Crashburn: articles


CrashBurn too good to rate?

Sometimes in this job, you enjoy preview tapes of a new show but have a nagging suspicion that it might not work. The other day I watched the first two episodes of one of the best new TV dramas of 2003. It is mature, clever, involving, sexy and has a delightful sense of humour. Can't say much better than that.

And I really hope for the sake of all of the talented people who contribute to it that I am proved wrong, but I fear it will not succeed. CrashBurn, which premiered on Channel Ten on Monday night, has one fundamental problem—it might be too clever for its own good.

It's not just that its two creators, Andrew Knight and Deb Cox, are the pair who masterminded SeaChange, the ABC's biggest hit of all time, and one of my favourite ABC series of the past decade, Simone De Beauvoir's Babies, but CrashBurn has the look and feel of an ABC series.

I am not being a snob. Commercial TV makes plenty of good drama, such as Ten's White Collar Blue. But that show looks and feels commercial. It might have been as out of place on the ABC as CrashBurn, at first glance, looks on Ten. White Collar Blue has been axed but not because it lacked quality. In the case of CrashBurn, which is quality television, too, its distinctly non-commercial feel might work against it.

It's just not the sort of product that I believe will work sufficiently well on a commercial network to be judged a success. On the ABC, it probably would attract 800,000 to 900,000 viewers nationally each week—maybe a few more—and would be classified a good performer by ABC standards. On Ten, I fear it will settle at around the same figure, but in the economically harsh environment of commercial television, that might be considered unsuccessful in a mid-evening timeslot.

It will be a pity if that happens, because CrashBurn is very good television. In essence, it is sophisticated soap, pitched at the 25-to-50-year-old market. That's a little older than the 16-to-39 target audience of its predecessor in Ten's Monday 8.30pm slot, The Secret Life of Us. But I have that nagging concern about whether this relationship drama will work.

By commercial standards, it is slow, although I am assured that it gathers pace. The marital problems of its two lead characters, Rosie and Ben, are not sufficiently explained in the first two episodes. That's frustrating. Their trial separation after nine years married seems almost too amicable to be true. Why are they doing it? These two were made for each other—that's obvious—and the reason for their bust-up is agonisingly remote from those of us watching their sadness unfold.

This is not an all-guns-blazing separation. Something has happened to make Ben and Rosie break up and to seek counselling support. But after two episodes, we don't really know what triggered it.

We get Ben's side of their romance in the first half of each episode, then Rosie's, and looking at everything from two points of view is what makes CrashBurn so fascinating. But after two episodes, it's still the start of their romance that we are seeing in flashback, a crazy, hit-and-miss dalliance that will seem familiar to many of those watching.

We fast forward to the present from time to time to sit in on the counselling sessions and to witness the heartache that separation is causing them and their seven-year-old son, Lewis.

But most of it is in the past, that mad time when each of them was trying to impress the other and discover their true feelings.

It is beautifully done. Ben, played brilliantly by Aaron Blabey (The Damnation of Harvey McHugh), wants Rosie but lacks confidence. Rosie (Catherine McClements) is more certain, more assertive, perhaps more needing.

This is McClements's show from the start. As Goldie, the police detective in Nine's Water Rats, she was a little too blokey for my liking, but that's what the role demanded.

Here, she is anything but blokey. She's as sexy as all get-out, a spirited young woman with looks and charm to die for. She's the aggressor in the romance. She's the one who pushes it along. She's the seductress. And McClements is perfect in the role.

But it is the things that make CrashBurn so intriguing—the time-shifting and the telling of each week's tale from each of the lovers' different points of view—that might be its downfall. CrashBurn demands constant attention. It is all about seeing a romance, a marriage and then a separation from the point of view of each party.

But are we honest enough with our own emotions to do that? CrashBurn requires each of us to admit things about ourselves that we might not care to confess.

For all the humour that the show provides—and there is plenty of wit here—it might, in the end, be a little discomfiting.

The success of CrashBurn might well depend on our honesty about ourselves.

By Ross Warneke
August 21, 2003
The Age