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Last updated on August 5th, 2017 at 08:12 am
The SMH’s Michael Dwyer previews a series based around the attractive theme of home invasions by bossy pod-people:
What if our planet was under siege by some omnipotent celestial foe but television stations were unable to acquire footage compelling enough to galvanise the required response? That appears to be the inconvenient truth confronting green TV shows.
Our foe is celestial? It seems Dwyer buys into the solar theory of global warming. Good for him!
This year we’ve already seen two well-intentioned environmental awareness shows come and go – or rather we haven’t, judging by the ratings for Eco House Challenge (SBS) and Channel Ten’s Cool Aid: the National Carbon Test.
Now the ABC braves the precarious balance between worthy and watchable with a six-part domestic challenge series titled – with an admirable lunge for some of that hot sci-fi, CSI intrigue – Carbon Cops.
Run for your lives, carbon scum!
Our real-life Mulder and Scully are scientists Sean Fitzgerald and Lish Fejer, two passionate believers in the unseen perils of climate change, dedicated to enlightening a sceptical and passive populace.
This can’t possibly fail.
Each week they don their orange monogrammed shirts to cordon off the toxic home of an Australian family. They arrive with energy-auditing gadgetry, sobering statistics and lips and eyebrows curled in withering admonishment. They rate these people, shame them, then challenge them to do better.
Well, first they could smash all Sean and Lish’s television cameras and sound equipment. That’d cut carbon outputs by heaps, I bet.
“One of the things I loved was when you tell them the audit result,” says Carbon Constable Fitzgerald, whose daytime cover is head of the science department at Geelong’s Oberon High School. “Most of them were expecting to come off pretty well but they were all genuinely, absolutely floored. They can’t believe it. It’s a great moment.”
I’d love them to audit Live Earth.
How do you think the Barries rate in episode one? Let’s just say that between their squillion perma-blazing light bulbs, Dad’s overseas business travel, their swimming pool and boat, their shame is acute.
Scroll to UPDATE XXXVI; business travel is exempt! These people don’t even know the rules.
Taken together, the case studies are not about individual scapegoats as much as an indictment of Western affluence, negligence and self-obsession.
How will we tell it apart from usual ABC programming?
Lish Feger? Fish Leger? Fish License!
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 06 25 at 10:09 AM • permalink
- Speaking about the sun—it’s the spot.
(Keep on scrolling, the article continues below the 20-some-odd links to GW Deniers columns and articles.)Posted by andycanuck on 2007 06 25 at 10:15 AM • permalink
What if our planet was under siege by some omnipotent celestial foe
Allah?
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 06 25 at 10:35 AM • permalink
Looking forward to seeing the ratings!
I’m sure us Aussies will rwally love this show about overbearing people invading homes to criticise and whinge
Sorry but this Aussie will be watching It Takes Two, while filing my nails and sipping some chardy
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 06 25 at 11:24 AM • permalink
Orange monogrammed shirts? They work at Home Depot?
Elizabeth
Imperial KeeperPosted by Elizabeth Imperial Keeper on 2007 06 25 at 12:24 PM • permalink
How nice of the hosts to wear orange. Now if they could just get Target to sponsor them.
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2007 06 25 at 01:12 PM • permalink
to cordon off the toxic home
I see we’re redefining the word “toxic” now. There’s just nothing like an uneducated journalist to preach about science.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2007 06 25 at 03:43 PM • permalink
#14. Depends how thinly you slice them.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 06 25 at 05:45 PM • permalink
Lish should be cordoned off and shamed; hair bleach is toxic.
Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2007 06 25 at 06:34 PM • permalink
How very like Their ABC to come up with a preachy programme. The only audience this show will reach will be the already converted. The Collective is just not plugged in to mainstream Australia at all.
Where was this show hatched? And what’s with the orange jumpsuits? Is there going to be a sacrificial beheading if they fail Gaia?
It’s even worse in the the review in the Herald’s TV Guide for today:
While this informative series, filmed in six very different households, is screening, the ABC has also taken the high-level decision (supposedly insisted upon at board level) to show the widely discredited but politically convenient Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. In it Martin Durkin argues the main cause of global warming is not human activity but changes in radiation from the sun.
Science reporter Robyn Williams has accused the ABC of “verging on the irresponsible” in running Durkin’s program. He went further, telling The Age newspaper the “inelegant” decision followed a patchy 12 months of ABC science shows, some from the “totally bollocks school” of science programs.
PS: I really really REALLY hope these dills show up on my doorstep.
Posted by Paul Wright on 2007 06 25 at 07:54 PM • permalink
I managed to get a pirated copy of this show – its actually pretty good. I question their methods though, for one thing it seems like the “shamings” were a little harsh.
This guy was using older, energy sucking light bulbs
Sean really got into his role as a totalitarian environmental enforcer.
In episode three they realise that not everyone takes a watering can into the shower to recycle “grey water”.
The final episode is a blast. In this one they pick the worst carbon offender and beat him around the head with billy clubs for the whole episode. He dies.
All in all this is great work by their ABC. Keep it coming guys, lets put an end to this evil “Western affluence”.
How much water can I waste hosing these idiots down before I commit a mortal sin against Gaia?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 06 25 at 08:48 PM • permalink
So a semi-literate highschool teacher and a gormless, gullible self publicist are qualified to hector householders about their wanton consumption according to the Anti-Burny Collective; who’d a thunk it?
I wish they’d lob around to my gaff for an audit, the whizzing meterboard would stun them into submission, and we could produce some high-rating video- with their orange jumpsuits, we wouldn’t even need a costume department.
These modern middle-class guilt monkeys are nothing more than latter-day flagellants; I’ve gotta work out an angle to fleece these maroons, they’ve got lotsa lettuce and notsa neurones.
Our real-life Mulder and Scully are scientists Sean Fitzgerald and Lish Fejer,
So they admit gorbal wormening is like an “X-Files” show! Spread the gospel!
Taken together, the case studies are not about individual scapegoats as much as an indictment of Western affluence, negligence and self-obsession.
How will we tell it apart from usual ABC programming?
Heh.
#21 Tex Lovera – “How nice of the hosts to wear orange”
Next week there will be two different hosts and they will be wearing colours less provocative. Unfortunately a knife wielding, bearded gent decapitated the first two. See Al-Jazeera for footage.
But they did not die in vain. The battle against western carbon terrorists will continue.
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2007 06 26 at 06:47 AM • permalink
What? They brought the Cat Detector van… from the Ministry of Housinge?