![]() ![]() ![]() The final shoot for the team at All Saints nears, bringing to a close 12 seasons over 11 years for the Seven medical soap. In that time it has brought us many memorable actors including Georgie Parker, John Howard, Libby Tanner, Erik Thomson, Christopher Gabardi, Wil Traval, Joelene Anderson, Conrad Coleby, Chris Vance and the late Mark Priestley. Judith McGrath remains the only cast member to have worked on the show from beginning to end. ![]() ![]() Watch full episodes of All Saints and get the latest breaking news, exclusive videos and pictures, episode recaps and much more at TVGuide.com. Watch All Saints online. Stream episodes of All Saints instantly. AllSaints presents the LA Sessions: an ongoing series of exclusive performances from pioneers of the international music scene, filmed live at our Los Angeles. Watch All Saints online. Stream episodes of All Saints instantly. Despite still delivering good ratings, the show is a victim of increased production costs, and being one of four in-house dramas at Seven that seemingly had to budge. But with the end of its run, does it also signal the “death” of the long-running drama in Australian television? Notwithstanding our two surviving serials, is the one-hour prime-time drama now a casualty of shifting audience trends and network costs? Australian television, which has seen many long-running TV dramas is now left with one-hour dramas all less than 4 years old. TV Tonight turned to critics and commentators to ask whether we will ever see another drama series that reaches such double figures? Should we now re-define the term “long-running drama” in the TV history books? Richard Clune, from the Sunday Telegraph agrees that drama runs of the past are just that. He says viewers are embracing subscription TV and the net for entertainment and are becoming more ‘commitment-phobic.’ “Currently many dramas – whether they are local or imported – seem to wane after 4 or so seasons, a dramatic reduction when you look at the runs of the past – 12 seasons for All Saints, 13 for Heelers, 8 for McLeod’s. “That said you may well see dramas hitting the 6 year mark – they just need to evolve with their audience. But I imagine six years would be the highest end for a dramatic run these days.” Melinda Houston from The Sunday Age, concurs, saying, “We’re unlikely to see those long-running series again. I think a portion of the audience will always like the familiar, but its the nature of anything that we become habituated and I think its television execs as much as anything who are unwilling to tolerate steady performers or slow slides.” The Australian‘s Amanda Meade says the end of All Saints feels like the end of an era. “It’s a little sad if we do lose the long running drama because the characters become so embedded in our minds and hearts and become part of our popular culture,” she says. “The longer they’re around the more familiar they are, but we also tire of them. “Just as we need new genres and formats to excite audiences, perhaps we need new stories too, and shorter run series can offer this.” James Manning of Media Week is reticent to write off long-running dramas just yet. “I’m always reluctant to say we might have seen the end of anything because all series are different and their longevity is based on different factors you can’t measure, which is why so many things fail. Nobody knows how to produce the perfect show,” he says. The Herald Sun’s Colin Vickery says no-one should underestimate the success story that All Saints has been. “Police and medical dramas seem to have the best chance of being stayers – look at Law and Order (18 years and counting) and The Bill (25 years plus) and the just-finished ER (15 years). “Most of the successful shows have been re-tooled at some stage. Sometimes that gives a show a new lease of life and sometimes it doesn’t.” But not everyone was happy with the revamp of All Saints this year, which added a Medical Response Unit headed up by Mike Vlasek (John Waters). TV Week columnist and author of the comprehensive Super Aussie Soaps, Andrew Mercado says the All Saints revamp ‘shortsold’ its audience.
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March 2018
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