Airdate: The Great Australian Fly

Who knew that the pesky fly could warrant a one-hour documentary, but ABC will air The Great Australian Fly next month.

Asking whether its value is misunderstood, this will suggest that a much-maligned spoiler of the Australian summer is in fact a crime solver, healer, pollinator and street sweeper.

Could be a hard sell but I guess the fact it has John Doyle as narrator gives it some sort of appeal.

Part social history, part scientific study, The Great Australian Fly introduces the people who devote their lives to flies through science, criminology, medicine, as breeders and for love. And it explains why we might need to stop swatting and start embracing the fly, because, like it or not, this pesky little insect looms large in our past, our present and our future.

Directed by Tosca
 Looby and produced by Sally Ingleton, the amusing and intriguing film pays homage to the tiny invertebrate and the influence it has had on our world.

“Most people don’t know anything about flies, they see them buzzing around and the first thing they think is how do I get rid of them?” Ingleton said.

“I think there is also a fear of flies – they are seen to be dirty and to spread disease – and I thought it would be interesting to explore the subject. Are flies really as bad as people believe? We decided to tell a chronological history story, woven through with stories of the people who work with flies; who study them, draw them, catch them and breed them.”

An expert natural-history filmmaker, Ingleton is interested in the way our wildlife intersects with people and the impact humans have had on its behaviour and survival. She has made documentaries about Little Penguins (Penguin Island), kangaroos (Kangaroo Mob) and Tasmanian devils (Devil Island).

The flies, naturally, are central to the film and director Tosca Looby, and cinematographers Peter Nearhos and Peter Coleman, used the latest High-speed photography – up to 200 frames per second technology – to capture them in all their glory.

“Flies have evolved over so many years that they are perfectly engineered to do what they do. They can really duck and weave. They can move backwards and their whole body turns to avoid a collision. They are amazing flying machines.” Looby said.

The Great Australian Fly introduces the people who devote their lives to flies through science, criminology, as breeders and for love. There is Queensland Museum’s curator of entomology and avid bug catcher Dr Christine Lambkin, who is leading a charge to identify and name some of the thousands of endemic fly species still to be classified and we meet Associate Professor James Wallman from University of Wollongong who’s studying the amazing sex lives of flies, plus many more experts in the field of flies.

And of course there’s an enduring Aussie advertising icon: created in 1957 by ad men Bryce Courtenay and Geoff Pike, ‘Louie the Fly’ still going strong. But despite Louie’s claim to be “bad, mean and mighty unclean”, is it possible the humble Australian fly – 30,000 species strong – could really do more good than bad?

8:30pm Tuesday April 7 ABC.