For American TV, Has Australia Become A Shangri-La?

Damien Cave: “Our dry, sunny isle far from swampy Washington seems to be the latest pinup for the American desire to check out and start over. It reminds me a bit of Hawaii in the 1970s and ’80s (the era of Fantasy Island, Gilligan’s Island, and Magnum P.I.) and more recently with Lost. Or to go further back, it’s what Mexico was for Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac and the Beats in the 1950s and ’60s — a place of great beauty where familiar rules and conflicts could be sidestepped or ignored.”