However 4.2 kilograms of marijuana made its way into Indonesia in a body board bag in 2004, the story of Schapelle Corby’s arrest, conviction and subsequent jailing for drug smuggling is known by every…
Even the briefest glance at recent cinema listings and television schedules suggests that the remake is everywhere. Currently showing in the UK is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, an update of the 1947…
In the US, television programmes have traditionally been designed to be aspirational. This is largely due to an advertising model that likes to think of audiences as consumers and sell them the latest…
When Downton Abbey finally returns to our tellies for a fourth season (we hope it will be “soon” but Channel Seven is keeping its powder dry) it’ll be sans its scheming troublemaker. Australian fans are…
Coronation Street’s Hayley Cropper killed herself before the watershed last night. The build up to this prompted the inevitable moral panic frenzy. The media’s role in the representation of suicide is…
It’s not uncommon, these days, to flip on the television in a foreign country and see a local remake of a show you always thought of as American or British. Talent shows like The Voice, The X Factor and…
The decision of the ABC to conduct regular editorial audits of its coverage of controversial topics is a great idea. The ABC has a unique place in the Australian media landscape. Learning more about how…
2013 will be remembered as the year analogue television was switched off in Australia. The curators of Tele Visions are celebrating the final days of analogue TV with a set of new and historically significant…
It’s 50 years since the first episode aired on the BBC on November 23 1963 – and now Doctor Who is in promotion overdrive. We’ve been treated to online snippets of the 50th-anniversary special, pre-anniversary…
Denmark’s award-winning cultural export, Borgen, is back on our screens for a second series following the fortunes of its fictional female Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg. Denmark need never resort to hard…
We are now about half way through the first season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, the much-hyped TV spin off from the enormously successful 2012 superhero blockbuster, The Avengers. The honeymoon is…
More than a decade ago, I wrote something on the 1996 film Twister and a host of other action films. I thought it was deep and profound: the new blockbuster films were trying to emulate the experience…
At 6.30am this morning, Channel Ten launched the program that will either resurrect the network’s fortunes or push it further into a coma from which it may never recover. Wake Up, joined by newsreader…
The Court of Appeal is to be televised for the first time now that a ban on cameras in courts in England and Wales has been lifted. High-profile media organisations have been lobbying for such a move for…
Female characters are currently dominating our crime dramas on television worldwide, with shows such as British detective series Scott and Bailey, Danish cop show The Killing, Danish/ Swedish co-production…
There were more hours of Australian-made television drama broadcast in 2012/13 than in any year since 2009, after a considerable boost to production following a substantial funding increase received by…
In nearly 40 years of teaching Jewish Studies at university the course I found hardest to deliver was my first-year “Introduction to Judaism”. It didn’t get any easier: the more I learned, the more I agonised…
The final episode of the award-winning American TV show Breaking Bad aired last night. Set against the backdrop of illicit crystal methamphetamine production, the series highlights the huge problem parts…
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW Walter White came to us just when we needed him. Breaking Bad offered a world reeling from the effects of lengthy recession some glimmer of hope, but more importantly it now offers…
On September 23, Showtime audiences will bid adieu to television’s unlikeliest hero. Since 2007, they’ve really warmed to Dexter. The show’s eponymous anti-hero is a congenial blood-spatter analyst who…