Stoofy
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SMichael Lahoud is the face of the SBS documentary series ‘Once Upon a Time in Punchbowl’. Picture: Andrew Quilty Source: Supplied
SBS is set to finally show what could be their most expensive documentary series ever.
Once Upon A Time In Punchbowl will go to air on June 19 at a *rumoured cost of about $1.5 million to the taxpayer-funded broadcaster, which was forced to shelve it in *December after The Daily Telegraph revealed one of its subjects had fudged his life story.
It then emerged that the tattoo-heavy “ex-con” Michael Lahoud, who had emerged as the face of the series, had never actually spent more than a few days in a NSW Correctional Facility despite claiming he served several years in Silverwater, Long Bay and Goulburn jails.
The embarrassing oversight, which somehow slipped through the SBS research department, sent production into a tail spin and saw SBS scrap hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of print, online and outdoor marketing.
It also added to what one production insider claims was an existing budget blowout of $300,000, even before the series was heavily re-edited while background checks were conducted on the show’s subjects.
It’s understood the overall project, produced by Northern Pictures and overseen by SBS’s Executive Producer (Factual) John Godfrey, finally reached its current broadcast state at a cost of $1.5 million, divided up between SBS, Screen Australia and Northern *Pictures.
One interviewee, Australian Arabic Council founder Joseph Wakim, said something was “amiss” as far back as 2012.
But an SBS spokesman claimed the cost of the debacle to the broadcaster was a paltry $60,000.
'I LOVE SBS BUT...'
Joseph Wakim is author of ‘Sorry we have no space’, and appears in the forthcoming series. He says....
With ‘Seven billion stories and counting,’ why would SBS commission a story that has been done to death?
After the success of the acclaimed ‘Once upon a time in Cabramatta’ series in 2012, the Punchbowl sequel assumes that the same success formula will work again. But those pleading to tell the truly untold stories warned against this flawed foundation.
A fortnight before the Punchbowl series was scheduled to be aired on 7 January, this newspaper exposed what the researchers failed to verify: their tattooed poster-boy Michael Lahoud had exaggerated his exploits, leading to a frenzied re-edit for the 18 June airing.
The template worked when the majority of Vietnamese Australians migrated to one place at one time. It had a definable beginning and end, with the Cabramatta series filmed long after the dust had settled, ten years after the turbulent 1990’s. Their story could have ended with ‘and they lived happily ever after.’
But this template could not be pasted onto Punchbowl, where the local Lebanese elders continue to grapple with raw realities. Lebanese have made Australia home for two centuries and the silent majority are fed up with those who define and criminalise them through the curved criminal lens of a ‘punchbowl.’
Like many advocates who were extensively filmed in 2012, I was promised that this was our chance to tell our story.
Almost everyone I spoke to in the crew had a British accent. Was this the BBC or my sacred SBS who ostensibly ‘celebrates diversity’? Was there not one local Lebanese talent in Australia deemed worthy? And why use a non-Lebanese academic to narrate our story when we have renowned sociologists and anthropologists?
Imagine a French TV crew visiting Bali to interview Australians about what it is in our culture that predisposes us to drug trafficking. Imagine broadcasting this like a lens to dissect a species.
It is both offensive and misleading for the series to be promoted as ‘the untold story of … the Lebanese community’. The series focuses on a small pocket of people from Southwest Sydney regarding high profile crimes in recent years.
In the heart of Punchbowl sits St Charbels Lebanese church which Tony Abbott traditionally attends every Good Friday. This booming metropolis is beaming with untold stories which I suspect will be overshadowed by the Lakemba mosque.
If SBS is sincere about unearthing untold stories rather than ascending the awards ladder, then it may need to look on the cutting room floor.
Michael Lahoud. Picture: Andrew Quilty Source: Supplied
Michael Lahoud with his family. Picture: Andrew Quilty Source: Supplied
