84 / What's on telly?
It'll finish tonight, but I haven't missed an episode of The Circuit on SBS. The series has received many accolades about good acting and production values; but that's just the beginning.
I have to say I was gobsmacked by the show. Just like the movie Avatar, The Circuit had transported me to another world, another universe. The place it describes is nothing like the world I occupy (call me ignorant) and shockingly so. Watching it I have wept at the conditions Aborigines live in (in a similar reaction to the movie Samson and Delilah and the documentary The First Australians.) I watched in disbelief the incredibly difficult job the law enforcement officers have up North, the fine line the justice workers walk when dealing with impossible cases of human misery, such as the fallout from neglect, violence, child abuse and alcohol/drug abuse.
As a whitey immigrant I never could fathom that it should be so hard for Aborigines to, 'stop the boozing and get your act together' to, 'just clean up the mess you live in and move on.' I remember Noel Pearson saying that indigenous people are too dependent on welfare and I thought, "yeah, right, pull up your socks, put in an honest day's work and you'll be o.k."
What a shock The Circuit has been. What an eye opener. It is the one television show I have seen in Australia that should be shown in all schools - especially the city schools.