An article by Frank Devine in The Australian today on The Hollowmen spent some time dissecting what he thinks is wrong. Chiefly, the problem seemed to be that it isn’t Yes Minister/ Yes Prime Minister. He observes that the program is “short of a finished product”, “lacking in character, motivation, conflict, suspense, denouement”, “with no characters that can engage our sympathies”. He also finds it “hard to tell characters apart” and argues that “comedy needs a moral compass to bounce laughter off”.

I’m the first to agree that Yes Minister/ Yes Prime Minister is high quality political satire and television comedy. I’m not so sure though that it is relevant to compare The Hollowmen with these fine series. For, television comedy has changed a great deal in the last 20 years or so. I think The Hollowmen can be placed within recent transformations in the genre, where we find both the visual and narrative style heavily influenced by the documentary….the mockumentary. So, identifying or sympathising with characters is not always the highest priority. Rather I think what this style of comedy does is reveal what purports to be a slice of life to us, to a great extent leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions. That is, unlike Yes Minister/ Yes Prime Minister in The Hollowmen the distinctions between the characters are blurry – because the “moral compass” (if we can even believe there is such a thing any more) they are locked into is also complex and blurry. The conflict is not so much between the various characters – but between all the characters and the world of media spin and public policy making that they inhabit and must manipulate the best way they can. No one wins or loses…they simply move on to the next event, the next emergency, the next phase of the media cycle and attempt (sometimes hopelessly) to have some, even minute effect on the strangling and paralysing discourses (there! I’ve used some naughty poststructuralist language) within which “contemporary politics” now emerges.

I’m sure I’ll continue to think about this…and perhaps even change my mind!