Pop CultureNovember 9, 2017

How does Outrageous Fortune hold up in 2017?

Guest writer

Seven years ago today, Outrageous Fortune ended forever. To mark the occasion, Madeleine Holden rewatched the entire series to see if the years have been kind.

As a bona fide West Aucklander myself, I have fond memories of watching Outrageous Fortune the first time around. The show followed the lives of a West Auckland family with a long criminal history trying to live on the right side of the law and became a beloved hit in Aotearoa, airing for six seasons and producing a whopping 107 episodes in total.

I recall Outrageous Fortune portraying working-class West Aucklanders in a comedic but sympathetic light; never sneering down its nose and ridiculing its subjects like Little Britain did so egregiously in the UK at about the same time. (For any outside readers, Outrageous Fortune centres around a family of “Westies”, or white, working-class West Aucklanders, roughly the equivalent of bogans in Australia, chavs in the UK, and rednecks in the US.)

Giving the show another crack reminded me that its overwhelming strength is its characters. Cheryl West remains a force to be reckoned with: she’s brash, funny and nurses a heart of gold under her rough exterior, and her two-steps-forward-one-step-back approach to keeping her family clean drives the plot along. She’s a fierce protector of her family and the vulnerable – a memorable moment is when she snaps, “Leave her alone, Noel, she’s not a melon!” at a sleazy supermarket manager who sexually harasses female staff.

The diversity of characters on the show is laudable, and the depth of the female characters holds up well in 2017. Antonia Prebble’s character, Loretta, is another jewel in the show’s cast; a proto-April Ludgate teen constantly rolling her eyes and dripping with sarcasm. She has a hilariously antagonistic relationship with her sister Pascal (“What’s up, Slutty?”), who also remains a genuinely comedic character and eerily reminiscent of girls I knew in high school. The perennially deadpanning hornbag Ted, played by the late Frank Whitten, is another reliable source of laughs.

Speaking of horniness, the show is still noteworthy for its no-nonsense approach to sex. The very first episode opens with a steamy handjob scene involving Cheryl and her soon-to-be-incarcerated partner, Wolf, shortly before their house is raided by cops. By the time the final episode aired, we’d seen Jethro’s te reo lesson turn into a cunnilingus session; wayward family friend Eric rooting a blow-up doll; an on-duty cop jacking off to pictures of Pascalle; pyromaniac Sparky wanking to a video shop blaze; the youngest West family member, Loretta, losing her virginity to a Corrections Officer; and pretty much every possible permutation of characters hooking up with each other.

The show is similarly straightforward when it comes to the topic of drugs and alcohol. The stimulant-addled Sparky is seen sniffing bumps of speed in broad daylight while Van and his stoner mate Munter are near-constantly blazed. There are spiked drinks and slipped ecstasy pills before we’re so much as through season one, and the Double Brown flows abundantly in every episode. West Auckland’s real-life problem with meth (or “P”) is reflected when Luther is revealed to be the region’s biggest cook of the stuff, and family lawyer Corky gets hooked on it. The show’s gritty portrayal of West Auckland’s underbelly has stood the test of time.

However, Outrageous Fortune has aged much more poorly when it comes to its treatment of race and gender issues. It doesn’t take long to encounter the first blunder: in the first episode, scallywags Van and Munter encounter an elderly Asian woman when they rob the Hong family’s home. Her race is immediately played for laughs, as she strikes a martial arts pose while “mystical” Asian music plays in the background. Cringeworthy jokes about the family name follow – “the Hong house, more like the Wong house” (as in wrong, ha… ha?) – and straight-up racial slurs are right around the corner, when Van is told he must do work on the Hong family’s house to make amends (“Pretty suckarse future being Chinky’s bumboy”, he says).

It’s not a one-off, either. Jethro pretends to be Māori to get a job at his law firm, revealing it to the partners in his interview and telling them he didn’t put it on his CV because he’s not in favour of “preferential treatment”. Yes, that’s right, the famed preferential treatment of Māori in law firms. Things go from bad to worse when Loretta puts on a faux Māori accent while addressing a partner in Jethro’s firm: “When are you gonna stop exploiting my bro, eh? Let him work for the good of the tangata whenua!” The treatment of sexuality and gender is about as thoughtful – tired stereotypes about gay women are trotted out in the episode where Cheryl is worried Loretta might be gay, for example (she’s not into shopping – you know what that means!). Of course, Outrageous Fortune doesn’t pretend to be portraying flawlessly woke characters, but a lot of this stuff still feels really unnecessary and doesn’t reflect well on the show’s writers.

The other anachronism is how much of a behemoth the show is; a relic from the days of tuning in to TV3 to watch one 45-minute episode a week. It’s a mammoth binge watch, with a whopping 22 episodes in the show’s longest season and most others clocking in at 18 or 19. A decade ago, endless side plots could be entertained and a tight storyline didn’t matter so much, because you were being drip-fed a single episode a week. These days, the freewheeling storylines feel a bit exhausting and you’re left wishing for shorter, snappier seasons.

Despite these criticisms, though, the show still largely holds up. The characters are loveable and entertaining, the humour and warmth is quintessentially Kiwi, and it’s a funny, feel-good show. It’s encouraging that Antonia Prebble’s acting chops are being utilised in Westside, the spinoff prequel, and that the lives of humble Westies are still considered good fodder for New Zealand TV in 2017. If you were a big fan of Outrageous Fortune the first time around, it’s worth another trip down memory lane.

