It's a man's world

It was an admirable strategy for Channel 7 to put their new Australian drama on after the desperately successful Desperate Housewives. The show regularly commands the No.1 ratings spot so it was a realistic hope that some of those viewers might refrain from pressing the remote control and give Last Man Standing a go.

I’m told that on its first outing, the debut had miraculously high ratings for its first 15 minutes but that they dropped with each ad break. By the second week, it wasn’t exactly stunning. In other words, if people don’t start turning on in droves, the show might end up yet another Aussie TV casualty like Ten’s The Cooks. Are viewers so indifferent to our own product unless it features cops or doctors and nurses?

At the time of writing this, Last Man Standing was still on air, but anything can happen in television. Let’s hope Channel 7 lets the series run to completion, and you never know, it might even build up a decent following.

The main problem with the opening episode – which probably explains the high fall-away rate – was that it just didn’t grab you. There’s always a difficulty because the main characters have to be introduced, relationships have to be established, and storylines commence from out of nowhere. But other shows manage to grip viewers from the word go so there just has to be a way to do it. We might not have the budgets for a Desperate Housewives or a Lost but in the end there’s no substitute for excellent, compelling writing. Desperate Housewives is a highly stylised and glamorous show, but it was the wicked humour and the mysteries set up in the opener that had people champing to see what happened next.

Creator and head writer of Last Man Standing is the 20-something Marieke Hardy, who’s already had a long and illustrious TV career. She comes from a TV producing/writing family, with her father and mother, Bill and Galia Hardy, having done Something in the Air, Fergus McPhail, The Sleepover Club, and The Wayne Manifesto among many others, so it’s in the girl’s blood. Oh, and her granddaddy was Frank Hardy (Power Without Glory).

There’s no doubt Hardy and her writing team have got the blokey dialogue going strongly for the three lead male characters, and there are the standard elements you’d expect for a Secret Life Of Us demographic – sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, lesbians wanting donated sperm, and the like. On hand to direct is Daniel Nettheim, who cut his teeth on the feature film Angst as well as TV shows like Love is a Four Letter Word and The Secret Life Of Us so there’s a healthy, youngblooded team on board. Executive Producer Ewan Burnett has been behind numerous TV series as diverse as The Sleepover Club to Eagle and Evans.

Then there are the actors, and a fairly likable bunch they are too. Travis McMahon first appeared in Good Guys Bad Guys as Marcus Graham’s sidekick. Here, here plays Bruno, one third of the trio of friends, with Rodger Corser as Adam and Matt Passmore as Cameron. New Zealander Miriama Smith plays Zoe, Cameron’s ex-wife, and guest stars include Love My Way’s Asher Keddie. Rodger Corser’s character has the voiceover throughout the series, just as Samuel Johnson and Deborah Mailman were the voices of The Secret Life Of Us. In that sense, the audience is apparently supposed to identify most strongly with Adam, although it’s not entirely obvious why. He’s good looking, as is Passmore, but McMahon’s more individual looks and commanding acting style make Bruno the standout.

There are no cops or doctors and nurses amongst this lot. They’re 30-ish guys we’re all supposed to have met and hung out with and maybe even fallen in love with. Whether TV audiences fall for them – let’s hope there’s enough time to tell.

Vicki Englund

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Last Man Standing

On: Channel 7
Time: Monday, 9:30pm*

*Note: This show has not been renewed

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