Pam casellas: final ratings push

PAM CASELLASThe West Australian This week begins the final thrust for the line in the annual ratings stakes and so wherever you look there are tempting little treats. First out of the blocks

is FlashForward on Channel 7 tonight, a series which has been heavily promoted for what feels like weeks now. But be warned: you need to concentrate hard to work out what's happening.

It goes like this. On one fine ordinary morning there is a cataclysmic event which, it turns out, has taken a few minutes from everyone's lives. And in that time, everyone gets a

glimpse of what their life will be in six months time. As a dramatic device, it has a lot to recommend it. Think about it. Is that a different partner you are dining with? Are you working in

a new job, perhaps, or living in a different house? More importantly, what if you are the only person you can find who didn't see into the future? Does it suggest - oo-er - you have no

future? Now, another word of advice: apart from concentrating hard, you need to stick with it until the last moment, because therein lies a clue. Of course there is - television makers are

not silly. They know you might otherwise slope off to bed. So that's the first newcomer away. The next events happen, in a major way, on Wednesday when Channel 10 starts Celebrity

MasterChef. Given the experience of the first series, it is hard to see how this can be a failure. Channel 9, however, will be hoping otherwise because, after a lot of re-thinking, it has

scheduled the first of the two Hey Hey Reunion specials partly against it. Channel 9 originally scheduled these on Tuesday night against, among other programs, Packed to the Rafters. But the

continuing success of the Rafters has scared them off and they moved it to Wednesday, obviously believing that Seven's combination of The World's Strictest Parents and City

Homicide was a softer target. Time will tell whether that is the case. These two specials will test the water on whether the return of Hey Hey It's Saturday, or some variation based on

the former hit show, is a good idea. In other words, if you watch these in numbers, you have only yourself to blame if Daryl Somers takes up residence again. Each is particularly long -

two-and-a-half hours - so if they are not popular Nine will have a gaping hole in the night's ratings. The ABC gets into the action, too, with a new series called Hungry Beast, also on

Wednesday. Phew. This is another from Andrew Denton's Zapruder's Other Films. Potentially it is the most original in the list but describing it is a difficult task. Basically it

goes like this: the working title was Project Next, which is a clue. A nationwide search has found 19 newcomers as contenders for the "next" generation of Australian TV performers.

Their task each week is to produce a topical half hour of TV, with associated weblinks and made up of stories not in the daily news round. Denton, ever the wit, says that when asked what

the show will be like, team members say that it will be "somewhere between the 7PM Project and The 7.30 Report". Which, when you think about it, is a very neat concept. The risk,

however, is that it might be more like The Spearman Experiment which turned out to be a poor thing. Its national audience is well below the magic million. But then, The 7PM Project is down

to 630,000 and it is still in the schedules and, to be fair, is not falling further. GET THE LATEST NEWS FROM THEWEST.COM.AU IN YOUR INBOX. Sign up for our emails