Phoenix

This is one of the finest series I've seen. Concentrating on the main thread, each episode has different themes, which all come together at the end. Brilliant! Sadly, the second series went off the rails and, yet again, they killed off great potential. Worth anyone watching - you need to watch carefully, but it's so gripping that's no problem.

On my shortest list of all-time favourite TV detective series. Cracker, Prime Suspect, Foyle's War, Silent Witness and Morse are all superb, but Phoenix remains in a class of its own. A single crime is the thread of a story spanning 13 episodes, leading the viewer through every step of the investigation; the false trails, the lucky breaks, the painstaking slog, the brilliant insights - and the all-too-plausible departmental intrigues. It had me hooked completely from the start, counting the days from one episode to the next. Nothing glossed over, no paranormal visions, no leaps of faith to help point out the killers - just gritty, meticulous police work, wonderfully scripted and acted. As far as Australian police TV drama goes, there's Phoenix, Scales of Justice and Blue Murder, then Janus and Wildside, then daylight.

Of all the TV series I have watched - which include most western productions (including American and British) - this is by far the best. Brilliant direction, acting, cinematography and editing. The storyline, while based on an actual event where two police officers are killed by a bombing, is just outstanding. It is uncontrived, honest and so real that you can just feel it. In my humble opinion there can be little doubt that this series is, to date, the zenith of television production in Australia - and the equal of anything in the world (and that says a lot coming from a New Zealander!).

The only disappointment is that this series has never got the awards and critical acclaim outside of Australia that it deserved. While this series was produced in 1992, it is only being matched in quality by series produced a decade later. Current series that come close to the quality of Phoenix include "Criminal Intent" and "Special Victims Unit".

The weakest times of this series appear and quickly vanish in the first couple of episodes of the second series; two series were made, and the first is, in some respects, the better of the two: the labyrinthine narrative moves at a slightly quicker pace, while still allowing ample room for character development - this is not to detract from the second series, however - once it gets going it is every bit as good as the first (although lacking a couple of the core characters).

And characters are indeed what makes this at least the best police series ever made in this country (and there have been many), if not the best police series anywhere. Often in this genre characters are reduced to a few quick punchlines and mild caricature. Here, the realist stylistic trajectory taken by the series' creators requires that character development takes place to a level much more at home in the feature film - it being a linear continuing narrative there is not only room for this but it makes it all the more involving, no matter how slowly the overall narrative seems to be moving; these characters are not black-and-white good-and-evil cops of the other police series of the era or contemporary series - these police are more akin to police in film-noir, bureaucrats in kafka or characters in late 1990s legal dramas (although these seem to be drifting back towards black-and-white) - they are individualists, morally ambiguous - while they realise they exist within a system that's restrictive (and not always there for a good reason), they also know what they're trying to achieve and how they can manipulate it to get what they want. Even the sidebar characters (note particularly Bill Hunter's character in one episode of the first series) are well developed. Both series are very much driven by personal concerns; this is not about orthodox legal justice, this is about revenge. The first series, in the wake of a direct, violent attack on the police themselves, is particularly intense in this respect. Narrative is never predictable - the twists and turns of the second series as things seem to get increasingly serious are a high point - the constant re-starts of the investigation keep the interest alive. This realist, unpredictable narrative as well as deep, developed, and ambiguous characters makes for compelling television; adding to this is the fact that it draws its visual stylistic largely from shock-tactic road safety ads which hit screens in Victoria in 1989. That the first series was at least tacitly based on the investigation of a real bombing (which took place outside the Melbourne City Watchhouse in 1986, killing a young female constable in very similar circumstances to the female victim in Phoenix I) gives it all the more resonance for local residents who remember.

The changed political climate between 1991 (the first series) and 1993 (the second series) is also evident; a conservative state government coming to power in 1992 at the height of a recession means the investigations in the second series are hampered almost to the point of collapse by budget cuts and penny pinching by bureaucrats; while the series itself appears to have gone in the opposite direction - from the trembling, average quality (but not without a certain charm) telecine, sparse, tight narrative and cheap sets of the first series to sharp, immaculate images, an endless supply of locations and a considerably larger cast in the second series, room is given to develop the milieu of early 1990s, run-down melbourne in a more effective way, offsetting the less resonant narrative surrounding aggrevated burglaries.

Also of note is the excellent soundtrack by well-known jazz musician and composer Paul Grabowsky.

For students of the police procedural, Phoenix is well worth a look: it is probably the best - best written, most interestingly shot, deepest in terms of social insight and most representative of its period - ever produced in Australia, if not anywhere. Even the excellent Wildside rarely comes close - it is too prone to fits of commercially-conscious melodrama.

N.B: It is occasionally re-run by the ABC late at night; unfortunate, however, is that to buy it on VHS (or any video format; duplication is done exclusively by request) costs AUD$1100.

I'm over the moon. The ABC has finally released the first season of "Phoenix" as a box set and it has just arrived. I have waited for this moment for years and after watching the first episode I now recall what made this series the cop drama benchmark that it truly is.

The story, which was based on a real-life bombing, actually moved along quite slowly but each hour went by so quickly that it seemed like a few minutes. Every character was fleshed out and whole, even those with small parts. Looking back, it is astonishing that the whole series is concerned with the investigation of one major crime. It was totally absorbing and so very life like. It was the first that compelled me to watch it every week. All other TV dramas I could miss a week or two, but Phoenix was mandatory viewing as far as I was concerned.