More Like Dog Shit

Hey, do you like unlikable characters? We don’t mean grumpy types with a heart of gold, or downbeat loners who just need to be brought out of their shell. We’re talking a real shithead here. Someone who actively goes around making other people’s lives worse. A bitter little turd of a man you’d run into oncoming traffic to avoid. Yes? Then Dog Park is the show for you.

It’s not like we can’t see what they were trying to do. Despite what the promotional material says, this isn’t a comedy, and not just because it contains absolutely no laughs. This is a character-based drama. The whole point is that a man at his lowest ebb finds his way back to friendship, shared humanity – and maybe even love – through the power of hanging out with dog owners.

Problem is, the man – that’d be Roland (Leon Ford, who co-created the series) – is such an unlikable fuckwit from word one that nobody in their right might is going to give two shits whether he finds love or finds himself waking up with his dick stuck in a blender. In every single scene he’s in (which is every single scene in the first episode) he is a dour, unpleasant presence that – rightly – nobody seems to like. Because he sucks!

Again, we can see where they were going with this. Start with him at rock bottom, he’s got a whole six episodes to claw his way back up. But who cares? This isn’t a movie where we’ve paid money and gone to a cinema so we might as well see where it’s going. It’s a slice of entertainment on the ABC on a Sunday night. Only they forgot the “entertainment” part and created a device to spray acid directly into your eyes.

Did we forget to mention that the whole thing looks fucking grim? Filmed in Melbourne in the middle of winter, it stifles any laughs with a deliberately dank and gloomy vibe. Which is weird because some of our favourite Australian comedy was filmed in Melbourne in winter. Guess those shows fucked up by not being a half hour drama about a shithead who everyone hates.

Seriously, we’re not projecting onto a character who doesn’t work for us: everyone in the episode hates him too. Every scene with his wife is an awkward loveless fumble. Which he then doubles down on because seemingly he doesn’t know how to apologise let alone change the subject. We thought their daughter was her daughter from a previous relationship because she treats Roland (deservedly) like shit. When he finally makes his way to the dog park, even the relentlessly cheerful chumps there don’t exactly warm to him basically telling them to fuck off over and over again.

(also, what kind of dog park is surrounded by busy roads with no fences? Earlier in the episode Roland is told that the park is a leashed area. Why is a tiny corner of it open to letting dogs run free?)

We will nod approvingly at one aspect of episode one. Samantha (Celia Pacquola) does do a decent job playing a character who seemingly finds Roland attractive. Unfortunately this makes her character seem demented, because Roland is shit, but she’s got a job to do and she does it well.

We’re not big fans of Colin From Accounts here. But even that show – which this is totally not ripping off, can’t Australian television handle more than one inner city rom-com where two mismatched and unlikable characters are brought together by a cute dog? – knew enough to focus on wacky hijinx for the first few episodes before digging into the ways the leads were a bit rough around the edges.

They weren’t funny hijinx, unless you find scooping a turd out of a toilet and tossing it out a window comedy gold. But at least they weren’t someone getting drunk on their own in a dark house after writing a text to their wife that said “I love you” and then deleting it. Comedy!

Possibly the most frustrating element of this whole thing is the way that nobody seems to have realised that what they were making was deliberately hostile to the concept of entertainment. Being intentionally unfunny is what we expect from an ABC dramedy. This is nothing but scene after scene of the central character being a dick to everyone he meets.

Who could possibly give a single solitary fuck about this kind of person? Who would think that audiences would want to spend time with such an unflushable turd? Who would look at this utter fucking open grave of a show and go “yeah, seems good”?

Oh wait.