Although WordswithMeaning! is a total stranger to the discussion of TV, we are no strangers to the corporations that provide the intensely expensive services like Foxtel in Australia. Even though Foxtel costs subscribers like myself around $100 a month, its service still has frequent advertisements and cancellations of the programs that were originally meant to gain more subscriptions in the first place.
The Australian show “Spirited” won many awards and received critical praise all around Australia as well as in the UK. It featured British comedy legend Matt King who portrayed the ghost of punk rocker “Henry Mallet” who inhabits the apartment of a dentist who leaves her husband and risks the judgement of insanity by befriending the ghost of the 1980s star. Throughout the series she attempts to help find how he died and comes across many of the challenges that someone who can communicate with a ghost would expect.
I personally don’t watch Australian programs often but I was very fond of the series, so it was a disappointment to receive a message on Twitter earlier this month that the series was cancelled despite the fact it was dubbed the “most successful Australian drama” by the critics and viewers alike.
If a television program has poor ratings it is usually cancelled, but why cancel a show that the people clearly want. Fans have created an online riot against the cancellation due to the incomplete ending in series 2, with more expected, it would only seem reasonable that the show would continue for at least another 6 episodes in order to please those that have paid good money for a subscription to an overly-expensive and overrated cable TV service.
Sadly though in this day and age the program will most likely be replaced by some sort of reality show about the three stuck-up daughters of Robert Kardashian who inherited his fortune when he died (Mr Kardashian was the defense attorney during the O.J Simpson’s murder trial).
Even though I wouldn’t treat this as a review of the program, it was cleverly written and was definitely better than most of the other crap we see on TV these days but once again this is another tale of a business venture to only promote the less-talented individuals on TV, much like how the technically proficient artists are dropped from their record label’s for failure to conform to the mainstream music acts of today.
