More than one-third of Australian TV dramas over the last five years had all-white casts, according to a new report released by Screen Australia – the most significant study of diversity on Australian screens since television launched here in 1956.
However, Indigenous Australians have recently become well-represented among main characters, and children’s programs and comedy are forging the way to a more representative on-screen culture by casting more diverse leads.
Based on analysis of 1,961 main characters from 199 dramas and comedies broadcast on free-to-air and pay TV between 2011 and 2015, the Screen Australia report found that while 32% of Australians have a non Anglo-Celtic background, only 18% of main characters on TV were from diverse backgrounds. On the flipside, while 36% of programs had main casts entirely comprising characters of Anglo-Celtic background, 64% of programs included at least one main character from a non Anglo-Celtic background.
Diversity has been a topic of much debate in recent months, with Gold Logie winner Waleed Aly accepting his award on behalf of all the people in the industry with “unpronounceable names”, outgoing ABC chief Mark Scott saying he thought the BBC did a better job than Australian of presenting diversity, and Indigenous actress Miranda Tapsell using her 2015 Logies speech to call for “more beautiful people of colour on TV”.
While Indigenous characters were concentrated in fewer programs (including Redfern Now, Black Comedy and Ready For This) than characters from European or non-European backgrounds, they were well-represented overall: 5% of characters, compared with 3% of the population.
This has been a dramatic turnaround from 1992, when a study found there were no Indigenous Australians in sustaining roles on Australian TV. In 1999 there were only two.
“You cannot underestimate how powerful it is for Indigenous people to turn on the TV and see a face that looks like their own,” the head of Indigenous department at Screen Australia, Penny Smallacombe, said.
“Whilst overall diversity on Australian screens clearly has a very long way to go, what the Indigenous experience shows is that when you have Indigenous decision-makers within funding bodies and broadcasters, coupled with initiatives that support Indigenous writers, directors, producers and actors, diversity and good entertainment can be one in the same.”
In general casting, however, the Australian experience was “20 years behind the US”, according to one respondent interviewed for the survey, which found that larger markets like the US and the UK were more open to diversity in casting.
People from European backgrounds such as Greek or Italian, and from non-European, non-Anglo backgrounds such as Asian, African or Middle Eastern, were significantly underrepresented, the study found, with only 6% of characters identified as from European backgrounds compared to 12% of the population, and 7% of characters from non-European, non-Anglo backgrounds, compared to 17% of the population.
The study also found that disability was very underrepresented, with only 4% of characters identifiably living with a disability compared with 18% of the Australian population.
Two ABC programs, Please Like Me and The Code, were singled out for praise for including main characters with a disability: Josh Thomas’s mother on Please Like Me (played by Debra Lawrence) who has bipolar disorder, and the character of hacker Jesse Banks (played by Ashley Zukerman) who has autism spectrum disorder.
LGBTQI characters are also underrepresented on Australian television, and casts which did include a gay character – 33 out of the total 199 shows – usually only had one. However, in one ABC program, Outland, the entire main cast was made up of LGBTQI characters. SBS and ABC stood out for commissioning programs – Janet King and The Principal – whose main characters were incidentally gay, with their sexuality not pivotal to the storyline.
The challenges faced by the industry continue to include the huge expense of producing local drama, and the relative reluctance of networks and producers to take a risk with an unknown actor.
According to the report, there is a perception among the industry that audiences “have a low tolerance for diversity, especially when they perceive it to be ‘worthy’”.
But there is good evidence of change. The authors said the future looked bright, with a spate of high-profile examples of diverse programs appearing since the end of 2015, including The Family Law (SBS), Here Come the Habibs (Nine), Cleverman (ABC) and the upcoming drama starring Jessica Mauboy, The Secret Daughter (Seven).
