow accents thick [perfect place for a climate change meeting] and most intriguingly Inspector Annika regularly breaks the fourth wall and talks to the camera. Not everyone enjoys this dramatic device used so well in the excellent Fleabag and House of Cards and this series is not in the same league but apparently the show did begin as a BBC radio series so I guess that might explain it. It doesn’t hurt and Nicola is such a good actor she makes it work. Not brilliant but not a disaster, Annika is on ABC.

Six songs about things going bad!!

New York Mining Disaster 1941 – The Bee Gees

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – Gordon Lightfoot

Calamity Song - The Decemberists

Kyoto Now – Bad Religion

It’s The End of the World – REM

Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival