Collector's Item

The Age

Saturday May 3, 2008

Raymond Gill

Raymond Gill is one of the many fans of this Friday night treasure.

IS IT FAINT PRAISE TO SAY THE ABC's Collectors is the best thing on TV?

Well, it's not meant that way. Lord knows Australian television is full of good stuff - the crazy unpredictability of that lunatic-eyed woman from the discount blinds ads, the series of informative and powerfully lit BrandPower commercials, Gladiators and, of course, anything with Catriona Rowntree in it.

But nothing competes with the reassuring comfort of settling in for a Friday's night entertainment with Collectors, which has become the flagship of all ABC arts and entertainment, in as much as the ABC dares to present arts in prime time.

Judicially programmed just before Midsomer Murders where at least one cozy murder occurs every week in an otherwise idyllic English village, this show is produced from another charmingly snug village (but with a lower body count and slightly less chintz): Hobart.

But don't think this panel show about collectables and antiques is for cardiganed seniors nodding into their Horlicks only to be woken by grumpy Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby finding yet another body impaled on the spine of Delia Smith's Ways with Pudding.

No way! Everybody loves Collectors - from the early-middle-aged who watch, slumped, smoking spliffs, down to disco bunnies who tune in as they drop a vial or two of G before the night's clubbing, and through to ordinary people like you and me just wanting to get the skinny on antique jelly moulds or how to distinguish Georgian grape scissors from Queen Anne forceps.

No one can resist the appeal of the most talented ensemble on TV, the spunkily Tin Tin-like Andy Muirhead and his talented crew: his very own Captain Haddock, the Scottish antiques guru Gordon Brown, director Neil Armfield's doppelganger the sociologist Professor Adrian Franklin, and the charismatically self-possessed museum curator Niccole Warren, who is the show's resident Emma Peel. Sitting in their bric-a-brac-inspired set, this fab foursome ooze that seamless on-air camaraderie that hasn't been seen since Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley ad libbed their way through the 7.27am segment on America's Today Show in its '80s heyday.

The Collectors dream team members kick back on their sofa as they dispense casual authority and rich information on matters of importance such as salt-glazed Bendigo pottery or the history of button collecting, for instance.

Yes, this show has it all. Romance (with the past), surprise (who knew that a pewter dildo was, in fact, a 17th-century leech-removing device?) and even thrills, as the talented trio guesses the value of an antique before an auctioneer's gavel comes down. You can have your fancy sadistic thrill kills on CSI Poughkeepsie, but who wouldn't be excited by the fact that Niccole can guess that a tea caddy with a secret compartment made for the Viscount of Ye Olde Days will reach $1275?

Another satisfying element of Collectors is the warm glow you feel from not being a collector yourself. Watching with wonder as Helen of Myrtleford reveals her collection of 1700 salt and pepper shakers, you feel that little self-congratulatory fillip that at a critical, perhaps empty, juncture in your life you resisted the urge to comb church fetes in search of anything more exotic than a rich-chocolate sponge cake.

Which brings us back to Midsomer. As the Collectors credits come to a close, keen-eyed ABC viewers will be combing the set dressing of one of the world's most tedious detective shows, looking for some Georgian toy library stairs, smug in the knowledge that if Andy, Niccole, Gordon and Adrian landed in Midsomer their soft-furnishing forensic skills would locate the murder weapon faster than Tom Barnaby could contort his face into another grumpy grimace.