Frances Grant: Outback beauty eclipses the story

You can't go past a town like Alice when it comes to a great setting for a smalltown drama with an offbeat, magical-mystical flavour.

Alice Springs, the town at the heart of Australia's awesome Red Centre, is one of those places with an inbuilt mythical quality courtesy of its poetic location.

So the makers of last night's debut of The Alice (TV One, 8.30pm), a two-hour pilot for the series, were always going to have their work cut out for them creating characters and stories which could stand up to the scenery.

Adding to the challenge was a highly portentous beginning. It began by anticipating a total eclipse in one of the most exciting places on Earth from which to view it: a vast desert complete with sacred sites and an ancient people.

Then there was the enigmatic narrator who told us that although the cosmic event was luring all kinds of people to the town, he would not be among them.

Others were heading to the Alice, however, literally from all quarters. Setting up four plot lines with key characters approaching from east, west, north and south was a stylish way to start a drama. Everything must converge.

But the weight of all this proved too much for the storylines to bear. What we got was a drama trying hard to pull a bunch of rather contrived set-ups into some kind of luminous, intriguing whole.

We met faded rocker Jack, lured back to the Alice by the memory of good times and a woman. Unhappily married Helen was heading our way in a campervan, with her obnoxious, athletic husband running outside the vehicle, and the ghost of her best friend chatting away to her inside.

Jess, a nurse, was taking her mentally ill mother to Alice to witness the eclipse.

And medical school drop-out Matt hopped on the Ghan on a train journey to self-discovery.

Meanwhile, in town, a bunch of tour operators were figuring out how to host a bunch of German eclipse chasers after a nutter ran a road train through their hotel.

The problem with The Alice is it seems to be searching for dramatic inspiration in as many quarters as its existential travellers are seeking meaning.

It's a patchwork of plot elements: part SeaChange, the inland version; a bit of Picnic at Hanging Rock in Helen's husband's mysterious death on the rock; a touch of Priscilla Queen of the Desert if you substitute drag queens for mad Germans in gold space suits.

It harks back to the whimsy of Northern Exposure with such scenes as Jack putting his fate in the hands, sorry hooves, of a sheep and the mystical apparition of a wise Aboriginal child in the desert. The character of Helen was almost a repeat for actor Caitlin McDougall of her role in Always Greener as a sad woman talking to a loved one's ghost.

It doesn't help to know that the show was cancelled in Australia last week and the lights have gone out on The Alice before it's even started here. With such hindsight, it's easier to see only its flaws.

But despite the cliches of its "everybody's looking for something" storylines, it was hard not to like. The Alice is visually stunning. It's a pity the drama's not as mesmerising.