australian television information archive

Life has its secret sites

"IT'S a show about life," the website for the new Aussie TV show The Secret Life Of Us says.

"Where Evan, Kelly, Alex, Miranda, Richie, Will, Gabrielle and Jason get to face the big questions–like how much pizza to keep in the fridge for breakfast. Or the little questions–like am I gay or not?"

You get the idea that it is not the Brady Bunch–not that at least one of those questions would have been relevant to some of the people on that show.

We have to tell you what is on the official site for this great new show about young people in St Kilda because the website is not easy to find.

Head to Channel 10 (www.ten.com.au) and you will be greeted on the front page with a link straight to the sites of such classic TV shows as Judge Judy and Beauty and the Beast.

But persist through the links and you will discover a reasonable effort to promote this show that clearly has far more talent on screen than any television series deserves.

The frequently asked question section tells you things like "where have I seen Claudia Karvan before?" but doesn't answer the big questions, like where have they hidden all of St Kilda's ugly people and why don't these people ever go to work?

Disappointingly, the episode guide is already out of date.

Fans of the show will probably be more rewarded at The Secret Life of Us unofficial site (http://australiantelevision.cjb.net/ [this site's former address]) that acts as a portal to all things Secret Life Of Us-ish around the Net.

There is also an online club (http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thesecretlifeofus) for folk who like nothing better than to sit around and exchange views about this show.

It is here we discovered, thanks to the moanings of a whingeing Brit, that the show goes to air in London at the ridiculously late hour of 10.55pm. Given the appalling treatment Australian television fans have had over the years with great shows (West Wing, Buffy and a million others), it's easy to relate to this guy's plight.

Moving on from the television show, we went searching through the back alleys of the Web for other folk who have secret lives.

At the Amazon store (www.amazon.com), we found a book by the title The Secret Life of Bill Clinton. It makes you wonder what the world's most famous wife-cheater and confessed liar could still have that qualifies as a secret.

There is the film called The Secret Life of Girls (http://www.flp.com/films/unglued) that sounds like a porn movie but turns out to be about a girl dealing with a family crisis.

Elsewhere, we discovered the rather menacing sounding site The Secret Life of Machines (http://www.teamvideo.net/secret.htm). This is a set of 12 videos that contains a no doubt gripping series of documentaries on the topics of how your fridge and sewing machine work.

If the innards of boring household objects does it for you, you'll also like The Secret Life Of my Computer (http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/computer.htm), which looks at the energy used in producing the beige box, similar to the one I'm currently sitting in front of.

"In its manufacture my 55-pound computer generated 139 pounds of waste and used 7300 gallons of water and 2300 kilowatt-hours of energy," the site says. "It will use four times that much energy again during its lifetime, generated by a nuclear power plant, a coal-fired plant and hydropower from the flooded lands of the Cree people at James Bay."

And I must admit to adding to the methane gas problem on long, cold nights sitting in front of my beige energy zapper.

A site that caught our eye was The Secret Life of Superman (http://userweb.nashville.com/~al.schroeder/mar798.htm). Written by a fan, this tells about the raunchier side of the classic comic books, such as the story in which a Hollywood starlet rubbed herself against Jimmy Olsen and whispered the words "I'll show you how I can make love like Marilyn Monroe!"

Jimmy of course activated his Superman signal-watch and got the Man of Steel to rescue him from the woman's hot, passionate love.

There is Antonio Mendez's website (www.themasterofdisguise.com) My Secret Life in the CIA.

Clearly, in this wired world of the post-Cold War era, when spies come in from the cold they write a book, get on to the lecture circuit and set up a website.

Doesn't anyone keep a secret any more?

Rodney Chester
August 02, 2001
The Courier Mail