“On any given day, the ABC’s viewing line-up is overwhelmed by repeats; most of the rest are BBC propaganda freebees such as Antiques Roadshow or Grand Designs,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.

There was a time when the ABC’s 7.30 Report was the unmissable highlight of ABC programming. 

Alas, those days of Mike Willesee, Richard Carleton, Kerry O’Brien and Leigh Sales are now but a fading memory. 

The current version with Sarah Ferguson in the chair is virtually unwatchable. 

It’s not her fault. She is a professional, socially pleasant person, I’m told by mutual friends. And were she properly managed and coached she might well join that elite crew who made 7.30 a winner. 

But the ABC under Ita Buttrose and her executive team was falling to pieces.

Sarah follows a national news that has taken a dive ever since the wonderful Juanita Phillips departed. Its current occupant sounds like a BBC reject from the era when Ita was an up and comer at Kerry Packer’s Cleo. 

The other news and current affairs programming is tired at best and weird at worst, not least the former powerhouse Four Corners with its recent half-baked story of alleged Chinese spies and a modern-day Don Quixote fighting wind turbines.

Sales is wasted on Australian Story and Paul Barry, who once cast his net across most media, has reduced his focus to commercial “junkets” and the limitless excesses of Murdoch’s madhatters. But even he could not resist giving the ABC a slap in the kisser for its second-rate coverage of the Bondi shopping centre knife attack and other breaking news events.

The recent NSW floods brought forth a raft of articulate women stringers who put their lazy Canberra bureau prima donnas to shame… except, of course, for the courageous and insightful Laura Tingle, whom the suits instantly abandoned when she told the truth about her racist countrymen. 

Sunday morning’s Insiders has lost its edge and simply parrots what everyone knows already or gets lost in the weeds where no one cares. And the seemingly endless David Speers’ interviews are more harrowing for the viewer than the interviewee. Even Mike Bowers’ Talking Pictures segment is now so rushed it’s lost its former elan. 

On any given day, the network’s viewing line-up is overwhelmed by repeats; most of the rest are BBC propaganda freebees such as Antiques Roadshow or Grand Designs, and even they are repeated ad nauseam. 

Moreover, they’re separated by multiple reruns of promos for other shows that are as dull as the shows they’re promoting.

Indeed, the occasional homegrown hit such as Back Roads or Hard Quiz was so wondrous to Ita and the suits that they exploited it to death. HQ’s Tom Gleeson’s shtick – making cheeky critiques of Ita, the network and its audience – once taken in delighted jest, now generates an embarrassed silence.

Drama and comedy are something else. And sometimes it’s hard to separate them. 

Typical is the recent Austin, which has all the hallmarks of a hastily assembled cast and crew built around the discovery of an autistic charmer, Michael Theo from a fairly typical ABC venture, Love on the Spectrum. Add a couple of British “stars” in Ben Miller and Sally Phillips; raise a budget from the ACT government, Screen Australia, ITV Studios and Screen Canberra; shoot some of the thing in Canberra with the Hyatt for some handy “contra” and the rest in England, which doesn’t match with the antipodean footage, and away we go.

Trouble is, Ben and Sally don’t know whether they’re in a drama or a comedy so they just over-act and hope for the best. Turns out, the best is Michael Theo himself. His timing is exquisite and his deadpan delivery is exactly what’s needed to claim centre stage. But even he can’t compensate for the absurd plot and the madcap performances from Ben and Sally. 

At least they picked the perfect mirror for the network to screen it. Kim Williams, over to you.

robert@robertmacklin.com