Frontline (Australian TV series)


Frontline is an Australian comedy television series which satirised Australian television current affairs programmes and reporting. It ran for three series of 13 half-hour episodes and was broadcast on ABC TV in 1994, 1995 and 1997.

Production

The series was written, directed and produced by Jane Kennedy, Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner. They created and performed in the television shows The D-Generation and The Late Show before creating Frontline. After Frontline they moved into feature films, making several popular Australian movies including The Castle and The Dish, and hosted The Panel for several years, before moving on to Thank God You're Here and later Have You Been Paying Attention?.
The series was partly inspired by a 60 Minutes special "Has the media gone too far?". It bears some similarity to the UK series Drop the Dead Donkey.

Setting

A commercial network

The series follows the fortunes of a fictional current affairs show, Frontline. In the show, Frontline competes directly with Nine's A Current Affair and Seven's Real Life, which changed its name to Today Tonight from 1995 onwards.
The Frontline office showcases and satirises the machinations of the ruthless producers, the self-obsessed airhead host, and the ambitious, cynical reporters, all of whom resort to any sort of underhanded trick to get ratings and maintain their status—including the use of hidden cameras, foot-in-the-door, bullying interview techniques, and chequebook journalism. They ingratiate themselves with the all-powerful network bosses, while the real work is in fact done by their long-suffering production staff.
The station itself also runs other television shows referenced by Frontline staff, such as 6 o'clock news program, a 3-hour news review show Sunday Forum, a sketch show The Komedy Bunch, a game show Jackpot, a teen soap opera Sunshine Cove which later changed to Rainbow Island, also lesser mentioned shows such as the football show Ball-to-Ball, Late-Night OZ, Cartoon Crazies, The Morning Show, Face the Press and Vacation.

As a commentary

The characters and situations were often thinly-disguised parodies of recent real events and real people, giving the show's comedy a black edge. Episodes such as "The Siege" were replays of controversial events which often had occurred just a few months earlier, told as though Frontline itself had covered the story.
The dim-witted, egotistical host Mike Moore was a parody of current television hosts and journalists. Sitch has claimed that none of the characters were directly based on a single person, and indeed the character of Moore was a combination of well-known characteristics of a number of high-profile television figures, including A Current Affair host Ray Martin, Martin's predecessor Mike Willesee, and Real Life host Stan Grant.
The ABC's media review show Media Watch was featured prominently. Much of the real life journalistic misconduct reported on Media Watch later appeared on Frontline in fictionalised form. One example of this was when Media Watch reported that Dave "Sluggo" Richardson had made a highly misleading report on Christopher Skase for Today Tonight. Richardson was suspended from duty for a month, and in the "One Rule for One" episode of Frontline, fictional reporter Martin di Stasio is suspended for a month for doing exactly the same thing.
Multiple episodes of Frontline featured Media Watch segments criticising the show.

Episodes

Characters

Reporters

Frontline frequently featured celebrity cameos, unusually including major Australian politicians appearing as themselves, often but not always as interviewees. The most memorable appearance is that of Pauline Hanson in "The Shadow We Cast", in which she turns her famous "please explain?" phrase on Mike. Noel Pearson appears as an interviewee later in the same episode. Other appearances include: John Hewson in "The Soufflé Rises" ; Pat Cash in "The Desert Angel"; Cheryl Kernot in "We Ain't Got Dames" ; Ben Elton, Bert Newton, Rosemary Margan, Amanda Keller and Anne Fulwood in "This Night of Nights" ; Glenn Ridge in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Office Mole" ; Glenn Robbins and Molly Meldrum in "Add Sex and Stir"; George Negus in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Dick on the Line" ; and Ian Baker-Finch in "A Hole in the Heart". Harry Shearer appeared in the series 2 episode "Changing the Face of Current Affairs", where he played the character of Larry Hadges. Merv Hughes also starred in the series 2 episode "Workin' Class Man".
Other guest stars appeared in mock-ups of their own shows: Mike Moore appeared on fictitious episodes of Burke's Backyard with Don Burke, Rex Hunt's fishing show, and The AFL Footy Show with Sam Newman. Stuart Littlemore, who at the time was hosting the media commentary show Media Watch, appeared in several fictitious episodes as a critic of Frontline.

Production strategies

Frontline broke new ground for Australian situation comedy, by adopting some innovative production strategies. Its rapid production schedule was inspired by UK series Drop the Dead Donkey, where each episode was written and taped in a single week and scripts were closely based on the real news stories of the preceding seven days.
The Frontline scripts were likewise written and the series filmed with a short period, often within a single week. It was a fully collaborative effort, with Cilauro, Kennedy, Gleisner and Sitch all sharing writing and directing duties, and the cast all contributing ideas during all stages of production. So sometimes when the show appeared on then-current events, it was a coincidence, as episodes were delayed by several months. In other cases there was direct commentary on real events, albeit not extremely recent ones.
To create a heightened illusion of grainy documentary realism, footage was shot under fluorescent lights in an actual office building set, and taped on hand-held Hi-8 camcorders usually operated by Gleisner and Cilauro. The footage was then transferred onto film and finally transferred back to videotape. Footage that was portrayed as being part of the Frontline broadcast was shot at broadcast quality, to increase the "realism" of the satire and complement the behind-the-scenes footage.

Other airings

In 1997, Channel Seven bought the rights to the series; however, they only aired a handful of episodes. The show was perceived by management as "too close to the bone" for a network significantly focused upon its prime-time current affairs ratings battle with rival stations. The Comedy Channel has shown the series as late as 2005.
In America, Frontline was shown as either Behind the Frontline on cable or as Breaking News on PBS.
In the UK, series 1 and 2 were shown by the Paramount Comedy Channel. Series 3, however, was never screened.
In Canada, it was aired as Behind the Frontline on Showcase in 1997.

Impact

The series was extremely popular through its run, winning a Logie Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Comedy in 1995, and a Logie for Alison Whyte as most outstanding actress in 1997. A Sydney Morning Herald industry poll rated it No. 2 in the 25 all-time greatest Australian TV shows.
Six episodes from series one were a core text in the Year 12 English Advanced syllabus for the Higher School Certificate in New South Wales for Module C: Representation and Text: Elective 1: Telling the Truth. The episodes are "Playing the Ego Card", "Add Sex and Stir", "The Siege", "Smaller Fish to Fry", "We Ain't Got Dames", and "This Night of Nights". The show has also been used as a text response for both Years 11 and 12 in the English units of the Victorian Certificate of Education. Episodes of Frontline have been analysed for the Media topic in the Year 10 English syllabus in New South Wales since at least 2001 and in Western Australia since at least 2009.

MentalAs Return

Sitch reprised the role of Mike Moore and Frontline during a short sketch on the Friday Night Crack Up in October 2014 as part of the ABC's "MentalAs" campaign to raise money and awareness for mental health issues.