Packed to the Rafters. Six episodes. When I finished, all I could say was ‘I see white people.’ It felt like sixty hours watching a documentary about a bogan breeding program. Where’s my T-shirt that says, ‘I Watched Six Episodes of Packed to the Rafters and All I Got Was a Lousy Sixty-point Fall in My IQ and the Overwhelming Urge To Punch Rebecca Gibney in the Face’?
Packed to the Rafters is Australia’s most-watched television show. If that’s not the most terrifying sentence ever written I’ll fly to Bangkok and become a Th ai ladyboy. It attracts two million people a week. When I say people I mean weak-chinned, mouth-breathing, glazed-eyed morons. Withno exceptions. The show should be called Lifestyles of the Dull and Suburban. After six episodes I was gagging for challenging storylines, provocative subject matter and complex characters so desperately I would have been happy with a good strong dose of Hey Dad!
The Rafters are Aussie battlers living the dream to such a point of cliché they could be Corey Worthington’s neighbours. Dad Dave is a sparkie, a top bloke who promises his adult daughter that she’ll always be his little girl and that he’ll protect her. Take two copies of The Female Eunuch and call me in the morning. Mum Julie’s middle name is Salt of the Earth. When she’s not being a slave to her family she’s wandering round the house holding a mug and wrapping herself in a cardigan. She has a career, working part-time answering phones in an office. If there were a Logie for folding your arms, rolling your eyes and exhaling withexasperation while shaking your head to signal there’s another knowing look coming, Gibney would be a shoe-in.
Australia – where low-rent plus middle of the road equals high ratings. PTTR is Home and Away withless eye candy, more mugs of instant coffee and slightly higher production values. And it’s an acting-free zone. The actors are forced to learn their lines and spit them out because that’s what our television-drama-making sausage factory has become.
PTTR glorifies the aspirational middle class, fetishises the working family and assures us that, yes, we all have our ups and downs but we’ll only get through if we’re a close-knit white family headed by an alpha bloke, supported by a doormat in an apron and consisting of infantilised adult children and a wise old grandfather who dishes out pearls of wisdom. Dave and Julie have just celebrated their silver wedding anniversary, which is some kind of loyalty program. Live the 1950s dream for twenty-five years and you get his and hers pewter goblets.
Keep your head down, do the right thing, don’t get above your station, watch your mouth, and one day you may be able to afford a jet ski. The fact that this show has captured the imagination of middle Australia proves, yet again, that middle Australia has no imagination.