Keith Gow, Writer

A monthly round-up of what I've seen, watched and listened to. This month I'll talk about the best-of-the-best in each category and then give a quick overview of the rest.
SEE I binge-watched a bunch of stand-up comedians at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival early in the month, saw a show each at the Melbourne Theatre Company and Malthouse Thetare, as well as a little show called The Road to Woodstock at Chapel Off Chapel.


Spotlight on... Sara Pascoe vs History

I see a lot of theatre - plays and musicals, mostly. I love being won over by a piece of theatre. I go in with the attitude of "give me your best" and I really hope that happens. But when I watch plays or musicals, I can usually see the work that's gone into it. I watch and my brain tries to figure out how it works - whether as stage craft or just on the level of writing. If I'm loving a play, it can inspire me - to be better, to try new things. If I'm hating a play, I'm pulling it apar…

Let me let you in on a little secret – if season two of Sonnigsburg ever happens, we know where the story is headed. But if we only ever make six episodes, it’s a satisfying and self-contained story. It’s the whole first story we wanted to tell. We started with a premise, had a good idea of where episode six ended and worked our way to that ending.

Writer Javier Grillo-Marxauch, who worked on the first season of Lost, posted a lengthy essay on his blog recently – discussing the old accusation that the series’ writers were just “making it up as we went along”. For me, the essay went a long way to explain a fundamental truth – writing for television is nearly always being made up as it goes along. That’s the nature of television production.

Grillo-Marxauch does a great job at explaining the pressure the writing staff were under to build that first season on the back of an incredible pilot episode – a pilot that wasn’t necessarily written to begin the story they ended up telling. The pr…