A three-hour, prime-time broadcast of a train journey has been hailed as Australia’s next Gold Logie winner, but also condemned as worse than “watching paint dry”.
The experimental SBS documentary The Ghan divided opinion on its way to nabbing half a million viewers across the country.
Marketed as Australia’s first foray into the Norwegian genre of slow TV, the program followed the famous passenger train on its 3,000km trip from Adelaide to Darwin, and has been so popular SBS is planning to release an extended 17-hour cut.
Aired on Sunday night without ad breaks, the documentary showed a driver’s seat view of outback scenery, train tracks and text explaining the local history of each new area – with a focus on Indigenous history and early European, Chinese and Afghan immigrants.
It became SBS’s highest-performing program of the past 12 months, according to the station’s director of TV and online content, Marshall Heald.
Audiences were divided. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph labelled it “a three-hour slog” that had doomed the future of the genre, quoting a viewer who labelled it “like watching paint dry”, while others on social media raved and The Ghan’s website crashed under the demand.
Gosh I love The Ghan. My second book is partially set in this part of the world and I just adore it.
— Anna Michal Kathryn Spargo-Ryan 🥑 (@annaspargoryan) January 7, 2018
Casually flicked the tv over to SBS at 7.30 and 2.5 hours later I’m still watching #TheGhan.
— Adam Carey (@adamlcarey) January 7, 2018
Look at this scene. LOOK AT IT. That is a goddamn masterpiece. If I don’t see a train accepting the Gold Logie this year then we have failed as a nation. #TheGhan pic.twitter.com/RlR5fPcCYB
— Chaz Hutton (@chazhutton) January 7, 2018
You’re missing out. Flip to @SBS now #theghan is a visual feast pic.twitter.com/8iEEBy9Ftq
— Richard Phelps (@richardphelps) January 7, 2018
How do I nominate #theGhan for the gold Logie?
— Sam Ryan (@shesaidso) January 7, 2018
Slow TV – pioneered in 2009 by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation when it aired a seven-hour train trip from Oslo to Bergen – has become increasingly popular in Europe, with meditative, marathon documentaries such as an eight-hour broadcast of a fireplace, and 12 hours of a sweater being knitted.
In 2011, a 134-hour broadcast of a cruise ship was watched by 50% of Norway’s population, and in 2015 the BBC introduced a whole season of slow TV, including a two-hour dispatch from the front of a barge and “a beautifully filmed portrait of the making of a simple glass jug”.
The Ghan followed suit by becoming a hit for the station despite the detractors, averaging 583,000 viewers in metro and regional areas, according to estimates by SBS.
OzTam figures showed the first hour drew 436,000 viewers in Australia’s five major cities, making it the 12th most watched show of the day. It was outrated only by another leisurely, multi-hour program – the Ashes – other cricket shows and the weekend’s national news and current affairs.
Heald said SBS was “thrilled with the success” and the station would look into similar projects around slow TV.
“We’re pleased that so many viewers embraced the addictive and hypnotic qualities of slow TV, and we will continue to explore ideas around this innovative style of storytelling,” he said.
Details of the 17-hour version have yet to be confirmed.
In real life, The Ghan’s journey takes 54 hours spread out over three days, with stops in Alice Springs and Katherine. It is the world’s longest passenger train – measuring 1.1km – and has been running in its current form since 2004. From 1929 it ran only from Adelaide to Alice Springs.
For Sunday’s broadcast, the journey was condensed into three hours, with footage gathered from 12 different cameras. Text overlays pointed out landmarks such as Adelaide Gaol and Darwin’s Chinatown, and told the stories of Australia’s first mosque, built by the tracks near Marree in the 1860s, and Port Pirie’s short-lived Mussolini-inspired fascist group, founded by Italian residents in the 1920s.
