Breaking news: Frontline considers return

The 1990s foot-in-the-door current ­affairs comedy might return to our screens | LISTEN

Jane Kennedy has joined her longtime friend Mick Molloy on ­Triple M’s national drive ­program. Picture: Tim Carrafa

It is early days, but there’s a chance that Frontline, the seminal 1990s foot-in-the-door current ­affairs comedy, might return to our screens.

That’s according to the comedy’s producer Jane Kennedy, who played Brooke Vandenberg, the show’s amoral bitch reporter and aspiring host.

“I’ve been asked about that quite recently — whether we would bring it back,” Kennedy, who this year has joined her longtime friend Mick Molloy on ­Triple M’s national drive ­program, told The Australian’s ­Behind the Media podcast.

Kennedy, who also co-produced and co-wrote the show with her colleagues at Working Dog Productions, described the talks as “interesting”. And while they are clearly at a preliminary stage, she declined to reveal any of the executives involved.

“I don’t think it would be a big budget show to do,” Kennedy told the podcast.

Frontline aired for three years from 1994 on the ABC and was a savage indictment of television current affairs of the time. Now it is screening on the ABC Comedy channel and on iView.

But Kennedy doesn’t think that era was more outrageous than the present. “No I don’t. I think Tracy Grimshaw is brilliant and does a great job but I see things on A Current Affair that she probably rolls her eyes at quietly.

“But there’s obviously a need and an appetite for it still.”

So what became of Brooke Vandenberg, who over three seasons and 39 episodes, remains a talismanic figure among comedians and journalists alike? “She’s getting on now. She’s had a lot of surgery, she’s got a lot of fake hair.”

Did she ever get her own show? “She did. It was on Sky. Very late on a Friday night. She did her own hair and makeup.”

After Brooke, Kennedy concentrated on Working Dog, often in behind-the-scenes roles such as casting director. Tomorrow she faces a big test, when the results are released for the first radio ratings survey of the year — a year of big changes, including the formation of Triple M’s Kennedy Molloy Drive show, which came about after Molloy chose to move after about eight years on Triple M’s breakfast.

With pay parity a hot topic, did Kennedy demand equal pay with the more experienced Molloy? Brooke Vandenberg would have.

(R-L) Rob Sitch, Alison Whyte, Steve Bisley, Tiriel Mora and Jane Kennedy from Frontline.

“We have a completely respectful understanding between the two of us that we’re both really happy with,” Kennedy says. But she does add: “Experience wins for me in the end, regardless of your gender.”

Kennedy is relaxed about pointing out that she took time out to raise her five children, aged between 11 and 16, with husband Rob Sitch, the star of the ABC’s Utopia who played Frontline’s dopey narcissistic anchor Mike Moore and is a co-principal in Working Dog.

“I wanted to be able to commit 100 per cent without thinking, ‘has my middle child taken his lunch to school today?’ ”

She called a family meeting among her five children when the job came up and her children swiftly gave consent. But they retain veto power over any family anecdotes that might make it on to the airwaves.

“I don’t believe their life should be copy unless it’s something where I can be a bit more obtuse about it and not really point the finger at one particular kid.”

Jane Kennedy as 'Frontline's' Brooke Vandenberg.

Growing up, Kennedy was a TV addict. Still is, but now she is a TV producer with kids who aren’t interested. “My children literally don’t watch television and that’s a big change and that’s a big concern for the industry. They hardly see TV commercials. They watch YouTube.

“I’ve been disappointed in a lot of product I’ve seen that is from YouTube and it’s from young people who have not a lot of ­experience. “

Kennedy met her husband, Sitch, when he was a presenter on the Triple M D Generation breakfast program in the late 1980s and she was hired to read the news and bring a bit more femininity to the blokey network.

The boys responded by trying to make her laugh while she read out serious news reports. Kennedy maintains such a romance is still possible in today’s heightened environment, even with harassment issues and the Me Too movement.

“You can’t kill off true ­romance, that’s my bottom line on that. I feel very buoyant and I feel relieved in a sense that the Me Too movement has occurred because I think it is time that women felt emboldened and not threatened with losing their jobs.”

Kennedy is often a panellist on Ten’s news panel program Have You Been Paying Attention?, which Working Dog produces. The news quiz is crammed with politically incorrect jokes about panelist Sam Pang’s Chinese heritage, as well as the Duchess of Cornwall and Clive Palmer, but it is rarely attacked on social media.

“If you make a joke just for the sake of being shocking, then I think that’s a problem,” Kennedy explains.

“If you’re doing something and it’s well thought out and it makes you laugh, I think you should be able to get away with it.”