The Circuit: the social, cultural and political significance of great TV

I was chatting with friends the other night about the state of TV. We recalled some of the great Australian tv shows of our childhood and teenage years (Janus, Mercury, Brides of Christ, Wild Side, Seachange, MDA...) and bemoaned the way that reality tv seems to have taken over the world.

Now I'm excited about an Aussie drama for the first time in a long time. I've been watching the advertisements on SBS and thinking that The Circuit looks like it could be a cracker. The Age has a write-up today which has whet my appetite further. It not only looks like some great TV, but its production raises questions about the role and status of indigenous people in broader Australian society and culture, and the extent to which the arts can be utilised for capacity-building and empowerment:

"With a cast, crew and writing and production team comprising about 95 per cent Aboriginal people, the stories of The Circuit are bound to resonate with many of them. The non-Aboriginal actors and producers say that working on this Aboriginal driven drama, a first for Australian television, has opened their eyes.

Co-producer Ross Hutchens, whose wife is Aboriginal, says: "Just seeing this baggage that indigenous people carry for their whole community . . . There's the amount of death that the indigenous cast and crew have dealt with . . . there's been an actor friend in Melbourne who passed away; it's just constant. I'll be dealing with some on-set issue and the director's helping me and at the same time they're texting a kid in Melbourne who's chroming. You've got all these people with different backgrounds, you're part-producer, you're part-social worker. At the end of it, I can go home, whereas for some of my indigenous directors and writers, this is their life."

Most (but not all) of my friends who are indigenous are also highly educated professionals (most attended university or TAFE). They're lawyers, ministers of religion, linguists, musicians, writers, film-makers, and people working in the community-development sector and the charitable sections of big corporates. At least one has said that he thinks that indigenous men who wear suits are perhaps the most marginalised of all indigenous people:

Although magistrate Peter Lockhart (Gary Sweet) and Aboriginal Legal Services lawyer Drew Ellis (Aaron Pedersen) essentially represent those two worlds, the complexity of their characters removes any chance of cliche.

Drew, a "flash city lawyer" from Perth who never knew his Aboriginal father, is more connected to the white way of life than that of the people he hopes to help. His earnest Western demeanour prompts the locals to call him a "coconut" - brown on the outside, white on the inside. And Peter is acutely aware of having to lord white man's law over black lore, forever pushing the limits of the legal system in a despairingly fruitless effort to accommodate both.

Ahhh...the question of the extent to which "white man's law" and "traditional law" can be reconciled. It could hardly be avoided, could it?!

In the wake of Howard's announcement about a tough new approach to problems in indigenous communities, it's also nice to be reminded of reasons to be positive and hopeful about the future:

If there is one theme that runs concurrently through The Circuit and the making of the drama, it is the combination of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal storytellers weaving a story for everyone.

And finally, a reminder that so-called "indigenous issues" or "indigenous dramas" aren't just for indigenous people:

"It's great to see scripts that are quite real, especially for Broome and Aboriginal people. It's nothing like Home and Away, it's something that we can relate to. And not just us, the whole of Australia."