Sometimes a televisual experience so spectacularly bad comes along that it's difficult to formulate a response that isn't little more than the text equivalent of:



Yes, that was me, over and over again, attempting to watch ABC2's new "comedy/drama" series about an unsigned band - Boy Crazy Stacey - trying to make it in the indie band scene™, I Rock.

My introduction to the show was when the resident "rock" lesbians showed up wearing matching outfits, and one of them deadpanned, "We're like sisters. Who fuck."

CHRIST ON A FUCKING BIKE.

A side note that will surprise very few of you: when I am not writing about television for you fine people, I write about music. I have written about music for close to a decade. I know what the music scene is like. I have never, ever, in my entire life, met anyone who comes even close to resembling any of the characters in this musically inclined abomination of a show.

I suspect that the show's creators have also never met any actual, live musicians, either.

Here's a little snippet before I continue:



Yes, you heard that pearl of dialogue correctly: "If you can't handle the frypan, just go and switch your gas off."

Actually, I'd like to partially rescind that previous statement: I have met people like "Nash Taylor" - mostly back in 2004 when the New Rock Revolution was in full effect and everyone was looking for "the new Jet". Typically they had little to no discernible musical ability, an addiction to hairspray, and gross delusions of grandeur.

So, at least in that respect, I Rock isn't too far off the mark.

The rest of the show, however, is such complete fantasy they may as well have set it on the moon.

I Rock is set in Sydney, a Sydney that apparently has a thriving live music scene unfettered by venue closures and the influx of pokie machines. In fact, the Sydney depicted by I Rock seems more like a Sydney that hasn't existed since around the turn of the century, let alone this new decade.

There's even a Hot Chick Bassplayer, inventively named "Comet", who - uh oh spaghettioes! - happens to be a lesbian. That doesn't stop Taylor from falling for her, and I would bet my life savings on the show later unfurling a Chasing Amy-esque "all lesbians just need to meet and root the right guy to see the light" storyline.

Actually, let's talk for a moment about Comet (played with the charisma of a Home Brand box of rolled oats by Ashley Fitzgerald). Reading the character summary from the show's website should give you what you need:

"Her looks alone would be enough to get her invited to any after-party in the city, but she’s charming too, able to poke fun at anything from her lack of musical talent to her troubled childhood. She seems very comfortable in her own skin for someone so young.

Only digging beneath the surface does a more complex character appear. For someone who passes herself off as worldly, who has seen it all, she has moments of
breathtaking naivety. It’s also hard to work out whether she’s aware of her sexual power, which is more than a little formidable."

It's magic pixie dream girl bassist! Would it be too much to ask to write a female character in a rock context who isn't a complete cipher? Then again, the show's male characters don't fare much better.

The show is written by and stars Josh Mapleston as Taylor and suggests that everything Mapleston knows about the Australian pub rock scene, he learned from watching Josie & The Pussycats. I suggest that Mapleston turns up at an actual rock gig in his swilling-whiskey-straight-from-the-bottle guise as Taylor and sees what actually happens to him.

Watching Mapleston play drunk at the end of episode two was like watching a Year 11 drama class solo performance.

The show drops names like Laura Imbruglia as though we're supposed to ooh and aah at its rock credentials; it even ropes in poor Tim Rogers (and no doubt some other hapless actual musicians along the way).

The dialogue is laughable ("The first gig is like having sex for the first time; it's this awful, humiliating, drawn-out process"), the music is the sort of stuff that lines rubbish bins in music critics' offices countrywide, the editing sluggish, even the sound and lighting is subpar.

Truly, this is one of the most spectacularly awful efforts that Australian film or television has coughed up in a long time. It's well worth watching if only to experience what slowly drawn out torture feels like.

Do yourself a favour.