Show a gay man on TV, and you immediately open yourself up to a degree of scrutiny that other artists usually have the privilege of avoiding. Representations of marginalised subjects on screen or in literature…
Yesterday Cricket Australia launched onto the Apple TV network, becoming the first Australian sports organisation to join the platform. The new Cricket Australia channel will feature a mixture of interviews…
If you were following politics over the last few election cycles, you were most likely getting some of your information from satire. In fact, research has shown that in today’s political climate, satire…
Communications watchdog Ofcom have released a report which reveals that, after decades of continual growth for the first time, the number of UK households with a television has fallen, from 26.33m at the…
Is the ABC trying to make itself redundant? Because that appears to be its strategy. Here’s why. The ABC is expensive. In 2013 it was allocated more than A$1 billion of taxpayer funds. The ABC claims…
The SBS/Blackfella Films production First Contact – that takes six non-Indigenous people and immerses them into Aboriginal Australia for the first time – captured the nation’s attention this week amassing…
Environmental catastrophe, economic collapse, global pandemic … does it feel like the world is ending? If you think Armageddon is near and are trying to get ready, you are not alone. National Geographic…
Netflix will launch in Australia and New Zealand in March next year. Expectations are this is just the start of an influx of new streaming options in Australia. The internet and television are increasingly…
In the epilogue to Jill Lepore’s new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, we learn about Wonder Woman’s importance to the American feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Lepore briefly notes Wonder…
The latest series of Doctor Who wrapped up on the weekend with the completion of a startling two-episode finale: Dark Waters and Death in Heaven. This season we’ve seen what is perhaps the darkest, edgiest…
Mental illness and women’s sexuality are frequently aligned – on screen and off. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, pathologised women’s sexuality. Indeed his definition of a woman as someone…
Susan Sontag once wrote that the ultimate camp statement is, “It’s good because it’s awful”. But can camp go too far? To paraphrase a line from the 2001 film Ghost World, can something be so awful that…
When Homeland first aired in 2011 starring a CIA agent with bipolar disorder, Carrie Mathison (played by Claire Danes), it was commended for its realistic portrayals of people with mental illness. Courtney…
Television series Outlander made its debut on the small screen in August this year, to the acclaim of both reviewers and fans. Critical tongues are wagging, tumblr gifs abound, and Etsy has been inundated…
Does the name Felix Kjellberg sound familiar? How about PewDiePie? … Still nothing? Clearly you’re not one of the 31 million subscribers to YouTube’s most successful channel, PewDiePie, starring 24-year-old…
In the penultimate episode of Twin Peaks (1990-1991), “I’ll see you again in 25 years” were the words spoken backwards by Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) to FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), the…
So what’s funny about mental illness? Very little. It can be hard to smile, let alone laugh, when every day feels like a wet blanket. When someone makes a joke about mental illness, it often trivialises…
ABC’s six-part political thriller The Code is shaping up as the most challenging political thriller on Australian television since the BBC’s House of Cards (1990). And, like the BBC series – and its recent…
Television is a major part of Australians’ daily lives: 99.7% of Australians homes have a television and, on average, Australians view 93 hours of television per month. But as audiences move online to…
Last week, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that community television broadcasts will be pushed online at the end of 2015. Turnbull’s announcement came as a surprise to many of those…