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John Wood: “We need more TV Drama”

Logie-winning John Wood says we need to get more Drama back on Commercial Television.

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Veteran actor John Wood, seen most recently in The Doctor Blake Mysteries, has just about seen it all, but says the current TV trends and the economy are hitting Drama production hard.

Reality shows on food and renovation are dominating TV schedules.

“Look it’s hard times. We need to get more Drama back on Commercial Television for sure,” he recently told TV Tonight.

“There was an article in the newspaper asking ‘Is anybody watching anymore?’ If they keep doing the sort of rubbish they’re doing, maybe not.

“But I think people have gotten cold feet about how much it costs to do anything. It’s extremely expensive. Once you work in the industry you know why it’s expensive.”

Wood has previously described 2014 as the worst of his career.

Even premium productions such as Gallipoli have struggled to attract audiences. But Wood praised the work of Director Glendyn Ivin and the young cast.

“I thought he was fantastic and the show was really good. I’ve known Kodi Smit-McPhee since he was very young. He and his father both worked on Blue Heelers numerous times. It’s a pity nobody watched it because it was bloody well made.

“I can’t remember the numbers but Band of Brothers cost something like $6 or $7m an episode.”

In fact it was $US12.5m per episode back in 2001. By comparison, Gallipoli was $14.6m in total.

43 Responses

  1. I agree we don’t produce enough drama (or scripted shows in general). I wonder if one reason is that viewers now have so much choice. We have access to all these amazing overseas shows that pre-Internet we would never have heard about. I don’t mean just the biggies like GOT, TWD, BB, etc, we would have seen them here eventually. But shows like Wallander, Broadchurch, The Fall, Orphan Black, etc are readily available to fill that drama hole that viewers crave. Perhaps Aus networks feel it’s not worth the investment in an original scripted series as the chances are high they won’t recoup the cost given the audience is now so fragmented. I also feel Aus dramas are too jingoistic, some of the best O/S shows could be set in any locale but Aus shows are nearly always centred around our country.

  2. I generally agree with John’s view on this one. However we need new and exciting drama not Medical/cops/procedural/soapie style stuff that the nation has already done. Even Wentworth is a rehash of Prisoner we need new stuff especially a SciFi drama on FTA.

  3. I agree on the more drama thing but it has to be quality drama not some of the cheap stuff we have had over the past few years. I seriously miss Blue Heelers and All Saints. They were the best on tv and then what happened to City Homicide? It just disappeared then A Place to Call Home, one of the best dramas in years gets canned by Seven and moves to PayTV. Where is the justice in that? I think that was the biggest blunder of 2014 in regards to a tv show. Rush, Offspring, Water Rats, Stingers…the list can go on and on.

    1. Yeah Guy you list a whole host of shows that used to appeal to me. There is such a lack of drama series as funding promotes the mini-series with better return for drama points. I think that needs to change!

  4. Good on John Wood for making this point – but it is a very controlled genre – quotas for the FTAs which they constantly try to minimise and lobby to reduce, and subject to the vagaries of federal funding at the ABC. We need more drama to make better drama. And we need to invest more time, money and expertise into development if we want to keep up with the high benchmarks being set internationally.

  5. We don’t need more drama. We need better drama. I appreciate that John Wood is trying to be a champion of the industry and talk up his mates, but Gallipoli was pretty much unwatchable. It had nothing original to say, the script was dire, production values barely adequate, the older “character” actors hammed away like they were in some Terence Rattigan play, and the younger ones were mostly miscast – pretty urban boys struggling to play real aussie blokes – and just looked lost. Like it or not, the gap between American TV drama and Australian drama has widened massively since the glory days of A Country Practice. And nobody is going to choose local drama over the best of HBO or Showtime out of sheer national loyalty. The fact is the standards – particularly the writing – of Aussie drama has declined considerably (think back to the Kennedy Miller mini-series), and it’s not going…

  6. I couldn’t agree more with John Wood’s comment, TV Drama has take a back seat to Reality TV in recent years but it’s hardly surprising when commercial interests are at stake. Product placement and unashamed promotions of multi-national companies make weekly ‘Reality’ a more profitable product. The ABC still keeps the drama/thriller flag flying though it’s looked a little battle worn in recent times. Even though it may be an anathema to critics, Australian drama should develop an overseas market niche much the same as the BBC has if it wants to survive, Australian themes with too much parochial content would have limited overseas appeal, even if it did star Hugo Weaving.

  7. Maybe if the networks didn’t spend so much on their personalities’ salaries, there might be more room for drama. There are very few that would be worth the sort of money that was demonstrated when the ABC’s salaries were leaked – I’m sure most of us were quite startled at what some were earning, specially when you appear only once a week for just a few minutes. To most Australians $200,000+ is an enormous amount. Are they really worth this? Obviously you’d have to collude to bring this figure down, and I can’t see that happening.

