As Robert Joseph points out, making a successful tv show about wine is hard work. Seriously hard. Many have tried, yet few have really made it (save for Oz and James’ Big Wine Adventure series) and definitely none in Australia.

Yet the new Plonk web series could well change that.

Driven by local filmmakers Nathan Earl and Glen Condie and starring Chris Taylor (from The Chaser), Plonk is a new online comedy series (it may well be picked up Channel 10 apparently) following a television crew as they travel through NSW trying to produce a wine show.

I managed to attend a preview screening of the first two episodes (it premieres in full on Monday February 10th) of Plonk and can confirm that it is indeed very funny. Not ‘face hurting’ funny maybe, but the whole cinema was laughing at much of it (which we’ll call a win).

More than just funny, Plonk also painted a few NSW wine regions in a very positive light, integrating classic Aussie vineyard scenery (brown hills, green vines) and a whole swathe of well-known Aussie winemakers (Bruce Tyrrell, Tim Kirk etc) into a simply premised comedy.

Obviously I know next-to-nothing about filmmaking, nor film reviewing, but series like this can only be good for wine regions (particularly NSW wine regions, given that funding for this was provided by Destinations NSW) both locally and internationally and the fact that it is genuinely funny only makes the whole project more worthy.

Two enthusiastic thumbs up from me.

Catch the Plonk series here: http://www.youtube.com/roadtoplonk