We’re far from a usual TV romp
ROMPER STOMPER BBC 2, 11.35pm
What the hell are we meant to do now? Have you looked at today’s TV schedules? Notice anything wrong? Anything off? Of course you have – there aren’t any matches today.
Frankly, this World Cup has been so entertaining that many of us have just become insatiably greedy for more football. Going from three matches a day to none at all just seems needlessly cruel.
One of the more pleasant surprises of this tournament has been the lack of any violence and it would appear that all those dire warnings about the folly of messing with Russian hoolies has paid dividends.
But there is street violence of a different sort – well it’s fictional, for starters – on the BBC’s controversial new Aussie import, Romper Stomper
(BBC2, tonight, 11.35pm). An updated adaptation of Russell Crowe’s breakthrough movie of the same name, the TV version of Romper Stomper has caused as much controversy in its native land as the uncompromisingly violent
1992 movie version. While that film painted a bleak picture of Melbourne neo-Nazi gangs targeting Vietnamese immigrants, the plot has been updated to include Muslim immigrants, far-right thugs, the far-left thugs of Antifa and, interestingly, it also expands the film’s universe and brings in conservative media pundits and liberal politicians.
At a time of rising racial tensions in Australia, it’s hardly surprising that some people are up in arms about the show, but director Geoffrey Wright is scathing about the claims of the show prompting copy-cat attacks.
As he says: “People feeling or implying that if an audience were to watch
Romper Stomper all of a sudden they would drop all of their ethics they brought into the cinema and turn into the characters they were watching on the screen? That’s just nonsense.”
It takes guts to produce a show like this in the current climate...