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Pop CultureNovember 9, 2017

The Dutch version of Top of the Pops was absolutely wild

Calum Henderson

Production editor

A vast YouTube archive reveals the weird, wonderful and sometimes genius parallel universe of TopPop – the Netherlands’ anything-goes answer to Top of the Pops.

Think of a band, any band, so long as they had an international chart hit in the 1970s or 80s. There is a pretty good chance that band lip-synced that song on the Dutch music television show TopPop. There is an even better chance that the performance in question is incredibly bloody weird.

Honey we shrunk Rod Stewart (Source: TopPop Archive)

The Dutch answer to the UK’s Top of the Pops was broadcast from 1970 to 1988, featuring the latest hits from both domestic and international artists. Since few international acts included the Netherlands on their tour schedules, filming of a lot of the international performances was outsourced to studios in the US or UK. Across the board, little to no creative boundaries appear to have been put in place.

Thin Lizzy thrash it out in front of the green screen (Source: TopPop Archive)

The official TopPop YouTube channel hosts more than a thousand (and still growing) performances which run the spectrum from pure class to utter depravity. Almost all of them feature one or more of the following: bizarre or inappropriate stage props, creative green screen techniques, appallingly lackluster attempts at pretending to play an instrument, unjustifiably bad fashion, strangely hypnotic dance routines… In other words it is a digital treasure trove containing some of the greatest and most creative music videos from a time before music videos were even a thing.

Please enjoy the following examples.

Iggy Pop – ‘Lust For Life’ (1977)

Iggy Pop was reportedly very mad about having to inauthentically lip sync his 1977 single, which is why he doesn’t bother to open his mouth for half the words of what is probably the most infamous TopPop performance of all time. There is a lot of writhing around the floor, and he also manages to destroy a stage lighting unit and tear a frond off a decorative palm tree and wave it around a bit. “If it’s tense it’s because I have to make it tense, otherwise some director or floor man would be telling me what to do,” he said in an interview following the performance.

Plastic Bertrand – ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’ (1977)

From the same year as Iggy Pop, the 70s least authentic punk Plastic Bertrand’s bubblegum classic ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’ features one of the show’s most inspired props: a full-size trampoline. The Belgian idol performs a variety of simple bounces while a rarked-up studio audience goes buck wild around the perimeter of the tramp.

Lindsey Buckingham – ‘Trouble’ (1982)

A strong contender for the surliest and most reluctant performance ever recorded for TopPop as Fleetwood Mac genius Lindsey Buckingham suffers his way through solo hit ‘Trouble’, unconvincingly miming the song’s flamenco guitar flourishes on an electric guitar. The only other person in the studio who cared less about their job appears to be in charge of the lighting.

George McCrae – ‘Rock Your Baby’ (1974)

It’s all very well to enjoy watching an artist hate their life, half-heartedly and sarcastically miming their song. The real pleasure is to be found in watching an entertainer go about their work whole-hearted, with style and grace and charisma. Here George McCrae gives an absolute masterclass in the art, captivating with a subtle slide of his hips, crooning his masterpiece straight down the camera, all in front of a green screen onto which will inexplicably be projected a proto-Windows 95 screensaver.

Luisa Fernandez – ‘Lay Love on You’ (1978)

Luisa Fernandez’s 1978 disco hit already had a pretty uneasy vibe courtesy of the whispered male backing vocal on the chorus. That, plus the way the young Spanish singer dances like some kind of human marionette, catapults this into the upper echelons of creepy TopPop performances.

Rod Stewart – ‘Tonight’s The Night’ (1976)

During the 1970s TopPop seemingly employed one of the most talented props departments in the world. Here, for example, Rod Stewart sings his sultry ballad ‘Tonight’s The Night’ standing in the middle of a giant pair of headphones. Hard to tell if this helps or hinders him, but he puts in a hell of a performance all the same.

Brian Eno – ‘Seven Deadly Finns’ (1974)

A superb example of TopPop’s imaginative approach to green screen technology (see also: Thin Lizzy ‘The Rocker’ from 1971 and David Bowie ‘Rebel Rebel’ from 1974). Creative camera angles and kaleidoscopic effects provide appropriately buzzy visuals for a rare performance by the dark shark himself.

Tight Fit – ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ (1982)

One of the risks of watching too many of these videos in a row is that you end up in a bad place and it all starts to feel a bit depressing. This one, in which a miserable caged lion is forced to endure pop nobodies Tight Fit clumsily miming their way through a shithouse version of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, is potentially the bleakest one there is. Turn back!

Sheila E – ‘The Belle of St Mark’ (1984)

Prince is a notable absence from the TopPop archive, but there are a couple of Prince-adjacent acts who carry the torch. Here Sheila E and band put in a classy performance of ‘The Belle of St Mark’, including one of the archive’s more competent (ie more or less in time) full band dance routines.

Feargal Sharkey – ‘A Good Heart’ (1985)

As the MTV era took hold TopPop reined in many of its extravagant production values, but the best artists remained true to the show’s creative spirit. Feargal Sharkey shows an admirable dedication to spectacle by turning up with a band including two drummers, two backing singers, two guitarists and a bloke playing the clarinet – even though there doesn’t appear to be a clarinet anywhere in the song.

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