The Rundown: The pilot week hits and misses from Channel 10

An eclectic mix of shows have debuted for pilot week and the verdict is in on the hits and misses, with two unlikely winners.

Dinner Guest would benefit from a better setting.

The Rundown is your new weekly sneak peek behind the scenes of TV and radio.

Porn, a plan to ‘unbugger’ the world, the search for love, familiar faces having serious conversations, the journey to a drag persona, and a bizarre quest for laughs – welcome to Pilot Week.

Six pilot episodes dropped on 10 Play this week as Channel 10’s 2022 Pilot Week Showcase.

This is the third time 10 has invested in Pilot Week, which is a chance to test new show ideas to a commercial audience.

Several shows have been picked up for short runs off the back of previous Pilot Weeks including Drunk History Australia, Trial by Kyle and Saturday Night Rove.

So, will any of this year’s six offerings survive Pilot Week … I think a couple will.

Courtney’s Closet

Hosted by Courtney Act, Courtney’s Closet is a celebrity interview show with a twist where Act transforms her guest into their drag persona as she teases out their life story.

Act is a terrific interviewer and this show is a delight. It is fun, serious, poignant and insightful. Luke McGregor was a generous and interesting guest for this pilot episode and his transformation and the reveal of his drag persona at the end was a glamorous full stop for the interview and experience. Act is an experienced TV performer and has shown when hosting One Plus One on the ABC that she knows how to put people at ease and draw good conversations out of them. I liked this show a lot. In terms of its structure it reminded me of Anh’s Brush With Fame.

Courtney’s Closet is like Anh’s Brush With Fame, but better.

Dinner Guest

Narelda Jacobs, Melissa Leong, Susan Carland invited Patricia Karvelas to dinner in Melbourne and the quartet dissected big issues over a hearty meal in Richmond. Four smart, strong, intelligent and worldly women – now that is a table that would have been fun to have been part of. Jacobs and Karvelas share their experiences on coming out as gay and Carland discusses her decision to convert to Islam when she was 19.

Leong spoke of playing down her cultural background when younger in an effort to fit in.

Was the restaurant setting important – no. There was very little discussion of the food. This show could be set around a table anywhere and might even give the viewer more of a sense of being privy to a private conversation if set in a home.

The Love Experiment

Can 36 questions make you fall in love with a total stranger?

The Love Experiment puts a very simple dating idea to the test by matching two strangers and getting them to sit opposite each other and ask 36 probing questions. This show’s best moments came when the matched pairs, who were only introduced when they sat down to start questioning each other in front of the cameras, gave vulnerable and genuine answers to the more personal and inquiring questions.

At the end of their questions the pair must sit and stare at each other in silence for three minutes.

It is a nice, kind, gentle, quiet show, but it felt very slow and, to be absolutely honest, I fell asleep watching it.

The Love Experiment – now to be known as the 36 questions to cure insomnia.

The Bush Blonde Vs The World

I expected to hate this show, but it was surprisingly engaging and funny. Nikki Osborne lets her ‘Bush Blonde’ character rip in this send up which owes a lot to that other Aussie favourite Russell Coight. It is definitely more on the edge that Russell Coight as Osborne’s ‘Bushie’ sets out to ‘Unbugger’ the world.

“Welcome to my show where I unbugger the joint, because it is buggered, we buggered it, now I gotta unbuggerise it, you buggers,” she says setting other mission clearly from the get go.

Russell Coight with boobs is going to unbugger the world.

As part of the episode she runs for PM, gives OnlyFans a crack and “unbuggers the Olympics”. Love the cameo from Stephen Quartermain!

And porn even gets a look in with Osborne taking her ‘Bushie’ to meet OnlyFans star Renee Gracie for instructions on how to launch an adult subscription content site to save the koalas.

This character could become a pin up for the anti-woke brigade – actually the anti-wokers would love her. Bushie could be the one to fly high from Pilot Week.

Time To Die

A show about comedians trying to be unfunny … OK. Gen Fricker and Ben Russell host Time To Die which pits two comedians, in this case Tom Cashman and Sonia Di Iorio, against each other with the challenge to write an awful stand-up set for the other to perform in front of an unaware live audience.

It is a different idea, but seemed a bit pointless. The cut aways to deadpan and unmoved audience members during Cashman’s stand up set were the funniest part of the show.

The show looked good and clearly a lot of work had gone into putting it together but at the end of the episode all I could think of was “why?”

Time To Die is a weird idea that falls as flat as the jokes.

Abbie Chats

Abbie Chatfield, she is TV and radio’s woman of the moment. This pilot is a good showcase for Chatfield: the camera loves her, she is a good presenter, a curious and empathetic interviewer and is extremely likeable.

Abbie Chats sees her explore worlds not commonly seen or heard from on television.

For the pilot Chatfield gets serious about sex.

She talks to porn stars, including Angela White who has been described as the Meryl Streep of porn, and attends the filming of three women having a threesome after a game of strip poker.

She then meets with members of the asexual community, people for whom sex is not of interest.

Chatfield is good TV talent. A doco series like this could be her next move.