The Role of a Lifetime (Just Not in Comedy)

We’ve complained about the way comedy is used as a marketing tool for a long time now. Your new drama is a bit of a dud? Your panel show is a chore? Your game show just plain sucks? Call it a comedy! People love comedy! And when they realise there’s no laughs to be found? Oh well, at least the first episode rated okay.

Seriously, if you’ve ever tried to wade through the various production documents and funding announcements that are the lifeblood of the Australian television industry – because it’s not like they’re making these shows for an audience – the phrase “comedy drama” comes up so often it’s a joke.

Which is handy, because none of these shows actually feature any jokes. They’re just duds that sound so boring the only way they can trick anyone into watching them is to claim that there’s some entertainment (that’d be the comedy) buried deep within.

What does all this ranting have to do with The Role of a Lifetime? You know, the new ABC show that promises to explore “how to parent in the rapidly changing world using scripted comedy sketches featuring a sitcom family to play out the most current and urgent parenting challenges facing Aussie mums, dads and caregivers” oh dear god no.

The good news is, going by the first episode, the “scripted comedy sketches” are kept to a bare minimum. Over a 45 minute show they’re maybe 7-8 minutes, tops. They’re also astoundingly unfunny. As in, the only identifiable “joke” is a repeated reference to that chocolate you eat when you have worms.

(is that a real thing?)

Sure, they’re not really trying to be funny. The point is to illustrate the parenting dilemmas that the rest of the episode is going to tackle in the trademark ABC factual fashion. So there’s a scene about how it sucks when you discover all your high school friends have set up a discord channel titled YOU SUCK AND WE HATE YOU, cut to some real-life expert explaining how they’re not your real friends anyway.

For what it is, it’s fine. It mostly left us wondering why the ABC doesn’t do any consumer affairs shows these days, because people used to love them and that’s an area of daily life where some expert help would actually be useful, but you know, blame Ita Buttrose for that.

What it isn’t, is any kind of comedy at all. So once again, time to wheel out this old classic:

If everyone knows that audiences love comedy – and everyone does know, that’s why 80% of everything put to air is sold as containing comedy – then why the fuck won’t the ABC (and everyone else, but mostly the ABC) actually make any comedy?

The Role of a Lifetime is a factual series based around parenting advice and tips. It’s not a comedy, it’s not a sitcom, it doesn’t feature comedy sketches. Stop insulting us, stop dicking around, and start commissioning some real comedy.

Oh look, The Weekly is back in a few weeks. Fuck this shit.