Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 30 April
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
As we begin the descent into winter, wave goodbye to daylight savings and fire up the heating, it’s time for a look at all things TV — with our favourite couch potatoes. Long-time critic Debi Enker will be joined by Luke Buckmaster, Stephanie Van Schilt and Craig Mathieson to wax lyrical about our second — or is it third? — golden age of television: the ongoing classics, new shows and returning series on which we’re about to binge.
Together, they’ll dig into some of the big questions facing the small-screen. How are we faring locally, given Australian content laws and our increasing appetite for the slick, well-funded offerings of the HBOs of the world? What are our successful exports, and why? And as the dust settles on the idiot box of old, what emerging platforms are proving popular and meeting — or manipulating — our transforming viewing habits? All will be up for discussion by our team of TV critics ... and if you fancy yourself a bit of a telly fanatic, we’ll wrap up with a quiz where you can prove your prowess.
Featuring
Debi Enker
Debi Enker has been writing about film and television for more than 20 years – long enough to have written reviews of Mad Max 3 and Far East for the late and lamented film magazine, Cinema Papers.
She writes regularly about TV for the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and is the television columnist for the Age Green Guide and the TV critic for Jon Faine’s Morning Show on ABC Radio 774 in Melbourne.
She has contributed to a number of books about film and television and at recent Screen Producers’ Association of Australia conferences and has hosted sessions with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and Downton Abbey executive producer Gareth Neame.
Stephanie Van Schilt
Stephanie Van Schilt is editor of The Lifted Brow and co-host of The Rereaders podcast. The former TV columnist for Kill Your Darlings, Stephanie's writing has featured in various publications including Metro, Crikey, Junkee and the Big Issue.
She's currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Monash University and tweets @steph_adele.
Luke Buckmaster
Luke Buckmaster began writing about cinema and TV in 1997. Back then Tamagotchis were all the rage, Scottish scientists cloned a sheep named Dolly and the word “Google” sounded like something you did with binoculars.
He is currently writer and film critic for the Guardian Australia and writer and film critic for Crikey. He has contributed to a wide range of other publications including VICE, the Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Senses of Cinema, ArtsHub, ScreenHub, Filmink and The Big Issue, and for the past two years has presented digital literacy workshops on the topic of film and TV in social media for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Craig Mathieson
Craig Mathieson is a television critic for Fairfax Media, writing in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald on the medium’s new shows, trends, and successes. He is also the film critic for the Sunday Age, and writes widely about popular music for Fairfax Media — as well as being the author or co-author of five books on contemporary sounds.