BUB-BYE
For the Canberra Times, Tuesday 26 September 2006


If I have any significant strength as a parent it is admitting when I get it wrong. Like many mums and dads, I wonder about how much television is good for kids. And we get annoyed that we can't just assume that if it's rated G it will be high quality, or even suitable.

Most "G" (general audience) rated programs should really be "PG" (parental guidance recommended) anyway, because kids have so many questions, or at least, need some things explained, when they're obviously a little worried or concerned. A mother I met at a kids' party proclaimed proudly that she had let her 5-year-old son watch the nightly news during the Iraq war, and even the burned bodies seemed to have no effect on him as he never asked questions, just watched in silence. Mental note: no playdates at her place.

My eight-year-old gets frightened and worried by a lot of stuff on screen, so we tend to steer clear of most adventure stories on screen for the time being. She seems to process stories more happily when she reads it, or hears it on tape. (I know that many children seem the other way around, more affected by books than TV - I myself would never risk reading National Velvet or Seven Little Australians again lest I flood something.).

In our house, Harry Potter read by Stephen Fry, or read by yourself curled up in an armchair in the same room as family bustle (for company) is pleasant interlude. But the Harry Potter film (we've only seen the first one) causes such great sweeps of emotion and tension. The "whole package" has scary music, magical digital vision, story, character, and carefully built shocks and emotional manipulation. The kid has requested she "wait a few years" to see the other.

So generally we tend to record stuff to watch as a family, and zap through the ads. Favourites have included cable TV's "Globe Trekker" (Travel, Discovery and Living, 6.30 and a zillion other times) because it's all about travelling to different countries around the world, with engaging presenters - but you have to make sure an adult viewer hasn't wandered off to the loo and left a kid open to a sudden onslaught of skull-illustrated Cambodian history.

Like Thank God You're Here, Australian Idol (Sundays, Network 10 at some point) has been a popular schoolyard favourite. But when they're on TV, an adult always has to be on hand - either to explain a scenario is fiction, or that Kyle Sandilands ought to be. It's hard to explain why it's okay to be cruel to people and to "evict" them; why there can only be one winner, that there's money in SMS-ing, why there's such a narrow little path to one idea of success. It's hard to say why a mean man is able to tell a girl that she's "sexy" and what that means, or that he, puffed up with ludicrous self-importance, has decided she weighs too much to be a singer.

Still, all of these things do have to be explained, unless you put your kids in a cultural bubble, so I thought we could try watching the second series of Project Runway, Tuesdays, 7.30 pm on Arena. It's a reality game show but it's based on how much talent somebody has as a potential fashion designer. It would be fun to watch them race the clock to make a dress out of plants, or something gorgeous from a couple of metres of calico. Sure, it's rated M, but it would be OK with supervision, surely? What were they going to do, stab each other with a bobbin?

When those gaunt, sullen-faced models skulked down the runway modelling the contestants' gear, we could talk about why they were all too thin, and looked sick and grumpy. And that it was okay to be naturally thin, but not if you didn't eat healthy food.

Project Runway is hosted by the then very pregnant model, uber-babe Heidi Klum, and judged by the resort-wear designer, orangey Michael Kors; a snippy cow from US Elle Magazine and a guest judge. Or is it? The credits of the show warn that the judges don't have final decision on who is evicted each week by Fraulein Klum saying "Auf wiederhesen" to them. The decision is made by the Bravo TV network - in other words, if you're a telegenic, controversial creep like Santino in this series, you get to stay, week after week, even if your dresses look like uncontrolled explosions in a bubble-gum and lycra factory.

We're at the end leg of the series; there are only three contestants left . Heidi says every week to the whittled-down final two: "One of you will be in. And one of you will be out." (The winner will get a car and $US100,000 to start their own label). The end can't come soon enough for us. It's reached the point where series 3 of Project Runway will have to be a guilty pleasure only for Mummy. Yesterday I watched the kid line up Panda, Muffin and Blue Ted and tell them in a German accent, "One of you will be OUT. Of course, there WILL be drama". I reckon Muffin's on borrowed time.