By TANIA PHILLIPS
Winners & Losers, Channel 7, Tuesday’s at 9pm
WINNERS & Losers has returned to our screens as a bonafide member of the Seven Network’s A team.
After three years of being the show that replaces Packed to the Rafters in the second half of the year, Winners & Losers finally leaves the kiddies table and takes its place at the head of the ratings ‘big boys’ table – and it’s not just because Packed to the Rafters has finished.
Winners & Losers has been ‘the little show that could’, and now into its fourth season it has become a rating’s winner and ‘water-cooler’ show in its own right. Do people still have time to stand at water coolers and talk about TV shows or are we all just posting it on our facebook walls? If that’s the case then Winners & Losers is probably racking up Facebook frequent flyers points.
So why were we all wondering what happened to Zac, if Sophie would tell her friends about her knife wounds or how Jenny would cope after her abandoned wedding to Callum?
Heart! This is a show with a lot of heart and so it is easy to invest in the characters particularly as they have grown. And while it is a story of four women, at it’s heart has been the Gross family and in particular stand-out performances by comedians Denise Scott and Francis Greenslade as Trish and Brian Gross and Melissa Bergland as Jenny Gross.
I don’t know about you, but they are really what has kept me coming back after the first season where I dipped in and out and never quite found it ‘must watch television’. Then the second season that built steadily but was let down by a final episode that tried too hard to be suspenseful – until the final explosive moment!
However mid-way through the third series, Winners & Losers finally seemed to find it’s consistency and by the end of the year the humour (which was always pretty strong) nicely balanced out the drama without it all tipping too far into melodrama.
And while this is not as slick as Ten’s Offspring, there is enough heart to keep you coming back and switching on. And with the show now in the first half of the year (when we are still starved of decent television after a summer of sport, sport and more sport) it has the potential to capture even more hearts and ratings.
Let’s hope so anyway – because a good episode of Winners & Losers certainly beats another round of reality shows… hands down.
