Equating journalism to an iceberg, this is the bigger, largely below water, challenge – one performed with eclat by Ferguson, Masters and the ABC doco team.įrom the opening titles complemented by Schubert's Piano Trio No 2 in E flat major – also used in the Stanley Kubrick film, Barry Lyndon – to tightly edited, atmospheric film of Commonwealth cars carrying pollies whizzing round Canberra, and politicians and staffers pacing the corridors of power in Parliament House, the viewer is drawn into a world that has endless fascination, but can, and does, turn pear-shaped.īut first The Killing Season takes us through Rudd's astonishing success as leader of the ALP Opposition. The challenge is to seduce, inveigle, charm, or persuade your way into their confidence, and secure the interviews. This involves picking a dramatic, significant event, or events, in the recent past that has/have undergone some form of closure, so key players feel free to unload, venting their feelings and settling some scores on the way. The Killing Season is an example of what television does best. The period is covered in this documentary by presenter Sarah Ferguson and principal producer Deborah Masters – sister of Sue Masters, one of Australian television's most successful developers of TV dramas, and of award winning current affairs documentary maker Chris Masters and the Sydney Morning Herald rugby league writer Roy Masters. This started in December 2006, when Kevin Rudd destroyed Kim Beazley's leadership of the parliamentary Labor Party, and ended on September 7, 2013, when Tony Abbott administered the electoral axe on the ALP. But the paradox of The Killing Season is that its brilliant use of the television medium sows the seeds for its own limitation, because Milburn's question is never really answered.Īs the title implies, there was something primal in the blood lust, anger, thirst for revenge, double-crossing, back-stabbing and all-round bastardry – and not just on the Labor side – that characterised that period in Australian politics. It is compelling viewing – dramatic, engrossing, revealing, tautly edited and superbly art directed. The final episode was screened on the ABC last night. He is speaking at the close of The Killing Season, a three-part documentary lasting almost four hours. Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd have varying memories of the events of their prime ministerships. For a few weeks, Milburn was a sort of ex officio campaign manager for Australian Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard in prosecuting her dismal 2010 election campaign. The speaker is Alan Milburn, a former UK cabinet minister and close adviser of the British Labour Party's most electorally successful leader, Tony Blair. No one can escape blame for that, in my view." "I've never seen anything quite like it in any country, anywhere, anytime, in any part of the world. The ABC political documentary, The Killing Season, poses this big question: "How is it possible that you win an election in November 2007 on the scale that you do, with the goodwill that you have, with the permission that you're gifted by the public, and you manage to lose all that goodwill, to trash the permission and to find yourself out of office within just six years? "
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