Australia experienced a beautiful summer but while we were all enjoying our time off, the heroes of Bondi were keeping watch. Tonight, after the busiest summer in a decade, Australia’s favourite lifeguards are back as Bondi Rescue enters its 18th season.
Ahead of the new season, B&T sat down with executive producer Ciaran Flannery and creators/EPs Ben Davies and Michael Cordell to discuss the balance of action and heart that make Bondi Rescue so iconic and the vital role the program plays in surf safety in Australia.
It may seem obvious, but Bondi Rescue is not a simple program to produce. The show is often categorised as reality television but it is really more of an “observational documentary” in which drama comes to the producers, rather than them having to create their own – and when it does, they often only have a split second to act.
“It is a really difficult show to make. We don’t dramatise anything at all; it’s all real life, and rescues sometimes happen in split seconds. If you miss one crucial shot, you could turn a great rescue into something that’s pretty ordinary or that you may not be able to use at all. So even at that level, it’s a really hard show to make,” said Cordell.
“It’s weather dependent, its crowd dependent, its talent dependent – all of those things need to land in a sweet spot, and then the key piece is the producers on the ground who can see the opportunities and understand why a story is unique and special and be able to hone in on those features so that the audience can get a slice of life in Bondi,” said Davies. “Then when it comes into post, it’s knowing which stories to run with and how to craft them”.
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Diving into its 18th season, Bondi Rescue shows no signs of slowing down. The producers are always searching for fresh ways to tell the lifeguard’s stories while remaining true to the heart of what makes the show so great.
“The show always evolves and changes; the storytelling becomes sharper and more contemporary, moving with the times. We make a real effort to make sure it is always fresh and crisp and are always looking for new characters and angles. But one of the things that makes the show really popular is the cast of characters – the team of lifeguards – who the Australian public have become very familiar with. Hoppo, Harries, Whippet – they are household names, and seeing those people that the audience know and love saving lives and on the flipside having fun and having a laugh, that is part of the enduring appeal of the show,” said Cordell.
“We are on the 18th season of Bondi Rescue, and you would think that with everything you’ve seen in 18 seasons, you would have seen before, but Bondi Beach just continues to deliver surprises every single season. The number of amazing stories that we haven’t seen before this season will blow your mind,” said Flannery.
Part of what has made the show resonate so profoundly over the last 17 seasons is the heart of the team of lifeguards, many of whom audiences feel like they know on a personal level after all these years. It is the humans behind the heroes that keep audiences coming back.
“It’s a little bit like the old show MASH; the lifeguards joke around and play practical jokes on each other, but when it’s time to go in and save lives, that’s what they do, and that balance in many ways sums up the uniqueness of the show. These guys are mates, they’re larikans, they love surfing, they love the ocean but then they also flip and will kick into gear to pull someone out of the surf or chase down a bag thief, it’s that balance on light and shade that really makes the show,” said Davies.
“They are a band of brothers and sisters, so audiences get a sense of the bond that exists between them. In one episode this season, Will Bigelow, a former rugby player who has quite openly talked about mental health issues, does a 48-hour non-stop run backwards and forwards past Bondi, down to Maroubra and back again to raise money for a mental health charity. I defy anyone to watch that story and not shed a tear – it is absolute gold,” said Cordell.
With 80 per cent of Australians living on the coast and countless tourists coming to our shores every year, the message of surf safety and just what to do when something goes wrong is more crucial than ever before.
This season, the team of lifeguards will go down in history as they tally up an incredible 123 rescues—the most rescues in a single day in over a decade. “These lifeguards don’t get paid much money, but they save hundreds of lives every year – it would be a bloodbath down at Bondi if they weren’t there,” said Cordell.
While it’s impossible to measure precisely how many lives have been saved because of the surf safety messaging so prominent in the program, Davies did highlight a UNSW study a few years back that tracked drownings and surf safety awareness around the country. The study showed an unequivocal increase in awareness since the program started. The study argued that drownings had gone down because Bondi Rescue was a household message for surf safety.
“It is very hard to measure how many lives have been saved by watching the show, but we do get bizarre emails from around the world saying someone drowned at the local swimming pool and did CPR because they had learned it from watching Bondi Rescue. We know it has an effect – that surf safety message is really important and is one of the reasons that the council has supported the show for so many years. A few of the rescues are regularly used in training videos for the ambulance services and other first aid services – so we know the show has a really crucial public safety impact, and we are really proud of that,” said Michael.
Over the span of the summer, the lifeguards tackle a dramatic resuscitation, a derp fin chop that could be fatal, a severe neck injury and a deadly blue-ringed octopus in the kids’ pool. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a Bondi summer without a bluebottle swarm, with hordes of swimmers descending on the tower in search of pain relief.
With unpredictable swells, intense rescues and millions of visitors, this season of Bondi rescue promises so much action and drama that you’ll feel like you are sitting on the beach beside Harries and Hoppo.
Bondi Rescue season 18 premieres tonight at 7:30 pm on Network Ten.
