Austin s2: Now it’s a Media Satire?

Austin is what you get when everybody making a show leaves the entertainment side of things to somebody else. Sure, there’s plenty of moments where it seems like comedy is just around the corner. But if they actually delivered any big laughs, you wouldn’t stick around for the next seven episodes.

It’s not often you see a series that’s so obviously the result of a co-production deal. Well, aside from those shows set in Tasmania where half the set-up is trying to explain why the story is taking place in Tasmania. But here you’re never left in any doubt that this is a production evenly split between Australia and the UK. There is an Australian plot and a UK plot and never (well, hardly never) the twain shall meet.

Half of Austin is about Austin, who this season is now a popular media celebrity due to his having written a book. You’d think this would make for a good crossover with the other half of the series, which is about his (possible) biological father Julian, a successful children’s book author trying to reclaim his media status after accidentally retweeting a racist tweet. But no!

After an opening episode which (to its credit) does figure out a way to have these two characters in the same room, the series splits. Austin has a bunch of wacky hijinx trying to peddle his book, now hilariously titled Game Of Scones: Doing Britain On The Spectrum. Anyone remember How to Stay Married? Remember how that had a bunch of side-splitting gags about the world of book publicity? Same deal here.

Meanwhile, Julian has a bunch of completely separate wacky hijinx around the filming of a live-action TV series based on his Big Bear books. The producers don’t want him involved because of the whole racism thing. Obviously that’s not going to stop him from being a nuisance. Hey, here’s an idea – why not just film another kids book?

Julian’s character arc feels like the kind of thing made up by people who’re living somewhere adjacent to – but not part of – the real world. Him being #cancelled and wanting to use his autistic son to redeem himself made sense (kind of) in season one. But now?

Either he’d have made a hard swerve to embrace the right – after all, Nazi’s have kids too – or he’d be popular enough to have ridden out the controversy. If you’re cancelled and then someone wants to make a TV show based on your books, you’re no longer cancelled. That’s how 2025 works.

Presumably the writers believe if you’ll buy his troubles you’ll buy anything. How else to explain why his illustrated books are being filmed as live-action (with someone in a bear costume) and not animated? Yeah, we know, if it wasn’t live action there’d be no sets for Julian to try and sneak onto. If only any of this stuff was funny.

Austin’s side of the story involves book publicity that isn’t merely Austin being told to film some clips for BookTok. So yeah, also implausible. Why isn’t Julian a central part of this book-centric plotline? Why isn’t the entire show about Austin and Julian working together? That way you’d have an actual show, not two largely separate shows side-by-side that occasionally drop in on each other every second or third episode.

The sense of a show made up by people with no experience in anything real extends to the smaller details. Why are football hooligans traveling first class on a train? Why are there only four football hooligans when they almost always travel in big groups? How can an unemployed writer afford a cab from Northampton when it’s a two hour trip by road? How hard is it for the Austin team to open Google Maps?

Adding to the frustration, Ben Miller (as Julian), Sally Phillips (as his illustrator wife, who is allowed on-set) and Michael Theo (as Austin) are all better than many of the scenes they’re in. Whenever things are allowed to get big, Austin gets… well, maybe not good, but better than usual. That’s because these are actors who can go big (or even just a bit sillier) and be funny. It’s the writing that too often holds them back.

The whole thing feels like the result of a contract negotiation. Miller and Phillips are in one show, Theo and his family are in another. Some times the funny scenes are funny. Other times they’re not. Then there’s the dramatic scenes, about which the less said the better. Sometimes they’re in London, other times they’re in Canberra.

Austin is a show held together entirely by the demands of the funding bodies, mashing everything together in some kind of financial teleporter accident. And it’s the longest running scripted comedy the ABC will show this year.