"A Place to Call Home"

Odd how we never get to taste any of the food we see so frequently on the small screen – unless we jot down the recipe and have a crack at making the meal. We rely on the reactions of celebrity chefs and globe-trotting gourmands to register their satisfaction with expressions of delight and complex explanations like “Yummmm!” or “Mnnn! You can really taste the flavour!”

Yet our dramatic palate is finely tuned. We often see the “right” ingredients prepared in an artistically competent manner only to deliver an unsatisfying or even disappointing product. The fortunes of A Place to Call Home are a case in point. This is not a meat pie and gravy offering from the makers of Packed to the Rafters, but a top-drawer period drama with all the trimmings.

 

A kind of postwar equivalent to The Sullivans, it was enthusiastically received by Network Seven viewers during its 2013 debut. But midway through a second series in June, the show was given the broom after ratings numbers indicated more than 600,000 of its original fans had jumped ship and the 800,000 who stayed loyal were, by a large majority, in the 55-and-over demographic – not Seven’s preferred audience.

    

What is laughingly referred to as viewer demand – a grotesque misnomer given the contempt networks usually display towards their audiences – prompted online petitions and a swell of persuasive murmuring that resulted in lapsed contracts being renewed and Seven entering into a production deal with the Foxtel network to deliver series three.

Viewer loyalty counts for little when it comes to that old TV equation: production costs versus primetime ratings. And if the move, preceded by the almost mandatory time-slot change, is seen as discriminatory, tough! Young bums on seats are more desirable than more mature posteriors. The free-to-air channel will produce the series for screening on a pay-TV provider – something of a novelty in Australia.

Seven’s fabled axing of Neighbours and that show’s subsequent resurrection as a permanent phoenix on Ten is a relevant, if not exactly fresh, example here. A Place to Call Home had a respectable budget and a strong cast and initially rode the wave of popularity for mannered, perhaps class-based, drama spurred by the huge success of Downton Abbey.

The basic ingredients of a determined heroine, an utterly benevolent upper class chap, a disapproving establishment matriarch and troubled families, both privileged and common, were fed into the kaleidoscope of rural Australia in the early 1950s.

Lots of nice clothes, idyllic scenery, postwar cars and the emergence of a refined and redefined version of Australian society – all things that over-55s could well recall and perhaps identify with. But, as ever, the recipe and chemistry required for a successful television drama don’t necessarily conform to the laws of physics.

This was no Downton Abbey, despite the obvious tropes. It began with that famous quote from LP Hartley, author of The Go Between and The Hireling: “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” Fair enough as a proverb – the past is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. And the confecting of modern sensibilities on to a retrospective slice of society doesn’t necessarily result in satisfying sensations or nourishing reactions.

While Lord Crawley and the Downton characters are examined with a lens that gives significance to major issues and almost trivial interactions, the dramatic tension – involving change and adaptation – was always pivotal.

At Downton Abbey, changing times, values and social outlook involve a friction whenever standards of decency collide with the inevitable compromises that follow a war. The second world war radically altered Australia’s old, sleepy system too, but it was never a place where class difference was either pronounced or guarded by an aristocratic elite reluctant to alter their attitudes.

A Place to Call Home had – and has – all the “correct” ingredients and a lot going for it on most levels but it is not outstandingly original and misses the mark too often to be regarded as must-see entertainment. Still, it’s interesting to witness Seven crank it into gear again in partnership with a paid-for channel. Its success or otherwise will be closely watched – and not just by the over-55 demographic.