Love Child Season 2 - a Nine Favourite Returns

Channel 9 shows it can have strong female leads in a drama (like Wentworth) beside it's regular wall to wall boys club crap...

Love Child returns over a year since season one aired (a little like Puberty Blues on Ten - actually make that almost 18 months after the first season aired, season three still TBA, maybe we will see it in 2017) and rated pretty well for Australian made drama. Without the powerhouse Packed to the Rafters or a success Underbelly season (the later Underbelly series were real flops in comparison to the original) there is room on Free to Air for solid Aussie dramas. So much so Foxtel is stealing cancelled network series like A Place to Call Home.

Love Child is not a far fetched story, a super hero to TV series or Crime series but more a straight up drama about people with a few medical procedures thrown in for good measure (remember how well All Saints did?).

With Series Three already confirmed Love Child is proving to be a solid Aussie drama. Unlike so many other dramas around these days Love Child is sticking to a solid and easy to consume 8 episode order. In my eyes this is perfect (as long as we don't have to wait another 13 months for the shows return) and viewers can easily consume this and still be hungry for another instalment. Unlike US dramas (I'm looking at you Revenge) ain't nobody got time for a long winded often drawn out 23 episode order.

Audiences now are struggling to keep up with their favourite Netflix series (all loaded at the same time), movies, reality (if that's your bag - you are in for five nights of recaps and not much in the way of new footage) and news.

Aussies need homegrown tales and Aussies need good drama, it keeps the business moving along, unfortunately of late the TV market is drowned out by reality and news leaving little to no room for drama.

Unfortunately too the Australian drama landscape is what some would say, unhealthy.

For Wentworth it's easy being the top dog when your competition consists of:

Wonderland - Boring white people trying to recreate Melrose Place in a boring beachside suburb. One word review - LAME

Winners & Losers - One word review - LOSING

House Husbands - One word review - STALE

A Place to Call Home - One word review - WHY?

So other than Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries and Doctor Blake nailing it (with iView figures, averaging weekly 1 million viewers each) it's a pretty small market right now. With US dramas (mostly) rating terribly on Free to Air (there is a thing called downloads - what?) it's no wonder the networks consider drama a has been genre. That said if networks got in early delivered great content and promoted it well we could see this turn around.

Why on Earth Winners and Losers is still on TV is beyond me however Love Child is a refreshing and bold network television choice and I have to commend Channel 9 for staying with this one and developing it in the first place.

So come Australia let's get behind Love Child and stop complaining about Struggle Street and embrace some love.