Sweet Transvestites

Sweet Transvestites

The second episode of Australian Idol aired last night, and already it's clear that only a handful of contestants can sing. Others strut, wail, or gyrate in order to hide the fact that, vocally, they're simply not up to scratch. Bereft of decent performances to focus on, the tv presenters concentrated instead on the personalities of the singers. There was the Somalian refugee who had trouble mastering the words to songs in English; the bitchy loner who refused to play back-up for the other members of the trio she was assigned to; the demure wallflower whose confidence builds with each performance she gives; the large, unemployed guy who wanted to make his generally unsympathetic dad proud of him; the young starlet who dedicated her performance to her dad, who'd died a few years earlier; the young feral who had just become a dad; and the cutesy pie who wanted to make one of the judges her sugardaddy. My favourite contestant is the sweet transvestite who was originally rejected as a boy, only to be accepted in drag the day after. Two of the judges didn't even recognize who she was.

On that point: if the performers have discovered remarkably quickly how to market themselves on camera, the judges are slowly beginning to settle into their proscribed roles, too. Ian Dickson still lacks the requisite callous detachment of a Simon Cowell, and in the outright-wanker stakes he's often upstaged by ex-pop-star Mark Holden, for whom melodramatic outbursts seem par for the course. Maybe Holden's a little bitter that none of the adolescent-to-young adult contestants actually know who he is? Marcia Hines has eased into the role assigned to her the best. There was less tough love on her part last night, and more of the comforting, if slightly condescending mother-figure who eagerly wants her children to be successful. At times she appears to be channelling Susan Sarandon. They both have the same matronizing, New-Age vibe. Now if Mark Holden could just work on his Barry Bostowick, straight-jawed good-guy persona, and Ian Dickson tried to impersonate Tim Curry rather than Simon Cowell, we might just have a show -- a Rocky Horror Show.