Critic's view - Sunday, July 12
The Age
Thursday July 9, 2009
Dancing with the StarsChannel Seven, 6.30pmREPORTS of its death are evidently premature given that Dancing with the Stars returned to air last Sunday for a ninth outing. After an extended time on the sidelines, it's back with a similar overload of spray-on tan, diamantes, cheesy repartee and a new batch of contestants who might give one pause to consider if the last two words of the title are still justified. It's not so much that "the stars" this time around are thin on the ground, it's more a case of just how much intrigue they might hold for the public. Those who tuned in for the train-wreck factor of watching individuals, such as the former Member for Oxley or Simone Callahan, opening up their lives to the great unwashed won't have much to pick over in the controversy-free line-up here - contestant Fiona O'Loughlin included, the comedienne having nipped scandal in the bud by confessing to a drinking problem prior to her restrained debut last Sunday. Indeed, it's something of a personality-lite cast of celebs this time around, with no less than four Seven personalities on their squeaky-clean best behaviour in the line-up, a couple of obligatory sporting "legends", an "international cover girl" (and we thought "model" was a mildly derisive appellation), leaving a couple of entertainment-world figures - singers Adam Brand and Rob Mills - as the resident extroverts. By way of novelty, there's Gerrard Gosens, an adventurer and paralympian who has been blind since birth and whose introduction last week was handled with an admirable lack of patronising sanctimony. No, rumours of the show's demise are exaggerated but not for long, I suspect.CastleChannel Seven, 9.30pmTHERE are certainly worse ways of spending an hour in front of the television these days, even if this unheralded detective show serves little more purpose than reigniting fond memories of shows of a bygone era. Castle harks back to shows like Moonlighting and Remington Steele in the 1980s, when cop shows were fixated less on sensationalised stories of murder and forensics than on an opposites-attract duo - a deeply attractive one at that - who rely on their wit, banter and skewed perspectives of humankind to solve unusual crimes. Here, though, it's the male half of the equation, Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion), a crime novelist who gets a job on the NYPD when the fictitious crimes of his books are re-enacted in real life (the mayor is an avid reader of his books, too), who gets the smartest lines and set-ups. More Nancy Drew than the sunglass-fixated television detective of today, Castle lives with his mother, a flaky life coach who, as Castle reminds her, doesn't know who fathered her son or why her ex stole all her money. The spark that lights his fire is straight-talking detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), who isn't in too much of a hurry to sublimate her evident attraction to her co-worker. Tonight, they're called in to investigate the disappearance of a small girl, while the arrival of Beckett's ex-boyfriend forces the aloof Castle to take a stand for her affection.Nature's Great EventsABC1, 7.30pmTHESE days, octogenarian David Attenborough doesn't have to leave home to make his presence felt in nature documentaries. His mellifluous narration accompanies this top-shelf BBC program, which turns a spotlight on the major natural events that sustain the life cycles of species in the wild. Tonight's irresistible episode focuses on the annual flooding of the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
© 2009 The Age
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