Review – Crownies – Episode 21

Crownies – ABC1 – 9:30pm Thursday – AUS

As this was the second last episode ever of Crownies it makes sense that the ABC would attempt to placate those fans that are somehow annoyed that this unusually long series is coming to a close. In a chat with TVTonight ABC1 Channel Controller Brendan Dahill raised the seemingly ridiculous notion that this series wouldn’t be back as Crownies but might instead come back with a spin-off, because when you have a low-rating series what you want to try and do is capitalize on that lack of success by creating a spin-off. One of the problems inherent with giving Crownies a 22 episode series was that the ABC were throwing all their cash at an untested product, but now they’ve tested the product and the audience have shown that they were NOT interested in it and that’s somehow prompted the ABC to considered a spin-off?

We’ll just have to put aside this week’s episode for a minute because this is a far more interesting discussion. As you read the TVTonight article the one thing that becomes clear is that the ABC are terrified of admitting they may have made a mistake. “There’s bits of Crownies that have really worked and I didn’t want to throw them away because of (poor) ratings. So what Screentime have come up with is a really great compromise that allows us to keep the best bits, and learn, and move on,” Dahill says. Try and wrap your head around that for a moment. This was a series that had twenty-two episodes to figure out what worked, what didn’t and create a better show and instead of that it just kept doing the same thing. If there are kinks that need to be worked out that’s what the twenty-two episodes are for. As an example, when Cougar Town started it was about a forty-something woman dating younger guys, the creators figured out that didn’t work and then changed the show, they didn’t just keep going making the same mistakes until the season ended with the hope some nutjob would give them a spin-off to fix the problems.

What was it about Crownies that Dahill believes is worth salvaging for AfterCrownies? “There were plenty of really on-the-pulse moments. There were so many cases when you open your paper they’re right there and the production team were right on the pulse of what Australian courts are inundated with.” So what Dahill thought was really great about Crownies was how it used ripped-from-the-headline cases for its legal drama? Somebody buy him the 20 season box set of Law & Order for Christmas, he’s going to have his mind blown. “The criticism comes in the more soapie elements and fair enough.” He basically sums up that what worked about Crownies was its cases and what didn’t work about Crownies was its characters. Dahill doesn’t need a spin-off he just needs a completely different legal drama, and he could have that if the ABC were one time able to just admit they made a television program that might not have been very good. Instead they tease the fans of the show with a spin-off, which if we’re being honest, probably (and hopefully) will never see the light of day.

It was odd that even though the ABC believes the problem with Crownies is the soapie elements that this second last episode of the series dealt almost exclusively with the soapier aspects of this show. Surely if the producers believed that what worked about the show was its ‘on the pulse’ court cases and not its relationship dramas then they could have, you know, done something about that. Not that the court cases from this episode were exactly ‘on the pulse’ of anything. A sick old man who was being abused by his carer and a man charged because he accidentally exposed himself to a child while he was sunning his penis because he has psoriasis on his genitals are not exactly the stuff of thrilling, cutting edge legal drama.

The last couple of weeks Crownies has delivered some truly stupid episodes of television but this was more in line with that middle ground Crownies found when it stopped being terrible and just became mediocre. Andy proposed to Lina, Tatum and Conrad had make-up sex, Ben and Richard ran naked together through the halls of a hotel, you know, those old storylines came out to play. Hanging over the episode was the news that one of our five wonder kids would be fired, unfortunately nobody added the words ‘out of a cannon, into the sun’ to make the threat more worthwhile. Presumably tension was supposed to grow until eventually Erin handed in her resignation because she no longer believes she can handle the job, but the whole storyline, like most of Crownies storylines, just sat there until it was over.

The reason Crownies has been an unsuccessful series is because it never finds a way to emotionally engage with any of the material in the show. Everything about this series is so clinical and lifeless that it’s impossible to care too much about anything that happens. Surely Erin finally deciding to quit the DPP should come as this huge cathartic moment where we get swept up in her feelings but it just happens with little more than a shrug. The reason the ‘soapie’ elements of the show were so unsuccessful is because Crownies never figured out how to make us care about these characters, they always remained broad caricatures – Ben was a chauvinistic rich kid when we started this adventure and he’s still a chauvinistic rich kid as we’re ending it, he’s not grown or changed in that time; none of the characters have. Soapie elements aren’t the problem with Crownies, plenty of good shows have soapie elements that they keep under control, Crownies is the problem with Crownies – you can remove part of the big pile of shit but what you’re left with is still a big pile of shit.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad

This review is part of Change The Channel’s episode by episode coverage of Crownies. The full list of episode reviews can be found under Series.