Journeys on a small screen

Hot Fix Stones CHANNEL Seven's Gladiators is an Australian show, but that's not necessarily the first thing you notice about it. What you notice is the X-Men aesthetic of the gladiators, the '80s nightclub vibe, the hostess' goddess ringlets and her steroidal decolletage, barely contained by a Romanesque gown. That, and how improbably nourishing it is watching plastic-armoured gym-junkies whacking one another with giant rubber paddles.I'd decided to watch a full week of Australian shows to see what our small screen is telling us about ourselves and, thanks in part to Gladiators, one thing was immediately clear. The flickering box in the nation's corner is not a mirror. If it was, Australia would have a median age of around, say, 22; it would be almost exclusively populated by attractive, prosperous, accident-prone white people who adore animals, footy and cars, who don't work, unless they're doctors or vets, and who spend most of their time gratefully emoting, like the character in East of Everything who gazes out to sea, where slanting sunrays kiss brooding clouds, and remarks: "Best office in the world, eh?"The second thing I noticed is the sheer quantity of Australian shows on our screens. For that we can thank the government regulation that stipulates that at least 55% of free-to-air TV must be locally made.The quota is there to shelter the Australian TV industry, and its contribution to a sense of Australian identity, from cheaper imported product. It can't protect the industry from derision though, especially at this time of year. "If that (Blue Heelers) is the best that was out there to win Logies," wrote one splenetic blogger last year, "then there's your answer why American/Brit shows kick butt EVERY time; Aussie TV sucks in the highest level!"But this is too narrow a view of what Australian TV is. Dig past our famous soaps and drama and you soon find plenty of shows that have no interest in competing with mega-budget US drama or Gordon Ramsay, and are happy enough quietly depicting some aspect of Australian life. On The Cook and the Chef, Maggie and Simon exult in the fresh flavours of yabbies and the humble satisfactions of the Australian stove; the redemptive joy of planting a nice little shrub is what powers Gardening Australia and its cherished host, Peter Cundall.A lot of the people you encounter on shows like this seem to have wandered almost absent-mindedly onto our screens. Most of the inventors on The New Inventors are there, we gather, because at some point they've headed off to the shed to see if they can't cobble together some new sort of jigger that'll get a job done better. Many of the older inventors, especially from the country, gloriously redefine telegenic: heads by Lucian Freud, bodies care of a life of practical work and solid meals