Last week's sad news was that Channel Ten is cancelling
Video Hits after its 20+ years on the air.
It seemed an arbitrary decision, given the show's stalwart status (though I'll admit I'm sure its ratings, all important when it comes to the palliative care of old-timer TV shows) are through the floor), but perhaps
Gina Rinehart Ten wants to inject a bit more right-leaning programming into their Sunday line-up. Either way, it's a shame.
I've spoken before about the dearth of music programming on Australian free-to-air TV, and now's as good a time as ever to remind ourselves of what we've got. To wit, not much.
There's
Spicks & Specks (which is finishing up soon, anyway)
, RocKwiz, rage, and... errr... Umm...
As you can see, it leaves us with a pretty barren wasteland with
Video Hits and
Spicks & Specks on the way out.
So, like approximately every other Australian human between the ages of about 25 and 35, when I heard that Dylan Lewis was set to be at a loose end, I suddenly thought: BRING BACK
RECOVERY!
(
This countdown of the show's 25 best moments is particularly misty watercolour memory inducing.)
There was a special sort of magic about the show and its dedication to live music (particularly Australian music) - three hours of live power every Saturday - and it's a magic that means even its most ill-advised moments now take on the sheen of brilliance. Ill-advised like, say, Silverchair playing Whole Lotta Love with Dylan on harmonica:
What's notable, too, in looking back at the glory days of the show - the mid-late-'90s episodes - is what a great gender balance it had. In fact more often than not Dylan and Leigh were far outnumbered by female presenters like Jane Gazzo, Pheona Donohoe, Jody Hill, J'Nett and Tamara Rewse. It's more than you can say for pretty much anything on TV today.
The show carked it in 2000 after a vaguely abortive rejig - touchingly, the ABC has
archived the website, so you can remember just how amazing the internet was back then - and really the various stars have been twiddling their thumbs (twiddling thumbs while earning millions in the case of former film reviewer Leigh Whannell) ever since, waiting for another definitive gig that never really came.
Lord knows they're up for it:
It's not just misguided nostalgia that has led to this (okay, maybe just a little), but rather - at least in my case - the fact that
Recovery embodied a televisual mood - joyful, anarchic - that is all but gone from our screens these days. "Youth" programming has become about "content" and "buzzwords", and the rest doesn't bear thinking about;
Recovery worked because it wasn't Youth™, it was just youthful.
And, like so many things about our youthful selves, sometimes we look back and cringe a little, but not without affection.
Recovery was certainly a product of its time, but there's no reason why it couldn't work still.
The audience is willing, Aunty - is the network?
Disclosure: when I was 15 I won a runner-up prize pack on
Recovery for giving Blur's
Song 2 "a better name" - I chose "Wet Fish (My Problem)", because Graham once said Damon was "about as sexy as a wet fish", and I put "My Problem" in parentheses because I was a wanker - but I think the statute of limitations on payola is 20 years and also I took the signed copy of the Pet Shop Boys' terrible '90s album that I won to Dixons once when I was broke and they only gave me $6 for it.