Tag Archives: Reality TV

Jury Duty: Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – This is a delightfully eccentric look at a more than absurd scenario.  

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this series.

A security camera.

Jury Duty Review –

I have seen a lot of different setups for a tv show, but whenever I have watched a scenario where one of the participants is not in on the joke, it always falls flat. Which meant I came into this with a bit of trepidation. It is so easy to slip into cruelty when everyone knows what is being withheld. You are walking on a high wire perched precariously with disaster all around. That is why it is so much fun that it actually worked.

So to set the scene, an ad was put out there to join a documentary about jury duty, and Ronald Gladeen (Ronald Gladeen) signed up. He is told that he is part of Judge Alan Rosen’s (Alan Barinholtz) final court case recording. Trevor Morris (Ben Seaward) has been alleged to have passed out work and destroyed an order for boss Jacquiline Hilgrove (Whitney Rice). It is an exciting case even before we discover that one of the potential jurors is X-Men actor James Marsden (James Marsden). However, when the paparazzi arrive, all the jurors are sequestered away, and the short court case turns into a three-week slog. The only issue is that everyone, but Ronald, is an actor. Now from here, we will be looking at the series as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

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TV Review – Lego Masters AU

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TL;DR – This is a breath of fresh air in a crowded market that shines by showing the strength of people and not my trying to tear them down.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Lego Masters AU. Image Credit: Nine Network.

Review –

In Australia, it feels like if you want to make any new content you have two choices Sport or Reality TV. Everything has to be designed around “Event TV’ that is television that you have to watch live so that you can be part of the conversation the next day in the office. This has been done in the response of shifting viewing habits of people away from traditional timeslots and TV stations not knowing how to respond. In Australia that has meant that we are inundated with one reality show after another, each jostling to try and be that next event, often by scraping through the bottom of the barrel to see what is underneath. For a viewer, this means that they take a concept and try and stretch as much out of it as possible so it can fill as much of the schedule as possible, and for a consumer, this is a real drag (and I assume it is no joy for the people making it either). However, every now and again something will break through the noise, and today I get the chance to look at just one such show, even though it is a reality TV show on three times a week.

So to set the scene, if you have seen a reality competition show before then you probably know what to expect here. Eight teams enter into a warehouse where they battle in the challenge after challenge where some of them will be eliminated until there is only one team left. The big change this time around is that the arena where they are battling is not food, or singing, or being married, at first sight, no it is building Lego creations. It is a show that celebrates creativity, working under pressure, but also being part of a team, and supporting them at each step of the way.   

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Article – Australian Survivor has a Huge Representation Problem

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TL;DR – They should have done better, and we know they could have.

 

Australian Survivor banner. Image Credit: Channel Nine.

 

Article –

Last night the first episode of the new season of Australian Survivor aired down here and there is a lot we need to talk about it. Indeed, there are some really fascinating things, like how a lot of the framing of the show is clearly tapping into the female gaze, the fact that someone acting like a complete ass actually got them booted off the show by the contestants, the Champions v Contender dichotomy that just exists to force more c-list celebrities onto our screens, or how they continue the Australian tradition of taking a format that works in an hour and pad it out to fill in as much runtime as possible. However, the area that we will be focusing on today is the representation and the complete failure of the show on multiple fronts.

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