The Audacity of Hype

We’ve heard a lot in the past week about how the BBC would screen exclusive footage from Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys as part of their biennial fundraiser Comic Relief. Appearing on Comic Relief is obviously a massive coup for any Australian comedian – Comic Relief is a long-established, high-rating spectacular featuring the cream of British comedy talent – but it’s notable that Lilley’s Angry Boys wasn’t considered one of the highlights in Britain.

Throughout the broadcast there were numerous plugs for comedians who would be on soon, but the first plug for Angry Boys didn’t come until around 12.20am. There was another plug for it 10 minutes later, and also mentioned as coming soon were Australia’s own Axis of Awesome, but anyone wanting to watch either would clearly have to force themselves to stay awake.

Finally, at some point after 1am, when a large chunk of the audience had probably gone to bed after a hard weeks work, about three and a half minutes of Angry Boys was shown. If you want to see it, it’s on YouTube. Then again, why bother? It’s just more of the same.

Axis of Awesome, who performed their 4 Chords Song, were on about 20 minutes after the Angry Boys preview. They performed live and went down really well with the studio audience. The Angry Boys clips, despite getting a big build-up from the quartet of celebrities who introduced it, didn’t get much of a reaction from the audience, who didn’t seem to have heard of Chris Lilley or find the clips funny.

It’s fascinating that no one in the Australian media has noted this, or questioned the fact that Lilley seems to be basically making the same programme over and over again.