    2. There was a segment on Insiders that compared ABC salaries with those from the News Limited stable (both came from leaked documents). The average salary of an ABC journalist is $75,000, whereas the average at News Limited is $174,000. Makes the ABC seem like a bargain.

  8. To which I (&, it seems, others) would add: “and not just something grabbed from the usual ‘cop/medical’, ‘slice of family life’, or ‘historical Australiana’ lazy susan of storylines. How about something a bit different, or even slightly innovative, for a change?”

    (Currently re-watching ‘Skins’, ‘Being Human’, and ‘Misfits’ from the start. And while it’s fair to say that they all used those themes as a basic framework, they also used them to actually dig a bit further into some interesting & fun ideas, rather than just loop through the same old same old every week. Very little Aus drama reaches even that minimal level of depth.)

      1. It might do (I did say “very little”!), though from what little I’ve seen it might also lean a bit too much towards copying ‘Les Revenants’, ‘In The Flesh’, etc. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that). Has the ABC announced a date for it yet?

        1. No, hearing soon. Maybe after Secret River? Most ongoing issue-based drama (whether Aus or international) is based around police / legal / medical for economic and story-generation ideas. It’s a bit different for shorter run and melodrama, obviously. I have filed in the past that we’ve had other subjects that look beyond frequent themes but people seem very focussed on the main game.

  9. I think its a shame that there isnt more Drama. I do like varierty though, In the 90’s, it was police, hospital, police, hospital. It worked but we never dared to think outside to something more adventurous. Thats why I love Wentworth, sure its a re-imagining of an old show but is done impeccably well. And look at the reviews, the ratings and the fans it has. Because to me it isnt the same type of stories we see about “friends and the relationships/ lives”

  10. Wood sounds like a nice guy, but are the networks in fact spending less on local drama as opposed to 5-10 years ago?

    Perhaps ending the Kiwi drama acquisition loophole would help as the Aus sales aren’t the life blood of the Kiwi industry, yet all those hours aren’t being produced in Australia and i doubt the networks are ever paying much over 20K ph. What is a commercial business supposed to do when it costs you directly 600-800K ph as opposed to 20…?

    It’s a clear problem caused by bad government policy.

  11. I feel these days dramas start ti late at night. by the time the reality show finishes its near 9pm. If you have to work the next day as most do staying up til 10pm is not on. Another problem is time a show starts, these can vary between on time and 30 mins later if the program before hand runs over.

    1. You are so right! I agree this is one of the larger problems, however we know that Timeshifting data, is predominantly drama, but always is lower from overnight figures.

  13. He’s right but, there is a but, writers should ensure they stick to drama, leave romance and all that goes with it out of it. The love interest thing always depletes the plotline

    1. You constantly say this and I don’t really understand why you are so against love/sex – most humans do experience it and crave it. More to the point though, love stories can be the primary storyline for a drama show/movie. Not sure what subject matters you consider are the only ones which should be classified ‘drama’. And even if a love story isn’t the primary theme of a show, it’s pretty normal to have some sort of relationship going on at the same time, that’s generally part and parcel of a humans life.

      2. I’m with Kristi. It ain’t really my thing either but I think that romance is often at the heart of most pure dramas. Sometimes they don’t get the balance right. Personally, I prefer it when it’s underplayed like with Mulder and Scully or Jean and Dr. Blake.

        However, I do object to when a(n often superficial) relationship is shoe-horned into a comedy or action or some other film or TV series where it clearly doesn’t belong.

        1. I agree, I don’t like when it’s shoe horned in for no reason other than a ratings grab or because the writers have run out of ideas. I like when it’s shown that a male and female can have a platonic relationship but that doesn’t seem to happen very often. The Joey and Rachel relationship on Friends was one of the worst offenders, it felt so forced. I loved in SVU that Benson and Stabler were friends and partners for so long but there was never anything romantic.

      3. There’s a valid point to what moonserf is saying. Romance is melodrama, which tends to dilute drama if it’s just parachuted into a story, thereby turning everything into soapy sludge. The problem is that just about all Oz TV is romantic melodrama, which is a kind way of saying it’s soap opera. If you look at US high-end TV, it’s always straight-ahead drama (House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Sopranos, True Detective, etc). They know to keep melodrama out of the equation. The best high-end TV we can come up with is Secrets & Lies and The Slap, which are distinctly melodramatic.

        1. Don’t agree all Oz drama is melodrama. Heaps of procedurals, just as US has heaps of procedurals (and melodrama for that matter). Sure US has high-end, they have the numbers to sustain it. Here in Australia we don’t always get the crap they churn out either. We were actually doing high-end dramas back in the 1970s and they were called miniseries, before the term was sexy: The Dismissal / Water Under the Bridge / Sara Dane etc. You could add Top of the Lake, Devils’ Playground, Cloudstreet, Gallipoli plus Secret River, Kettering Incident on the way.

