Back to the West Wing

The West Wing is back on Australian TV screens - back being the operating word here, with episodes restarting with the "Twenty Hours in America" two-parter from the Bartlet re-election campaign which originally screened in the U.S. on September 2002. Australians will know that this is due to the show's move from the commercial Nine Network, which buried the show in the 23:30 timeslot, to the publicly funded ABC; there, at least it's on at 21:30 for the time being, and without commercial breaks (now if only we could continue to get double episodes every week to catch up with the action!).

Having watched The West Wing in its original run here (whenever it wasn't delayed or otherwise thrown about by Nine's deeply ingrained disdain for its audience), I nonetheless watched this first re-run today, and don't regret it - the show was, at least during the Aaron Sorkin years, one of the most eloquent, best acted dramas out of Hollywood. In this of course I'm also fully aware that it was something akin to political soft-porn: featuring an intelligent, well-educated, and honest U.S. President it provided bitterly needed escapism from the Washington reality, and even went well beyond the comparative idyll which a Gore America could have been.

In the Australian context, then, the ABC really is The West Wing's natural home, seeing as that broadcaster at least still attempts to maintain some of the journalistic standards which in its commercial counterparts have long given way to tattered euphemism that is 'current affairs' (read: con-men and over-hyped consumer alerts) reporting. The ABC itself represents a kind of journalistic escapism in its (sometimes, at least) dogged pursuit of government scandals (and lard knows there are a few) in the face of the execrable state of commercial journalism; and The West Wing's Bartlet Presidency doesn't only offer an ideal vision of what U.S. leaders could, and should, be, but also shows up the leadership void that is the lying, cheating, irresponsible and inhumane Australian government. (Incidentally, could someone please let John Howard know that 'fulsome' doesn't mean what he thinks it means?) At the same time, there remains the question: how do we move from the fiction of a just and thoughtful government - whether in the U.S. or in Australia - to reality?