Austin: A Nation Divided

It’s the halfway point of Austin series 2, and what have we learned? Not to watch Austin for starters. When an episode begins with Austin (Michael Theo) being told by his publicist that if he wants to sell books to the kids he has to say his favourite singer is Taylor Swift… what the fuck is this?

A hundred taxpayer-funded episodes ago this was a sweet story of a young man trying to connect with his morally flexible father. Now it’s somehow developed into not one but two pissweak media satires. You remember media satire – that’s when the scriptwriters vanish up their own arse. Is there anything audiences care less about than the comedy that arises from a book tour? How about the comedy that arises from putting together a television show?

We joke, of course – there’s no comedy to be found here, just references to Euphoria. And let’s just linger at the scene of this car crash for a moment. Why does Austin – who loves Frank Sinatra, The Goodies and Doctor Who – have the taste of a 55-year-old man? He’s in his late 20s, and the joke is just that he’s an out-of-touch nerd. So why isn’t he a fan of, say, the MCU? We hear that’s daggy now.

But of course, the real point of this scene is to tell the audience of 55-year-olds that they – like Austin – have good taste. All this modern muck? Rubbish. In Austin, either you are a 50-year-old or you think like one. The ABC sure does know its audience.

Which is presumably why this season seems to be turning into a fictionalised version of Love on the Spectrum. You know, the much-loved show that gave Theo his big break. Once, his real-life search for romance won the nation’s heart. Now he’s back looking for love, only this time… it’s scripted. So yeah, a lot less charming.

This romance subplot also features Natalie Abbott, AKA the star of Aftertaste. Does her two-for-two appearance in two of the ABC’s most aimlessly pissweak sitcoms of recent years make her a name you can trust when it comes to comedies you can’t? Seems harsh, but you can’t argue with facts.

As for the other plot thread – which, we should point out, in no real way overlaps with Austin’s search for love and pop cultural relevance – it’s about the dramas of casting a children’s television show. Oh great. This plot somehow manages to be both totally unrealistic and deathly familiar. It’s the kind of thing sitcom writers come up with when their only point of reference is other sitcoms.

It’s not that the wacky comedic premise isn’t a wacky comedy premise. Sure, it’s totally possible* that a TV production company would buy the rights to a series of illustrated kids books, then decide to film them as a live action series with a man in a bear suit, then hire a high profile actor to play the bear and be fine with him cutting a hole in the front of the bear suit so his face would be visible. Possible… just not funny.

Maybe it would get laughs if the comedy was “oh no, we accidentally sold our property to a bunch of complete fuckwits who are totally going to ruin it”. Instead, we’re supposed to treat them as serious professionals, and Julian (Ben Miller), the book’s author, as a meddling chump who’s ruined everything. Which he has, obviously. Just not in a way that’s funny or much of anything beyond a bunch of stale sitcom gestures.

It’s not a new insight to point out that Austin feels very much like a show where the audience is not an active consideration. But increasingly it feels like a show where reality hardly gets a look in either. Why are we getting jokes about book tours and television production when neither feels even remotely authentic or interesting?

Making shit up is fine if it’s funny shit. But Austin exists in a half-baked fantasy world where even situations the audience will never experience – book tours, television sets – don’t feel plausible. And we all know what funny shit without the funny is.

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*it’s not possible