The Dismissal . . . sets a critical standard to which all future Australian television programs should aspire. It is, quite simply, the best piece of television I have ever seen. This success story confounded those commentators who registered the broad cast delays as probably delivering a body blow to the mini-series' chances. It is worth speculating about this series of claims and successes.
Analysis is superfluous in either form.
Considering this field of representations, then, it is not surprising that The Dismissal stands as arguably sui generis within Australian television practices. Clearly, then, The Dismissal breaks new ground in treating a still highly volatile, very recent political issue. Exits situates Whitlam's dismissal in terms of its existential impact on the lives of 'ordinary' people undergoing their own relational and vocational 'exits', juxtaposed somewhat incoherently, or, to gloss it positively, 'experimentally', with rhetorical gestures toward CIA involvement in the dismissal. Home on the Range does more than gesture toward such CIA intervention, indeed, it marshals a persuasive array of evidence linking the imminent expiry of leases on U. S. military and intelligence bases in Australia in 1975, the CIA, and Whitlam's dismissal. Com paring this analysis and what is offered in The Dismissal on the CIA is instructive.