Right, class, listen up. Today’s lesson is “How NOT to make a successful television show”, with special reference to the new ABC program Rain Shadow (Sundays, 8.30pm).

First, let’s address plot. If you genuinely don’t want to excite, inspire and attract an audience, save yourself a ton of effort and go straight for cliche. Phrases like fish out of water, a harsh brown land, hard nut to crack, he’s got a secret, rule with an iron fist, we are good people, this land takes so much but gives nothing back and troubled souls immediately spring to mind.

Now, location. Well, we live in Australia and the biggest issue facing our country is drought. So, let’s go with rural, outback farming community. Is there a risk that will look too much like a McLeod’s Daughters rip-off? Yes, so let’s make it even more remote and pick ultra-harsh locations for all the wide landscape pans we plan to throw in to soak up time when the scriptwriters slack off. Perfect, lock it in.

Okay, good, now characters. You will have to spend the most amount of time on this element – say, about four minutes in total.

Again, be ruled by cliche and you cannot go wrong. For our leads we need:

1. A difficult, aloof, unflappable and abrupt older woman who knows the answer to your question before you’ve even asked it. She’s been around the traps and was in fact around before they even invented “traps”. She’s lived in this one-horse town most of her life and drives a grunting, beat-up four-wheel-drive that’s never been washed.

2. The perfect foil for said unflappable know-it-all – an innocent, privileged, earnest, wide-eyed female novice who hails from the city and drives a shiny lunchbox on wheels, undoubtedly made of tin foil, but a graduation present from dear old daddy.

Let’s give them short, no-nonsense names like Kate and Jill, in a smart nod to their profession, which demands they be ruthless and no fuss, especially when it comes to telling a farmer to shoot his 2000 perfectly healthy sheep.

While chaos is sure to ensue, as clever as we have been here with our two leads, making them antitheses of each other, we may need to add a few more spices to the brew.

Let’s give the main characters an occupation that involves blood and guts, lots of passing traffic and therefore lots of different sub-characters and lots of drama. Well, as we established, it is a drought ... and one of the first things to suffer from a landowner’s perspective is their stock. So, why not make them vets? Brilliant. Yes, that will give us a shiny green light straight into real, human stories of heartache and devastation – excellent.

What? You, up the back there, do you have a question?

Oh, you’ve asked about script. (General laughter.) So naïve ... did you not watch the first episode of Rain Shadow, as I instructed you to do for homework?

It was plain to see that there was more text on a cornflakes box than in this script – and even then Mr Kellogg had more profound words to say.

Tired, boring, predictable and weird – this script could have engrossed, could have emoted, could have been something meaningful to the thousands of farming families devastated by drought. It didn’t and it wasn’t.

As for actors, direction and editing ... well, certainly don’t get the best. (Sorry Rachel Ward.)

And finally, if you really want to pucker up and whack a big, wet kiss of death on your TV show, get your casting people to pop Gary Sweet in the role of mysterious, black-clad, Porsche-driving man. (What kind of idiot drives a black Porsche around a dusty town full of dirt roads??)

Here endeth the lesson. ABC, go to the head of the class.

Your mark: Distinction. But for me, it’s a D for disappointing.

— REBECCA MARSHALL