Ten’s Pilot Showcase lets viewers taste-test six new shows. Were they any good?

Pilot Showcase ★★★½

After Uma Thurman’s Mia Wallace explained Fox Force Five to John Travolta’s Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, the pilot went from television industry practice to popular culture touchstone. Network Ten’s newly renamed Pilot Showcase, which has become a welcome feature of the network’s programming, lets viewers sample a selection of test episodes in one batch. The theory is that the cream should rise, and – unlike Fox Force Five – the best shows will get picked up for a debut season.

It’s not a hollow promise. In 2018 Ten went to series with four of their eight pilots, although only Kinne Tonight earnt a second season as Taboo, Saturday Night Rove, and Trial by Kyle soon left the schedule. But it’s not as if Ten will countenance a pilot for a major new reality competition series, the top-of-the-line title for a commercial television network, so Pilot Showcase tends to encompass comedy sketches and low-budget productions. Some ideas are too expensive for an actual pilot, or a single instalment would simply be inconclusive.

Melissa Leong, Susan Carland and Narelda Jacobs in Dinner Guest.

But if you take a step back, Pilot Showcase does offer insight into what networks are thinking about. Blokey comedies are out and shows that draw on female talent are putting a dent in traditional under-representation. Dinner Guest has a deliberately diverse trio of presenters in Narelda Jacobs, Susan Carland and Melissa Leong sitting down to a restaurant meal with debut guest RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas. All four are comfortable with the camera, and the show has an interesting dynamic in that the autobiographical discussion freely moves from one to the other.

At one point Karvelas – her professional antenna up – zeroes in on a comment by Jacobs, and asks follow-up queries. It’s a smart, personal exploration of Australia’s changing face, taking in faith and sexuality. At one point a bemused Jacobs remembers being told by a newsroom superior early in her career: “You’re Aboriginal and gay, but you can’t be political.”

Courtney Act with guest Luke McGregor in Courtney’s Closet.

Sometimes it’s a matter of putting known talent to the right use. Abbie Chatfield has enjoyed a meteoric rise since debuting on The Bachelor in 2019, so Abbie Chats places her front and centre on a show where she pledges to “dissect different”. The pilot’s contradictory subjects are porn stars and asexual people. Chatfield is a good listener and lively interviewer – her frankness tends to pierce cliches, even if the B-roll footage of leading Australian-in-L.A. adult star Angela White overdoes the T&A. The promising pilot tries to have it both ways.

Likewise drag performer Courtney Act has already fronted the ABC’s interview series One Plus One. In Courtney’s Closet she gives a celebrity guest – in this case Rosehaven’s Luke McGregor – a drag persona makeover. It’s Anh’s Brush with Fame with a tuck-in G-string instead of paint. That makes for an interesting pilot, but it poses the same question that several of these efforts do: does the concept have the legs for an entire season? The sketch comedy The Bush Blonde Vs the World, for example, feels somewhat thin, staking everything on Nikki Osborne’s character of a distaff Russell Coight.

Nikki Osborne in The Bush Blonde Vs The World.

Pilot Showcase also doesn’t need to be the full stop. The comedy competition, Time to Die, where stand-ups write terrible material for each other to perform, feels like a curious idea that needs refining. Not everyone wants to watch a stand-up excruciatingly bomb. The Love Experiment, which is a dating show crossed with You Can’t Ask That, feels too solemn for commercial television as the matched couples offer confessions. It actually would play better on the ABC.

Pilot Showcase is on 10Play.

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