The Bolt Report
Channel 10 – Sunday 10am
THERE’S two ways to look at The Bolt Report.
Either it’s the funniest thing to hit Australian TV screens since Kingswood Country or it’s the worst television produced here since Chances.
But laugh or cry – this is train wreck viewing that is hard to ignore once the mistake has been made of hitting 10 on the remote button at 10am on Sundays.
If you have been fortunate/unfortunate enough to have not seen the show, this is what you have missed.
After some cheap graphics that end with an intimidating silhouette of the host, Bolt appears at a cheap looking desk and starts ranting.
He rants about Labor, he rants about Fairfax and rants about the general leftist/elite conspiracy that is stopping the nation moving towards the Bolt vision of its future.
Whether you enjoy agree with his politics or not, the real gold in this show is Bolt himself.
With his plum-in-the-mouth accent, a lack of natural screen presence and Channel 10’s low budget production values, the show seems like it has been shot and edited in the garage of a Toorak mansion with the help of iMovies.
Imagine Wayne’s World but with catchphrases like “party on dudes, but only if you don’t want to clean up the fiscal mess left by Labor and its union mates.”
Like the echo chambers of the internet, Bolt only interviews those who agree with his view of the world or those he can hector into agreeing.
There’s little room for debate when he has a panel of experts. Bolt makes a statement and then asks his guests to agree. They either agree outright or fudge an answer that doesn’t directly contradict the great man. That’s against the rules.
While people like Bill O’Reilly run similarly partisan programs on the US Fox network, Australians don’t like to be lectured to by their TV hosts.
Alan Jones tried it in the ’90s, but couldn’t translate his massive radio popularity in Sydney into the broader audience appeal of national TV.
The real pity of The Bolt Report is that its star can sometimes be an astute political commentator. But having made a very lucrative living out of his conservative shtick, he is locked into a tedious loop of Labor bashing and right-wing rhetoric.
But whatever your politics, it’s still worth tuning in occasionally to enjoy an hour of television that even Channel 31 would have baulked at.
– Danny Buttler
