The Strip

Q&A adjusts format to accommodate Malcolm Turnbull


Article from: The Courier-Mail

Diane Butler

September 25, 2008 12:00am

GOT your question for Malcolm Turnbull? Course you have. Here's mine: Malcolm, you worked as a journalist and now you're a multimillionaire. Please explain.
I think the only time Q&A has had just the one person on it before was when the show started and Kevin Rudd took the stage.
They might find they need to do it more often, have fewer people on at a time, because I imagine it's a bit of an ask coming up with five newsy, interesting guests each week.
Five who can talk. Without repetitive swearing. And who aren't repulsive to look at. I mean, ask yourself, how many people do you know who fit that bill?
So Malcolm Turnbull, the big star, gets his own show tonight. Exciting times.
I won't be watching obviously, because bits of it clash with The Strip.
Do you believe that story about Aaron Jeffery and whatshername getting together in real life? The two lead characters? I don't.
Here's what I think happened: a Channel 9 publicity meeting one Monday morning.
Not that it matters to us if they're actually together, the main thing is the gossip says they are, which is what we, the romantic general public, expect and demand of our celebrities.
Whoops - I just called Aaron Jeffery and Vanessa Gray celebrities.
Interesting how Aaron Jeffery is embroiled in an AVO-style divorce in the series when he's had his own ugly marital saga in real life.
Remember in 2006 he got a 12-month good behaviour bond after pleading guilty to assaulting his estranged wife?
I wonder if what we're witnessing up there on the small screen is in fact method acting? We'll never know.
Actually, I thought there was a degree of zing between Frankie Holden and the blonde curly-haired detective last week. I haven't seen every episode this season, I haven't missed anything crucial there have I? Because it was very strange, he held her chair out for her at one meeting they all had. Who does that in the workplace? So clearly that means Frankie and blondie will soon be going at it, possibly in that same chair.
We already know Frankie's a massive womaniser, he's had more marriages than The Donald. There's all that sea air, and stressful situations, and gun metaphors, I wouldn't be surprised.
And I was relieved - there was speedboat action and at least one meter maid.
I'd been starting to have grave suspicions that The Strip wasn't in fact being shot at a glamorous Gold Coast location riddled with bikinis but in the producers' office in the middle of Sydney.


www.couriermail.com.au

Aussie cop shows go head-to-head


The stadium is packed. The atmosphere is electric.
A silver microphone is lowered into the middle of a boxing ring, into the centre of a spot-lit glow.
The crowd falls silent, sudden anticipation abruptly halting their hand-claps and choking their chants, as if a silent spell has been cast.
A tuxedoed, Brylcreamed man takes the mike in his hand, sweeps it to his lips and, boom like thunder, his voice pierces every eardrum in the room.
Welcome to fight night – where the greatest battles on earth sort the men from the boys! What a contest we have for you tonight ...
I hope you’re not scared of blood, because this is going to get messy.
In the red corner, we have The Strip – lean, mean and mighty unclean, direct from the gutters of glitzy Surfers Paradise.
And in the blue corner, we have that cocky little city kid, who thinks he’s so good he only needs a one-word name: Rush!
Ready now, here they are facing off and ... FIGHT!
Yes, it’s been Aussie police dramas at 20 paces for the latter half of 2008’s ratings season and these two have been pitted head-to-head – or so the marketers would have you believe.
Truthfully, comparing The Strip (Nine, Thursdays, 8.30pm) and Rush (Ten, Tuesdays, 9.30pm) is like weighing up whether or not you’d like milk or battery acid in your tea.
Let’s break it down.
PREMISE
“The Strip is the hub of the Gold Coast, inhabited by the bold and the beautiful, the rich and the desperate and all those simple battlers who have followed their own dreams of paradise.
“The lure of a wonderful wealthy lifestyle has brought those who have it, those that want it, and the criminals who will take it if they can.
“Rush is an action drama series set in a new critical-incident response police unit. They're trained to be smarter, tactically superior and technologically advantaged – Melbourne's take on a cutting-edge trend in policing worldwide.
“Rush is an insider's view of police under pressure – defusing crises, saving lives, preventing crime rather than catching the bad guys after the deed is done.”
Ho-hum. At this point, The Strip clearly wins on the cliche scale. Extra points for use of the words “dreams of paradise” and “the bold and the beautiful”.
LOCATION
The Strip: Gold Coast.
Rush: Melbourne.
Sure, the Goldy has its share of spoilt little rich kids going all gangsta while crying over their spilt milk or toolies wreaking havoc with poor, impressionable kiddies come November, but, sorry, you ain’t gonna compete with Melbourne on the crime scale.
Um, hello, that’s where Underbelly happened, that’s where there are usually more shootings than pasta dinners on Lygon Street and that’s where Eddie McGuire AND Sam Newman live. That’s right, scary!
CAST
The Strip: Aaron Jeffery, Frankie J Holden, a whole heap of unknowns and Home & Away cast-offs.
Rush: Rodger Corser, Callan Mulvey, Catherine McClements, Samuel Johnson.
Rush’s trainers, Network Ten, lose major points – and maybe even a disqualification probe via the Court of Arbitration for Sport – not only for recycling their Underbelly stars in Corser and Mulvey, but for confusing viewers by putting them on the same side in Rush, when they were enemies in Underbelly.
Despite this, strong, believable performances prove hard work pays off. Great tension, great control and a captivating performance.
The Strip, however, just didn’t show up on this count – a sheet of wet cardboard would have been more animated.
LOOK
The Strip: glitzy and glossy, just like its location. But plastic melts in that harsh Gold Coast sun and just ends up looking ugly.
Rush: raw but crisp, with lots of shaky, hand-held, doco-style filming. Do they seriously think viewers actually get confused about whether or not they are watching Cops or a highly stylised TV production?
Rush is VERY unsteady on its feet, and while footwork and movement are excellent traits in the boxing ring, which is where we are, after all, they do not work so well for queasy viewers!
A dead heat, with melted plastic and vomit crossing the line simultaneously here. I told you it would be messy.
SCRIPT
The Strip: (example) Aaron Jeffery is going through a nasty marriage break-up. He pops around to his ex’s and is confronted by her.
“I’m tryin’ to save my marriage and I thought you would feel the same ... I never took you for a quitter.”
Bo-ring. These writers should give The Bold and the Beautiful a ring if they’re going to churn out rot like that.
Rush: (example) Catherine McClements is going through a nasty marriage break-up. She nicks her ex’s golf clubs.
They are seen in the back of her car during a scene with Rodger Corser. They are given a cursory glance and talked about briefly, then the scene moves on.
It’s handled skilfully and left as a tasty undercurrent that has the viewer wanting more.
PEDIGREE
The Strip: Knapman Wyld, producer of Wildside and East West 101.
Rush: created by John Edwards – he of Secret Life of Us, Love My Way, Police Rescue, The Surgeon, Fireflies, Big Sky and Stringer.
Rush wins. Hands down. ’Nuff said.
VERDICT
Rush by a total knockout. Ding ding ding!
— REBECCA MARSHALL

