The Last Year of Television, Binge review: funny, well-informed & sobering

Every year, Mitch McTaggart highlights the lowlights of Australian television. This year he’s had his work cut out for him. The latest instalment of The Last Year of Television is a delight, snarky and smart in equal measure. It’s Australian television overall that’s let us down.

McTaggart is someone who knows what he’s talking about, which already puts this well ahead of pretty much every other year-in-review show on our screens. One of the big strengths of a show that isn’t short on them is that his take on the local industry is both funny and well-informed, backed up by the kind of in-depth research that rarely goes into coverage of anything on television, let alone television itself.

Some of the sharpest moments here simply involve him pointing out that the facts are often an optional extra when it comes to the opinion-based discussion that increasingly makes up ‘local content’. They’re not exactly lying, they’re just leaving out the details that don’t suit the story they’re telling.

Watch The Last Year of Television trailer.

With a year to cover and only an hour of air time, McTaggart still finds room to squeeze in a number of capsule reviews, often to devastating effect. Prosper, a show that promised a whole lot more than it ever got around to delivering, does not come off well.

There are recommendations (sometimes glowing) as well, but when he points out that the best commercial TV drama of the year is also the only commercial TV drama of the year … well, we’re back to being let down by local television once again.

A lengthy look at a particularly dubious episode of Nine’s Under Investigation (a true-crime series so shoddy even the police have asked them to stop) is both a scathing look at the show’s near-total lack of consideration for pretty much every social and moral standard, and a resigned acknowledgement that, as far as Australian television is concerned, nothing matters because nobody cares.

The scene behind the scenes is even worse. There’s the usual rot from the usual suspects – Daryl Somers racing to trademark ‘Hey Hey it’s Heaven’ after using the phrase in a eulogy for co-worker John Blackman is an unsurprising lowlight – but the big picture here is of a business run by and for a sleazy collection of entitled businessmen presiding over workplaces that may not feature heavy machinery but are in no way ‘safe’.

The extensive look at Seven’s handling of their coverage of Bruce Lehrmann is basically the television version of kicking over a flat rock and watching a bunch of earwigs scurry around. Ten’s throwing of Lisa Wilkinson under a bus after her Lehrmann-related Logies speech – one that they encouraged her to make – is yet another low point.

When they’re covered at all by the media, such dodgy dealings and dubious decisions are usually presented as some distant event unrelated to what we see on our screens. McTaggart’s skill here is in tying the rot out back to the product out front, revealing time and again the way Australian television is used to protect power, stirring up inconsequential conflicts while taking a firm side on the issues that matter (spoiler alert: that side isn’t ours).

Previous years have seen McTaggart find solid laughs in the industries various nooks and crannies, and there’s still a lot to laugh at here; even if you care nothing for the state of Australian television, his take on reality porn Aussie Shore is one for the ages. But the overall takeaway is one of an industry in decline, both in absolute terms (ie: the slashing of the ABC’s drama and comedy output) and in creativity.

Even what should have been a moment of triumph – Seven finally airing Fam Time, a long-buried sitcom McTaggart’s been championing for years – ends up being a reminder that while old game shows never die, there’s few things deader on Australian television in 2024 than the idea of a commercial sitcom. Unless it’s a commercial drama.

The Last Year of Television premieres on Binge on 30 December 2024.

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