From Mike Carlton in Saturday's SMH ...
Bastard Boys, the ABC's drama about the 1998 waterfront war, has aroused the entirely predictable fury of the ABC-haters. Their attack has been two-pronged. One, to sneer that the show was a turgid melodrama and a waste of money. Two, to screech that the whole thing was a nefarious left-wing conspiracy to damage the Howard Government in this election year.Me, I thought it was terrific. On a technical level, it was elegantly directed and shot: for one thing, it takes high cinematographic art to light an entire dockyard at night. The script hummed along, with appropriate moments of tension and light relief. Writers and actors did a masterful job of capturing the authentic cadences of Australian dialogue.
Having spent some time covering that brawl between Patrick and the Maritime Union, I'm also prepared to say that, allowing for reasonable dramatic licence, Bastard Boys got the story about right. If anything, the Howard Government escaped rather lightly.
I too thought the ABCs production was an excellent depiction that caught the nuances fairly accurately. It certainly captured the irony of the union winning the conspiracy court battle at every stage through to the high court, only to lose the war when they had to bend and provide realistic workplace reforms.
Shows of this calibre prove the value of an independent ABC.
Coming in late on this but I agree. The show has been criticized for appearing to give the dockers and union people a filled out life with families etc but showing Corrigan as a one dimensional figure - and therefore being biased. The first episode was a bit like this but the second made up for it well in that by the end one could almost sympathise with the man.
It's also been criticized for being ponderous but it was such a complicated story that I can't see any other way it could have been done other than to take the issues steadily. And even so there was some wonderful tension and great humour.
I'm grateful to the ABC for telling the story. There was a certain delight, I have to confess, in seeing Reith and Howard so comprehensively dumped in it. Such a pity that the ultimate legal conspiracy case had to be dropped for expediency.