www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au

What happens on the Gold Coast...

25th September 2008, 10:00 WST



When shooting wrapped on Channel 9’s new cop drama, The Strip, media attention wasn’t focused on the quality of the acting, the CSI Miami feel of the show or the volume of bikini-clad flesh on show.
Much more interesting to the nation’s media was a burgeoning romance that was rumoured to have sprung up between two of the leading characters.
“I think Frankie J. Holden really spilt the beans a couple of weeks ago when he started talking about me and him,” deadpans Aaron Jeffery, who plays Detective Jack Cross in the show.
Thankfully, such a disturbing coupling exists only in Holden’s and Jeffery’s mind and it was a romance between Jeffery and co-star Vanessa Gray that had the women’s magazines in a tizzy.
Sitting across from the pair at a riverside restaurant in Perth, it is clear there is a certain chemistry between them.
A chemistry that translates to their performances on The Strip, with Gray’s wonderfully flawed Detective Tully proving a perfect foil for the hard-nosed intensity of Jeffery’s Cross.
Asked if the stories are true that the pair are contemplating a move to Los Angeles together, both are quick to respond.
“Thirty days isn’t exactly ‘moving’,” Gray says with incredulity.
“She’s going for a month and I’m going for a couple — we were going anyway,” Jeffery says.
Travelling to LA to investigate work opportunities will seem like more of a holiday than the past few months they’ve spent on the Gold Coast, where the 13 episodes of The Strip were largely filmed.
Both actors speak of long days shooting, leaving little time to get into the sort of “what happens on the Gold Coast, stays at the Gold Coast” stories we all so desperately want to hear.
Talking to Holden, who plays Inspector Max Nelson, a couple of weeks ago revealed Jeffery had found a small bag of cocaine in an elevator within hours of arriving at the Gold Coast and Jeffery confirms this Holden anecdote is true.
“That’s a true story . . . I walked into the lift the first night and there was a little bag sitting there,” Jeffery says.
“I looked up at the security camera and thought, ‘This must be a set-up’.”
When Gray is asked to contribute a story, there are a few false starts as Jeffery vetoes anecdote after anecdote, leading to a rather tame recollection of the meter maids, who incidentally feature quite prominently in the show. All this talk of bikini-clad flesh and meter maids might make it seem that The Strip is all style and no substance but this would be an incorrect assumption.
Granted, style is a big part of the show, from the lingering shots of girls getting out of swimming pools to the aerial footage of Surfers Paradise breakers crashing on white sandy beaches — this is a show with a very specific aesthetic.
And it is an aesthetic that closely mirrors the glossy American cop shows like the CSI franchises. But it is produced by people who have highly credentialled cop dramas like Wildside and East West 101 on their resumes so you shouldn’t dismiss how much substance they’ve imbued the plots and characters with.
Though The Strip follows a standard someone-dies-at-the-start formula that is always miraculously wrapped up by episode’s end, there is an over-arching narrative that flows in and out of the show.
And it is something that builds as the episodes progress, rewarding the viewers who have stuck with it.
But the key is the performances of Gray and Jeffery in the lead roles.
For Jeffery, a former McLeod’s Daughters star, it is confirmation of his leading man status and for Gray, who grew up on a pig farm in the Perth Hills and is a trained hypnotherapist, it is a loud announcement that she’s arrived as a serious acting talent.
Expect to see a lot more of both of them in the future.

The Strip is on tonight at 8.30 on Nine.



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