The Circle

Yesterday was 9/02/10, so belated happy 90210 day! To celebrate, I slicked back my hair and pretended I was a privileged teen! How did Channel 10 celebrate? They launched their new mid-morning show. Now, you’d think that perhaps, as a reviewer, I’m not the intended audience f0r an all female chat show aimed at the house wife club. This is where you’d be wrong. As a stay at home husband with a passion for trying to keep my grocery bill as low as possible, I’m just the woman for the job.

To get into the housewife mood, I even watched it while doing my ironing (and taking notes)!

To get me into the mood of “what a housewife thinks” I started to think of all the things housewives are meant to like: losing weight, and Guy Sebastian. Blow me down with a feather! First thing off the block we see the heart throb to the housewife Guy Sebastian! Later on? Exercise machines, jeans that suck in your tum, and low calorie options now being sold by Dominoes. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. With the slick intro and transition music, clean graphics, and content focused on the stereotypical housewife, it is actually quite interesting to see the show, and even the most jaded critic can appreciate that it’s actually quite clever in the way it sinks its teeth into its ideal audience. Much like a pitbull it doesn’t seem to let go of this image of an audience.

Everybody seems to be making the connection with this show and the American “The View”, which in all honesty, is just confusing a group of women with a TV format. The similarities between this and the old “9am with David and Kim” are much more pronounced, with the advertorials, identical cooking segments, and the whole lounge room vibe. You can see that the “9am” brand was far too damaged by small ratings and general lack of interest, and the major refresh has come as a whole new rebranding.

The Set

Your expected pinks yellows, and beige. The set looks cramped. You can’t get around this, although, my semi-professional guess would be that this is entirely a production change compared to the shows forerunner “9am with David and Kim”. David and Kim I believe was filmed out at Avalon, lots of studio space, you could probably play tennis during the ad breaks. The Circle? I’m assuming from their Facebook and the “outside the studio shots” of the Tram Station they’re in South Yarra filming out of the Como Centre. It’s small, but at least it’s easy to get to, and I’m sure this is a great help to keeping costs down, and probably makes accommodating guests a whole lot easier.  The large screen TV, the different sectioned off areas for advertorials, the ability to move furniture while filming different parts of the set; this is all you expect from this kind of show. There is also the inclusion of a studio audience, who get to nosh down on low fat pizza. There is probably only 30-odd people in the small studio, and you begin to think they have to work quite hard for two hours trying to fill the space with cheers and laughter.

[Update: TV Rev fan Dylan Ettridge emailed in a correction:

By the way, 9am and
The Circle were filmed in the same locations at the Como Centre at South
Yarra, it IS the same kitchen just with the appliances moved around – 9am
did not have a fridge on set ... and no, as much as I love the idea of
Watkins V Reyne tennis during the infomericals. The set was tiny. I did
Work Experience there. The 9am set was not as loud as The Circle's set
also 9am did not initially have to share studio floor space with another
show that is shot daily - The 7PM Project. Oh, and it is not Avalon. The
only show filmed there is Airways as it is home to Melbourne’s second
(dud) airport. You are thinking of Nunawading – now owned by Global and
not Ten. In fact, in 1992, Ten moved its News and GMA with Bert Newton to
South Yarra and the News and the three morning shows have been filmed
there since. Really only Neighbours is filmed there these days. ]

The introductions

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-BizDY9GMk[/youtube]

The introduction coming off of the new 9am news bulletin seemed a little ... odd. It wasn't until Dan emailed me asking "They started the show without introducing the hosts at all. Why should we care who they are?" Which, when you go back to your recording of this mornings show (like I did) you'll notice that in fact, they don't introduce the panel, they talk about how excited they are, and quickly go into interviewing one of the panel. The first morning was Denise Drysdale, and I'm assuming they'll continue to interview a different host as the first week progresses. Perhaps it was assumed you'd paid attention to the bombardment of radio, newspaper, internet, facebook, twitter, and press releases and knew who everybody was already.

