Marking Time

John Doyle proves he is one of Australia's best writers with this mini series. I was excited by the previews and the show lived up to my expectations. Calling it a Romeo and Juliet set in rural Australia is to simplify a show that is so much more. The show's greatest strength is that it has a real context. How many times have a watched a series that is set in a vacuum, giving the audience no insight into the time and place it was produced. Marking Time portrays what it was like in Australia at the start of the 21st Century. Our pride in the Olympics, the sense of optimism in 2000, the bewilderment of Tampa and September 11. The trouble with most Australian TV and movies is they are set in two extremes. They are either set in the absolute outback (Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Welcome to Woop Woop) or in the inner city of a bustling metropolis (Sample

People, Dirty Deeds). A show like Marking Time, or the equally excellent The

Dish, is so refreshing because it is about the small cities and country towns where a lot of us live. If you have ever had to leave Geraldton or Rockhampton or Renmark or Batemans Bay or whatever your hometown for work or study you would understand exactly how Hal (Abe Forsythe) felt. Ultimately you outgrow your surroundings and it is time to move on. Of course the show is not without its faults. The Afghani refugees Hassan (Lech Mackiewicz) and Randa (Bojana Novakovic) look nothing like the ethnic Hazars they are supposed to be playing. The show would have been better if the producers had the courage to cast genuine refugees. Also the reasoning behind the detention of Randa and Hassan and the attitudes of the townspeople were oversimplifies. Not everyone who voted for the coalition in the 2001 election were horrible racists. These comments aside, Marking Time was both thoughtful and uplifting.