The Role of a Lifetime, ABC review: you’re raising your kids wrong

Who wants to be told how to raise their children by a television network? If the answer is you, good news: you’re the target audience for The Role of a Lifetime, the ABC’s latest attempt to turn the kind of educational video that would get no likes and no follows on YouTube into prime-time viewing.

What supposedly separates this from an hour-long lecture titled Parenting: You’re Probably Doing It Wrong is that it features a sitcom element: Kate Ritchie and Nazeem Hussain (who co-host alongside Amanda Keller) play parents in a family that’s dealing with whatever big issue each particular episode is tackling.

So this is a sitcom with side segments explaining the issues raised in more detail? Well, no. Aside from a number of references to worming tablets, the sitcom scenes – which make up maybe five minutes of each 45 minute episode – are little more than scripted illustrations of the topic of the week.

It would be nice to say these scenes are atypically unfunny for an ABC sitcom, but there’s a second season of the Mother and Son reboot due later this year.

ScreenHub: Mother and Son, ABC review: fumbled, jumbled, inoffensive

Aside from the brief scripted segments, The Role of a Lifetime is basically just another chance to revisit ABC educational programming, with all the standard segments.

Watch the Role of a Lifetime trailer

Yes, there are interviews with experts. Yes, there are large scale outdoor stunts to demonstrate various points. Yes, there are vox pops and round table chats to hear from the actual people involved. Yes, the whole thing could be summed up in about five minutes but then we wouldn’t get to see Kate Ritchie wearing a cool portable brainwave scanner that looks a bit like the brain recording gear from the classic science fiction film Strange Days.

Role of a Lifetime: phones

Episode one is about the dangers of kids having phones, though a couple of experts define ‘kids’ as ‘anyone under 25 as far as brain development goes’, which even the hosts realise is not going to fly.

Aside from the specific threat of cyberbullying (terrifying as always), the main problem with phones and social media as presented here is simply that, much like driving and alcohol, kids are too young to handle it – and the experts have the brainwave studies to prove it.

So the advice here is roughly that kids at 13 can have a phone with nothing on it (so basically a tracking device with an option to call home), by 16 they’ll be left out if they don’t have social media of some sort, and fingers crossed your kid doesn’t turn out to be one of the ones filming other kids having sex and putting it online.

To balance out the scare tactics, TikTok star Tom Ford talks to a bunch of teens in a fast food restaurant – you know they’re real teens because this is a time of life when bad skin is a thing and there is no make-up on any of them – and good news: these kids have their heads screwed on and know the risks. Guess all the cyberbullies and online porn addicts weren’t answering their phones when the ABC was looking for talent.

But the main reason why it’s important to give kids a phone by sixteen is because otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to cover in the next four episodes. From online gambling to sexting, the effect of influencers on body image and the way porn is shaping modern sexuality (hope the kids didn’t see that recent Law & Order episode on sexy strangulation), right through to the threat of AI and deepfakes, this is largely a series about parenting and technology.

Role of a lifetime: largely pointless

Ironically, technology is also the reason why this is largely pointless. As far as gathering information goes, television is pretty much the last place anyone under 50 is going to look, which probably explains why at one point there’s an on-screen caption to explain what the term ‘flex’ (as in, ‘it was a big flex’) means to the oldies.

And while the information is solid and presented in the usual breezy style by personable experts, there’s little going on here to make any of it memorable viewing. Maybe if this had focused more – a lot more – on the comedy side of things there’d be something unique and interesting going on to lure viewers in.

As it stands, this is no threat to scrolling on your phone. Just ask any teenager.

The Role of a Lifetime premieres 18 February at 8.30pm on ABC TV then airs weekly, with all five episodes available to stream on ABC iView