Sunday evening is fast becoming the best part of the week for TV thanks to Chanel 5* here - in the past four weeks at this time they've been showing nothing but top class movies I'd never heard of before. First it was Killer Flood (Imdb: 3.8), then it was NYC:Tornado Terror (Imdb: 3.6), then Polar Storm (with that guy from Heroes and which actually managed to make the Core look sophisticated) (Imdb: 3.8), followed by Tornado Warning (which managed to feature both aliens and electric tornadoes!) (Imdb: 3.0), and most recently Ice Twisters (Imdb: 4.1). They've really been giving the Movie Mix channel a run for their money. That channel happened to be showing Meteor Storm (Imdb: 3.6) at the same time (a change from a lineup made exclusively of sequels to the movie Sniper - none of which I needed to know exist). These beautiful examples of cinematic majesty often feature middle shelf Canadian actors with Vancouver and its environs standing in for New York, Chicago and just about anywhere else. They do magic with their minimal budgets and minimal acting talent, often constructing some sort of crisis situation room, be it NASA headquarters or Army command, from about 5 people (probably half the cast) and 2 computers. In particular I wish I'd known the Guardian had been live tweeting a broadcast of Tornado warning: ...running away from an electrical tornado. Again, if you're not watching this, imagine a toilet roll made of clingfilm with a string of Poundland Christmas lights inside it. That is exactly what an electrical tornado looks like. So what fantastic made-for-tv disaster movie featuring the worst tornado special effects will there be next week? Can't wait.. Update: Well they really pulled out the stops for this one - Tidal Wave : No Escape (Imdb: 4.0) It promised a lot when it started with titles that looked like something from my Amiga 20 years ago. And the main star - Corbin Bernsen! Well, at that stage it looked so good I had to just turn it off right there.

This is more specifically about the main commercial networks here. The ABC and SBS networks are actually pretty good; they show international news, good programming from the UK sometimes, and less mainstream movies. But the more popular channels - 7 and 9 in particular are just awful. They compete with each other for the worst kind of sensationalistic tabloid "news" magazine shows (even copying the theme music from American counterparts) - Today Tonight and A Current Affair are the worst - "what YOU need to know about welfare cheats!..and the NASA designed bra that can make you look 10-years younger!" The non-news content consists of showing either one of a long list of reality-TV derivatives (Australia's Got X-Factor Talent MasterChef Home Renovator!, or one of the versions of NCIS/Law&Order/Criminal Minds over and over and over. On the odd occasion they show a movie I'd actually like to watch the deliberately start it 10minutes late! All the feckin time. Update: An ad for Today Tonight that somewhat shows what I'm talking about. And an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that agrees with me

Channel 7 often shows cheap, made for TV movies from the States, but I think they recently passed their own high standard with their latest offering, Category 7: The End of the World. Given that the Hurricane scale only goes up to 5, there was an easy way to convey that this movie featured a VERY BIG storm. But no they didn't just go the easy way out and call it Category 6, no no. This was CATEGORY 7. Just look at this fantastic Z-list cast producers somehow managed to assemble: James Brolin, Robert Wagner, Shannen Doherty, that guy from Alien, some guy from CSI Miami, that lady from Bound, Krycek from the X-Files, some guy from Twin Peaks, and some random Aussie actor that Channel 7 tried to make light of. And of course no Z-list tv movie would be complete without..Randy Quaid. Of course the threat of a storm strong enough to destroy whole cities and suck one of the main bad guys out of a whole in the roof of the white house (that was the Dick Cheney "this storm will just blow over" character - aka - Windom Earle) is not enough of a story to fill 3 hours. So they include subplots with a religious cult and one with a bunch of hostages. Unfortunately I only saw the last three quarters of an hour - it was spread out over 3 hours on Channel 7, 2. That's right, they can't fit all the appalling tv onto one channel, they have to spread it over two. According to Wikipedia this z-movie fest was 4 hours long when broadcast in the states. And it seems it was filmed in just one location. Meaning all the sets and thus all the cities of the world were reproduced by various shots of Winnepeg, Canada. Fantastically appalling? It seems it must be because it was "nominated for multiple awards in 2006, including a Primetime Emmy Award for 'Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special'"