I was excited about last week's debut episode of My Kid's a Star (Nine, Wednesday, 7.30pm) for a few reasons. Firstly, it looked cheerily inane and awesomely lowbrow — two factors that make my life as a columnist relatively simple.
Secondly, it featured former Partridge Family wash-up and all-round nutbar Danny Bonaduce, a man by whom the phrase "That's quite enough, thank you, I am fairly inebriated as it is and should most likely pop home to visit the wife and kids before I make a lavishly public ass of myself" was last employed in about 1972 and who is usually involved in the kind of car-crash television you can't watch without first being administered an IV of morphine.
Thirdly, it purported to be about insufferably naff child actor show-offs and many moons ago I was one of these very creatures, so the chance to again delve into the glamorous underbelly of prepubescent spray tans and high-cut leotards proved too tempting. What a colourful, camp, adorably cheeky glimpse into the quest for young folk stardom! It'd be like Young Talent Time with more modest decolletage.
Only it wasn't. It was sad and mean-spirited and cheaper than the shop-soiled bargain table at Dimmey's and I feel a lesser person for having endured it. I'd like to think only Nine could take the mischievous fun times out of a bunch of jovial youngsters performing ham-fisted show tunes and turn it into a sodden, charmless piece of spite, but the result would probably be the same on any of the networks given the public's apparent craving for ritual humiliation on the box.
One week former AFL stars with a penchant for booger-sugar are flaying themselves raw for our viewing pleasure, the next we're expected to get on board while tippy-tapping darlings get their hearts ripped out of their tiny chests and stomped on by a trio of smoky-voiced judges. Where will it stop? World's Funniest Beatings of the Fat Kid up the Back of the Bus?
I'm not even sure I understand the premise of My Kid's a Star.
Languidly attractive host Cameron Daddo, wearing the haunted look of a man who knows he may never escape the shame of hosting erstwhile reality black hole Pirate Master, talked through some overcomplicated rules and regulations in the show's opener, but as far as I can tell the point system and challenge rounds are supposed to play a distant second to the unbridled hilarity of little Jo-Jo Junior doing the splits and being informed by a celebrity agent that she'll most likely have to turn tricks for mealy-mouthed skeezers to make her rent in future. Can you think of nothing more amusing than a wide-eyed rosy-cheeked bean getting verbally kicked in the stomach and left to cry mortified tears in a room full of strangers? No? No job at Nine for you, then. Back to TV school.
Having seen the promos I at least expected to gain some perverse
pleasure out of hating the pushy, overly ambitious parents. What
could be more universally loathsome than the faded glamour of a
stage mother, anxiously miming along to her offspring's overly
sexualised song choice and demanding that Breeanna dry those tears
before the gancho medley or there'll be no dinner for a month?
Certainly, there were some awkward moments featuring maternal
figures perhaps blurring the lines between their children's lives
and their own frustrated dreams ("My plan to win … is be
myself and give it everything I've got," asserted one mamma
breathlessly, almost shoving her daughter out of the way to get to
the camera for a close-up), but for the most part the parents
involved were as nervous, insecure and fragile as their children.
By the show's end at least half of them had wept; genuinely
confused and hurt and convinced by the judging panel they were bad
people. It was unbelievably awful.
Watching gravel-gargling former drug addict Bonaduce test out
the winsome opener "You know, the list of dead child stars is
hideously long" on his frankly startled students pretty much summed
up the entire MKAS experience for me — grim facts and
figures about show-business and career trajectories forced upon
pups who should be focused on nothing more than how lovely and
spirited it feels to make wee come out of nan when performing that
magic envelope trick she loves.
These mini-performers may be hokey and stiff and about as
sophisticated as a Westfield shopping centre food court talent
quest, but who cares? They've a right to pirouette gaily through a
living room without someone telling them they're a waste of space
and an insult to their "brand". When tiny first evictee
Victoria-Rose, struggling to hold back body-racking sobs over her
disappointment at being turfed, looked into camera on Wednesday and
miserably told Australia to "remember this face", I wanted to climb
into my TV and give her a cuddle.
I guess there's no room in this world for a show that simply
celebrates youthful exuberance in all its gloriously crummy,
cornball splendour. Quick, someone call Johnny Young. Tell him it's
an emergency.
- Review by Marieke Hardy for The Age.