Caught between cathode ray nostalgia and an atomised future

The late Kerry Packer once quipped, ‘You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime, and I’ve had mine.’ Packer was referring to the 1987 deal in which the Perth-based Bond bought Packer’s Nine network for $1 billion. The wily Sydneysider clawed back an equity stake in the top-rating station upon Bond’s bankruptcy and slide into ignominy, when Bond was found guilty of committing, through other companies, Australia’s biggest corporate fraud.

Thirty years later, with both men dead, and having already resuscitated Kerry Packer in a couple of biopics, Nine was determined to give us a second Bondy with House of Bond, focusing not on Bond’s siphoning of Bell Resources funds but on his love triangle with ex-wife Eileen ‘Red’ Bond and his second wife, restaurant hostess turned theatre producer Diana Bliss. Actors Ben Mingay and Adrienne Pickering are taller than Alan and Eileen but no matter; they’re as robust in their roles taking a wee under a Napoleon painting or reading a Valley of the Dolls paperback as Rachael Taylor is suitably poignant playing the ill-fated Bliss.