Sam Pang has won the Gold Logie for the most popular person on Australian television. And in a showstopping surprise that capped an uncommonly entertaining ceremony, he was presented with the award by a tattered and torn Sharon Strzelecki – Magda Szubanski in her first public appearance since her prolonged cancer battle – dressed in Australia Zoo fatigues and looking for all the world like she’d just emerged from a tussle with a crocodile.
“I grew up watching television at the feet of my parents – they wouldn’t let me on the couch,” Pang joked in his acceptance speech. “But when you’re watching television in this country, you never think you’re going to be on it.”
Speaking in the media room backstage, he said it was a particular honour to receive the top award on a night when Deborah Mailman and Andrew Denton were being inducted into the Logie Awards Hall of Fame.
“I’ve become close with [Denton] over the last few years, and then for Sharon to be there, it was all surreal,” said Pang.
In a world that sometimes feels hopelessly shrouded in gloom and conflict, the 66th TV Week Logie Awards landed as something as welcome as it was unexpected – a warm embrace that did its very best to encompass Australia in all its breadth, strangeness and diversity. And Pang’s win, which makes him the second non-white person to take home the top gong, provided its perfect end.
This is the 70th year of television in this country, and while there are those who’d happily write its obituary, Sunday night’s ceremony showed there’s life in the old dog yet, and a good deal of love for it, too.
The choice of Robert Irwin as host was inspired. Groomed almost since birth to perform in the spotlight, he shouldered the unenviable task of fronting Australian TV’s favourite piñata – everyone loves to take a swing – with grace, humour, and a tight-fitting single-lapel tuxedo whose buttons seemed designed to pop open at the merest ripple of a well-honed torso. Wardrobe malfunction? Only if the fasteners didn’t pop as planned.
He danced, he joked, he shed his tux for the more familiar khaki bushwear, he draped an enormous snake around the tensed neck and shoulders of the never not-tense Luke McGregor, he did the worm on stage with Peking Duk. Yes, Pang was a tough act to follow, but with his distinctive style of enviro-showbiz razzle-dazzle, Irwin made this show his own.
He stamped his mark from the beginning, with a pre-recorded skit that incorporated Russell Coight, Glenn Robbin’s caricature of an Irwinesque figure. Then, as the ceremony proper kicked off, Irwin delivered a heartfelt acknowledgement to country, almost certainly the first-ever acknowledgement of that sort to grace a Logies. On a night on which Mailman basked in a standing ovation and the palpable love in the room, Goolagong won best miniseries, its star Lila McGuire was voted most popular newcomer, and so many other nominees were First Nations people, it was more than fitting.
Before the bleaters at Sky, now known as News24, start crowing about cultural elites, take note that this Logies made space for everyone. After RFDS won best drama – pipping the world-class Narrow Road to the Deep North, which started the evening as the most nominated program but ended it with just one win, for Simon Baker as best supporting actor – Emma Hamilton tried to put her finger on why the show matters.
“Telling regional Australian stories is incredibly important,” the actor who plays Dr Eliza Harrod said backstage. “Australia is a vast country, and a lot of the stories that get told on screen are centred on the coast. It’s beautiful to be able to reveal the spectacular landscape and the beating heart of this country, both with rural communities and First Nations communities, and everyone who makes up the fabric of the vast majority of this country.
“It is a privilege and an honour to bring those stories to life. I feel like I’ve grown as a person telling those stories, and I’m sure I’m not alone.”
Lisa Millar expressed similar sentiments after Muster Dogs won for best structured reality program.
Her duties as host of that show and Backroads, both for the ABC, meant she was on the road in rural and regional Australia for 125 days a year. “It’s really lovely to get out of the cities and rediscover how people feel about the ABC and feel about the programs,” she said.
Muster Dogs resonated, she suggested, because it’s a bit of an antidote to the grimness of the news. “It’s something people can switch on with their families and sit there with their kids. It makes them feel happy, it lifts their spirits, and I am so grateful that I get to be a part of that.”
With A Country Practice also being inducted into the Hall of Fame, the cynical might observe that the focus on the regions might have owed something to the fact Logies host Seven is particularly strong in those markets. But this didn’t really feel like a night for cynicism.
“I just want to spend as much time as I can pumping positivity out in the world,” said Irwin backstage after winning the award for most popular presenter.
Even Pang, whose biting humour had been a highlight of the past three years, was won over. “He’s doing a wonderful job,” he said when asked if he had any notes for the new kid. “It’s different, obviously, to the ones I did, but he’s just talented and wonderful and we’re all enjoying it.”
For all the warm glow, there was an inescapable sadness about the night, too. The passing of Sam Neill last month and of Johnny Young last week both landed hard, and the In Memoriam segment jolted with reminders of others gone in the past year: James Valentine, Mel Schilling, Derryn Hinch, David Stratton, John Laws, Rhoda Roberts, Terence Donovan and so many more.
Even there, though, there was a note of optimism to be found in the words of Neill, as relayed by his longtime friend Heather Mitchell.
“He took every opportunity to open his heart and share his life and his talent with all of us. He gave us courage and hope, and very fine wine,” said Mitchell.
“To quote Sam: ‘I know it’s easy to spiral down and think what’s the worst thing that can happen, but I encourage you to spiral up and think what’s the best thing that can happen. Look up. It’s blue.’”