          1. There are various definitions of melodrama. Some contend that it’s the absence of subtext (Oz TV is particularly guilty of this), others say it’s the presence of passive characters rather than active characters (again, guilty as charged), or maybe it’s an over-reliance on plot contrivances at the expense of character. Or maybe it’s wild “Melissa George” levels of campy, over-emotional acting. No matter what your definition, the Oz TV industry is guilty of being melodramatic.

        3. I am a big fan of all the shows you’ve listed and all their romantic storylines are so well written – they are simply one part of the rich tapestry of the fictional worlds they inhabit. The only exception I think is TWD – my very favourite show – but the writing is very uneven and the romance that started to develop last season was so melodramatic it’s branching into soap opera territory. Maggie and Glenn however have always felt very organic.

          2. I love TWD too. It started “jumping the shark” towards the end of season four for the reasons you’ve stated. For a moment I thought that Daryl and Beth might hook up after he gave her that doe-eyed look when they were alone and getting drunk. Glad they didn’t!

    2. So you just want crime dramas? Cop dramas? With no interpersonal relationships?

      Drama equals conflict. Conflict between people, a person and their environment, a person and their inner demons. All of these things demand relationships. Relationship between people, their environment and their own psyche. Relationships – good and bad – are the key element within any drama.

      I can understand when people are disappointed by a show like Bones where it turned to the relationship between the characters (I think – not a fan) – but that doesn’t mean that every drama has to be devoid of relationships – otherwise they’d be pretty dull… Some of the best dramas involve relationships – GoT, OITNB, True Detective – all shows with complex characters with complex relationships – some romantic, some not.

      1. Sure, relationships are crucial to good storytelling, but Oz TV shows often just use relationships as crude, soap opera “will-they-won’t-they” plot devices. Or else they exist just to create a cliched storyline about marital infidelity.

        Can you honestly name one Oz TV show where there’s been a relationship as rich, complex and nuanced as that between Piper and Alex (OITNB) or Walter White and Jesse (Breaking Bad) or Frank and Claire Underwood (House of Cards) or Tony Soprano and his “family”?

        1. Jimbo, I’m a bit confused by what you’re saying. You said that ‘romance is melodrama’ but list US shows that have romantic storylines. Do you just mean Aus TV show romances are melodramatic? In that case, I agree, there are very few Aus shows that have had a romantic element as a natural component of the story rather than it being in there to ‘check a box’. I disagree however that The Slap is melodrama as the premise of the show is to explore the fallout from a single event. The characters were well written and not sensationalised.

          1. Yes, we just bung in a romance to pad out the plot, which is used to inject melodrama into an often undramatic story. Those US shows I listed do not have romances in the melodramatic sense. Any “romance” in the Piper/Alex relationship is secondary to the real nature of their relationship – trust, or lack thereof. The same can be said of Frank and Claire Underwood’s relationship. In many ways this is the best way to use romance – as a disguise for something deeper.

            We’ll have to disagree about The Slap. I found the tone and acting ridiculously melodramatic. It was so over-the-top I found it to be borderline comedy.

  14. I think Love Child and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries might be the only dramas on TV at the moment. Now that Wonderland has finished 10 has nothing in the pipeline and who knows how long it will be until W&L returns for 7. 7 always seemed to have something on e.g. PTTR or APTCH etc. I know ABC has some dramas on the way but John Wood is right we need more drama. I enjoy drama – it’s my favourite TV and movie genre and there just isn’t enough on offer on FTA. Let’s hope we see a change soon…

    1. In a sense he’s right. When John was on Blue Hellers, the cost was much less than it is today. Series like Blue Heelers, McLeod’s or All Saints ran between 25-45 episodes per year. Those days seem long gone.

  15. Note to TV producers: make something people want to watch, and then maybe they’ll watch it. If you keep churning out badly-written, badly-directed, badly-acted, cliche-ridden pseudo soap operas, then audiences will tune out.

    1. That’s not entirely true. There are some crap soap opera type dramas which rate & there are some fine dramas which are flops. Gallipoli, which was mentioned in the article, wasn’t an example of a fine drama,IMO. I found it to be slow & boring. It did not entice me to watch again after episode 1. All the hype also turned me off. Being lectured by critics (not David) & told that those who didn’t watch had an inferiority complex was insulting.

        1. No, I covered that in a few sentences, hardly lengthy. I also stated that it was my opinion. I found Ep 1 to be boring & was not enticed to watch any further episodes. I was not the only one. They may well have been brilliant.
          By all means, feel free to disagree

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