Vale Austin

Here’s an exciting fact: Austin was the biggest commitment to scripted comedy we’ll see from the ABC in 2024. Sitcoms usually get six episode runs: Austin had eight. Was there anything at all at any point during those eight episodes that left anyone thinking “wow, this story really needed that extra space”? Or was it just a matter of quantity over quality?

The ABC isn’t usually the home of dragging things out. It’s not like we got four episodes of Austin a week for two months a la Masterchef. But this feels like a point worth hammering home: what made Austin so special that we needed an extra two episodes* of it? And why is the answer “nothing to do with the actual quality of the show?”

Let’s be honest, Austin was… fine for what it was? The (possibly) interesting comedy clash between a semi-selfish father and his newly-discovered autistic son ended up being largely sidelined for a string of scummy schemes from dodgy dad. Which would have been a lot funnier if it wasn’t obvious we were shuffling towards a happy ending that would nullify everything before it.

Losing an hour or so and focusing a lot more tightly on… something… would have made it a better show. Maybe it could have been a father-son bonding session; maybe the adventures of a sleazy author trying to redeem himself without having to do any real work. Why not two very different lots of parents clashing over their autistic son (why even bother having Austin’s parents there if they weren’t going to play a bigger role), while the son has a few ideas of his own about life?

Also, it was filmed in Australia. Why? Putting aside the usual “we can get funding there” reasons, two thirds of the main cast were from from the UK, most of the story took place in the UK, and the whole thing felt very much like the kind of sitcom they make in the UK.

“Hang on,” we hear you ask, “so what kind of sitcoms do they make in Australia?”. WE DON’T KNOW, THEY DON’T MAKE SITCOMS HERE ANY MORE.

Ahem.

The point being, whatever the actual quality of Austin – and again, it was fine, Ben Miller and Sally Phillips are old hands at this comedy thing (sometimes even in Australia) and newcomer Michael Theo more than held his own – it was not a series that in any substantive way felt Australian. So why put a whole bunch of Australian money into it?

The reason why scripted comedy is all but dead in this country is the result of a range of factors, both local and international. For starters, Australia’s film and television market is basically too small to survive without government handouts. Why not tie those handouts to the end result? Make it so the industry has to make five local sitcoms each year, written by and starring local comedians. Hahaha as if.

The industry and the politicians would much rather have the money be tied to (their) jobs. While a sitcom could (in theory) have just one writer, it’s always going to need dozens of behind the scenes crew to make it. So creating those behind-the-scenes jobs – boosting production, not local content – is where the funding goes. Australia is now almost entirely a place where overseas people come to make their film and television projects on the cheap.

For some genres this works out ok. Crime television relies heavily on location, and Australia has plenty of stunning places to dump a corpse. So overseas production companies are fine with setting their generic small town murder mysteries in Australia. Comedy, on the other hand, relies on local culture and references. Overseas productions aren’t going to pay for Aussie jokes, even if the audiences back home would get them.

And so we get Austin. A UK show made with Australian money for a UK audience because the chumps in Australia will watch anything that’s served up to them. The ABC is eagerly letting people know that Austin is the #1 comedy on iView. But it’s the lack of anything else on offer that’s worth paying attention to.

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*that’s 10% of all scripted comedy on the ABC in 2024