australian television information archive

Bushies bung on a tizz

TO SUCCEED in a rural drama, you need to be able to get a little dirt on your face.

Getting a little dirt on your hands helps but it’s those daubs of dirt on the face that really count. The gals in McLeod’s Daughters  know this, and you would travel far in this broad, brown land to find a more accomplished band of dirt daubers than Tess McLeod and her Stetson-topped accomplices in agrarian angst.

There are storm clouds gathering on the horizon this week. These are not the usual dramatic clouds but real clouds as presaged by the tinkling of the wind chimes on the veranda. As any veteran viewer of Australian Outback dramas knows, the sound of a wind chime tinkling in a freshening breeze can only mean a storm of epic proportions will strike before the credits roll.

Not that the girls, faces freshly doused with dirt, applied over several layers of foundation make-up, mascara, lip gloss and eyeliner, have time to worry about the storm for there are more pressing matters at hand.

Women struggling in a man’s world, they are driven daily by the need to prove themselves equal to their male counterparts and are helped only by their guts, grit, determination and an improbable script that every week delivers them from disaster.

Said script each week rewards viewers with a warm and snugly happy ending while carving a comfortable position for McLeod’s Daughters in the weekly viewing schedule.

The photography is first class, crammed with wide-angle shots of the great outdoors sufficiently evocative to send you heading west in search of your Australian bush heritage. Unfortunately, the predictable storyline and regular outbursts of over-acting are enough to send me heading west—or east, south or north—anywhere to escape the dirt-daubed damsels.

Not that females dominate the screen. Those old enough—like me—to recall a series called Bonanza will remember a character called Hoss.

Hoss may have long gone to the happy hunting grounds but his spirit lives on in McLeod’s Daughters in the form of Alex—big, boofy, heart-of-gold Alex—who believes in such manly virtues as “doing the right thing” and punching anyone who does the wrong thing.

With the wind chimes tinkling, the dusty girls go about their business of running the property and trying to secure a market for their politically correct organic farming venture.

Oh no! They’ve been sold a load of feed contaminated with traces of chemicals and the handsome male buyer from The Big Smoke is due any moment.

It’s almost enough to make you go inside, wash the dirt off your face and get a job in IT.

Thud! What was that? Just Tess’s favourite white horse collapsing on the ground. Lord! What next? The horse is crook, the hitherto organically pure sheep have eaten the chemical laden food and the wind is blowing so hard it’s shattered the wind chimes, and down at the truck stop Terry’s been replaced by Moira whose husband has left her for another woman.

But wait! Terry’s single and now Moira’s available and they’re both in the back seat of a car, driven there in search of shelter from by the wind, proof that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

It is just one highly charged dramatic moment after another and I predict that this summer, dirt make-up will ascend the heights of fashion, women throughout the western world paying large amounts of money to have perfumed blobs of dirt artfully applied to their faces.

By Mike O'Connor
August 25, 2005
The Courier Mail