★★★★★ 0/5

Panic at Rock Island premieres in NZ

Telemovie Panic at Rock Island will tonight have its World Premiere in New Zealand -ahead of it screening on Nine.

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Forthcoming Nine telemovie Panic at Rock Island will tonight have its World Premiere in New Zealand -ahead of it screening on Nine.

The co-production with TVNZ was initially promised for 2010 on Nine, but is now part of the network’s upcoming offerings for 2011.

Starring Grant Bowler, Vince Colosimo, Damian Walshe-Howling, Dee Smart, Jessica Tovey Simone Kessell, and Anna Hutchison, it unravels a mysterious deadly virus that strikes during a rock concert on an island in Sydney Harbour.

But one NZ review for the telemovie has not been kind.

NZ Herald:
I suppose even a barf-o-phobe like me could suppress her gag reflex through a film such as Panic at Rock Island if there was going to be a twist that would make the retching worthwhile. There are some music performances from top bands including You Am I and Gin Wigmore. And there is the zombie subtext, as well as a profound theme about the very fragile nature of this thing we call civilisation. It’s just a puddle of spew, innit? The director also made the very excellent crime drama Underbelly, and some of the cast were in that too, which is probably why it seems like extra high quality vomiting. But spewing nonetheless.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wMRqmHTYk8[/youtube]

8 Responses

  2. This looks like the usual poor quality result of commercial network dramas that put marketing and business plans ahead of content. Tired naratives, poor production values that mimic Hollywood drama, but lack the budget to really pull it off properly. Producers get real, audiences are more sophisticated than you give them credit for, people are tiring of this crap. Australian television culture has great professionals who are capable of so much more and if you haven’t really got the money for it, don’t bother doing a half-assed job, as that’s how it will come across.

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