Sweaty, silly, off-the-cuff: This is the TV Australia’s missing

3 hours ago 3

Opinion

November 5, 2025 — 2.00pm

If you’re a lover of the arts, there are plenty of Australian-made TV programs probing its parameters. Documentaries, interviews, chat shows, awards ceremonies and reality arts series. Right now, you can watch a number of visual artists paint a celebrity’s portrait in-situ (Portrait Artist of the Year, Anh’s Brush With Fame) or talented “everyday” pianists unknowingly ply their skills before two famous musicians (The Piano) and both will almost certainly make you cry.

But something’s missing. We’re missing the feel of the arts. The thrill, the danger, the torrid toil and clanking failure of it all. The success, vulnerability and heart-beating otherness, loneliness and togetherness of experiencing the arts first hand or trying to make new bits of it.

Dylan Lewis, Sarah MacDonald,and Glen Mitchell on Recovery during its run.

What we have is great. Please don’t take it away. I’m not complaining about the shows on now, mostly on the ABC. The Art Of, an arts and culture deep-dive hosted by Namila Benson, features Australian and international artists exploring and discussing themes ranging from memory to space, the taboo, the inner child and more. Its predecessor Art Works, also hosted by Benson, was chock-a-block with diverse and enlightening artists’ stories, their practice and work. Same diff with Creative Types with Virginia Trioli, Take 5 with Zan Rowe, Know It Alls: Visual Art and the ABC’s new eight-episode series Portrait Artist of the Year, which premiered a week ago.

These are all beautifully made. They cover arts and artists with vim, care and depth. But I want more. I want an arts program that pumps me with the energy and anticipation that makes me stop everything else to turn on the TV at a particular time. Something like… live sport.

We have hours and hours of sport on our TVs (no complaints, I truly pine for more free-to-air test cricket), but also acres of live pre-match, in-match and post-match reporting. Live interviews at the game, in the locker-rooms, in the stands and in the studio with players and fans and coaches and ex-players and managers and on and on. Why don’t we cover the arts in the same way?

I want to see music and movies and books and theatre discussed and debated in the same style as sports panel shows – experts, pundits, commentators (serious and, importantly, not too serious) talking casually, knowledgeably and with curiosity about how things in the arts went down that week. What stood out? What went under the radar? Who’s making a splash? What’s ahead, who triumphed, who didn’t? Why?

I know the arts scene and industry need perennial support. Negative comments don’t help. Tickets need to be sold, funding is vital. But this kind of criticism can still be done with love (At the Movies and The Book Club both managed it). How about an arts show with discussion that’s of the ilk of Roy & HG discussing the Olympics on The Dream? Or a show with roving reporters out on the scene? A live feed from backstage minutes before curtain up and then post-show at any number of theatres, stand-up clubs and music venues. Or a visual artist in the TV studio sculpting or painting in real-time?

TV today is lacking live, slightly guerrilla and anarchic arts coverage with artists whizzing in and out (everyone from pop musicians to comedians to poets, sculptors and theatre performers) while the hosts rollick around the TV studio and out into the streets. It’s the kind of show rooted in the style, fervour and pace of live variety programs mostly aired in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. That includes The Big Gig (ABC, hosted by Wendy Harmer), Recovery (ABC) and The Tube.

The latter, aired on Channel 4 in the UK between 1982 and 1987, was a must-see live music program with hosts including the late British broadcaster Paula Yates and musician Jools Holland. The audience crowded around the guests; the camera crew and hosts were either outside with the waiting crowd, on-set in a party-like hubbub; or interviewing famous types at the pub next-door. The tone was irreverent, edgy, whip-smart and occasionally inept. The chemistry between Yates (smart, funny, dressed like a fashion explosion) and Holland (cheeky, fast-talking, a music encyclopedia) was magnetic.

No one seemed afraid or deferential to the camera, the music guests (from famous to new) looked happily startled to be there, and it changed youth, music and variety TV forever.

Would that work with the arts more broadly? I reckon. Interviewing an actor five minutes before they go on stage could be nail-biting and illuminating. Visiting a movie or TV show’s night-shoot to join fans star-spotting at the barriers. How about live-roaming at a gallery opening, theatre foyer, venue stage-door, street art-painting or poetry slam asking people what they really think? Then back to the studio to banter about upcoming arts events and shows; to check in with a band creating a song in the pop-up recording studio; to see how a choreographer’s vignette with five dancers is progressing. It’s OK if they “fail”. It’s loose, unpolished “event TV” and a lot of it rests on the repartee between guests, audience and whoever is hosting.

Linda Marigliano with her co-host Dylan Alcott on the set of ABC live music series The Set (2018-2021).

I’m not sure why we don’t see this kind of thing today. Perhaps it’s due to budget, perhaps it’s due to concerns with how to market it. ABC’s live music show The Set (2018-21), hosted by Linda Marigliano and Dylan Alcott, bore this live in-studio flavour but lasted just three seasons, and we haven’t tried anything since.

There’s room for TV that gets right inside the arts, TV that’s sweaty, silly, wit-soaked and off-the-cuff. Maybe even a bit notorious. Just like the best sports coverage.

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