It seems a bit strange not to launch into the show with introductions, but when you have a guest like Guy Sebastian first up, you're probably trying to grab your new audience in quickly. You also notice Guy gets to sit off to the side of the hosts, rather than in between them, like on The View.

The Advertorials

No morning show would be complete with the old advertorials. Even if you didn't have any sponsors, you'd still whack a couple in, just to look like what a morning show should. With the demise of "9am with David and Kim" last year, we got to hear about the kind of dollar figures that go with running each one. This is what keeps the show rolling.

What "The Circle" did very well, was the use of your on air talent in advertorials, most notably with the quite excellent "Biggest Loser" cross-promotion/Dominoes healthy choices advetorial. Shannon from "Loser" and Drysdale were hilarious and you actually enjoyed watching an ad. It was also nice to see one that didn't demand I give them my credit card, merely all I had to do was eat a yummy pizza that was good for me.

It was very fun, but the return to the regular Danoz exercise equipment ads later in the show brought you crashing back to reality.  Another jarring part of the show is the knowing introduction of the ad with insipid lines that make you think you're part of Amway, and not TV for grown ups: "Our very first shopping oppurtunity for the morning!" or "Circle Shopping!"

Interestingly, the infomercials seem very long for the show, especially as the group chats are so brief and ad breaks and segment changes are so rapid.

The Discussion

The talk on the show is quite interesting and moves between the absolutely great (the section talking about the reconstruction of Marysvale) to the absolutely dross (bitching about husbands and "men in general"). If I'd have wanted to listen to women bitch about their husbands (in a way that made even my own wife think was a bit silly) I'd have taken my son to Playgroup and listened to it there, instead of staying home and watching Channel 10. The show hit all the ground breaking topics of why don't men tidy? Men cleaning for sex? Is calling Denise "Ding Dong" acceptable? Why should I eat healthy food?

The discussion was reasonably fun, but for the first show off the blocks, the topics were quite weak and patronising for any audience, let alone the imagined housewife. I wonder how deliberate this selection of topics was, or wheteher there will be some barrel scraping in the near future.
The amount of time spent on "Super Bowl" ads was incredible, people with the internet have Youtubed them already, and frankly, the rest probably don't care.

What the biggest complaint in my household was, was how terribly hetero-normative the show was. Very heterosexual, very man and woman married, dreadful cliche after cliche, weddings, generalisations  about men as a whole and what it means to be a "man". For the first time in my life, I actually wished Ruby Rose was on screen. The running contest on the show hammered the hetero-normativity home, a $25 000 dreaming wedding contest. It was exclusionary (especially with the legislation of homosexual marriages in Australia), it was tacky, and it was driven by an overly simple commercial interest.

The Cooking Segments(s)

The cooking segment looked exactly the same as "9am with David and Kim". EXACTLY! The big difference is the segmentis broken up through the show so you don't have to sit through all of the steps. Another nice touch was also the move to a set table at the end of the show, lunch time, and having the hosts eat a yummy meal. This is absolutely excellent at anchoring the events of the show within the events of the home.

David Rayne was famous for his germ and food phobias, and he's been recast with the junk food loving Chrissie Swan. Kim Watkins, who loved a glass of wine, replaced with Gorgi. It's exactly the same! You could almost be fooled into thinking it was the same kitchen. Was it? Who knows.

Audience Letters

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqujXMlygGM[/youtube]

In summary

"The Circle" is a flawed show, but I was surprised to find some interest in the show, even if I wasn't amused by parts of it, it still held my interest. There were quite a few technical difficulties, which are expected on the first show, but are still jarring and break you out of any illusion you're part of this lounge room discussion. The general reception of the show has been quite poor. Tim Burrowes over at the good ol' Mumbrella collected some of the tweets on the show, and most were negative. Will I watch this over the other morning shows? Probably. Will I actively seek it out? Probably not.