Australian Tumbleweeds
Jonah Week 3: Running in Place
So, exactly how much of this week’s episode of Jonah from Tonga was just a bunch of schoolboy dickheads running around hiding from authority figures? We’re not saying that kind of thing can’t be funny; we are saying that when you’re Chris Lilley and the only string you have to your comedy bow is your ability to replicate various teen foibles, it’s probably not a great idea to spend large chunks of your show just running around.
Then again, what else was he going to do? Jonah’s been firmly established as a one-note dickhead, and with last week pretty much seeing the end of his “hilarious” string of schoolboy bullying, this was the episode where he had to redeem himself before once again going off the rails next week. So we got a lot of running away, some occasionally half-hearted attempts to court Lilley’s much loved “edgy comedy” by having Jonah be kind of attracted to his hot cousin, and eventually the Fob-alicious crew learnt about the evils of bullying and made a heart-warming anti-bullying video. Take that, the very idea that Jonah could possibly be a bad influence on the kids!
Oh wait, then he went and lay on the road in front of oncoming traffic. Eh, the was a safety warning up the front, kids aren’t that stupid.
If none of that sounds particularly funny, collect a gold star. Lilley’s rightfully very aware that he’s in dangerous waters with his portrayal of Jonah, what with Jonah being an Islander and Lilley being white, and it’s increasingly clear that while he’s never going to be able to defuse the argument that he simply shouldn’t be trying to tell Islander stories, he’s trying his hardest to make sure no-one can claim that Jonah is a negative picture of a troubled youth. He’s just a really boring one.
In theory, this episode balances out all the horrible stuff Jonah was up to in the first two episodes, saving him from just being an annoying shit like Ja’mie was. Great! He’s a character we can like again! Oh wait, we’re back to the whole “not funny” thing again, aren’t we? Because Lilley only ever makes one joke, and that joke is “look how outrageously horrible these people treat everyone around them” so when he makes moves to redeem his characters all the comedy drains out of the show in an instant.
It’s this kind of basic fatal flaw that’s made Lilley’s career so frustrating to watch over the years. Even when he fixes a lot of the problems in his same old, same old act – Jonah from Tonga actually gives non Lilley-characters lines, which you’d think wouldn’t be a big deal but it really is – you still run up hard against the wall that is his near total disinterest in actually creating a decent comedy.
There’s a very good reason why these days the “mockumentary” format is largely just treated as a loose set of guidelines rather than a firm commitment to documentary reality: unless you’re really good at it, it’s hard to smuggle jokes into it. If you watch any mockumentary stuff made before The Office (UK) – People Like Us, The Games, the work of Christopher Guest – it’s obvious that the fake documentary approach is just a way of selling a bunch of really good jokes. How hard would it have been to film Fawlty Towers as a behind-the-scenes mockumentary set at a dodgy hotel? Not that hard if you think about it, but the good stuff – the underlying comedy, the stuff that makes it a great show – would have been basically the same.
Post The Office though, “realism” became the selling point for mockumentaries. Let’s just pretend we could be bothered dredging up that Ben Pobjie quote where he berated Modern Family for not doing mockumentaries “right”, ok? People latched onto one idea – that the more accurate a show was, the funnier it would somehow be – and for a bunch of years there, refused to let go. This is the world that Chris Lilley has decided to stay in: one where even moderately well-crafted jokes would fracture the fragile “realism” that he prizes so highly.
So most of the comedy in this episode comes from Jonah making up and telling increasingly shithouse “jokes”: “What did the bowling alley do to my dick? Give me balls.” Occasionally sure, this stuff is funny. But this is all Jonah’s got. It’s a comedy so realistic the only way it can get any laughs on screen is by having the lead actually tell jokes. Only because it has to be realistic, the jokes have to be shit. If you’re doing that, you’re doing comedy wrong.
Oh, the ratings went up a little this week:
ABC News (762,000) led ABC1 then 7:30 (681,000), QI (605,000), Spicks and Specks (490,000), QI 6:30 (351,000), Jonah from Tonga (348,000) and a repeat of Upper Middle Bogan (212,000).
Shame everyone came running back for what was easily the least funny episode to date.
In Comedy, Timing Is Everything
Press release time!
ABC TELEVISION HEAD OF ONLINE AND MULTIPLATFORM MOVES ON
Arul Baskaran, Head of Online and Multiplatform has advised that he is leaving the ABC to pursue new opportunities in digital media.
Baskaran was instrumental in launching iview, Australia’s first on-line TV catch-up service which remains the country’s leading video-on-demand platform to this day.
Under his stewardship, iview has seen dramatic growth both in content and audience uptake. The number of monthly visitors has grown from 122,000 in 2008 to more than 1.3 million today, and the service has expanded from a single website to 13 platforms including tablets and mobile, gaming consoles and connected TV devices. In the last three years monthly program plays have grown from 3.5 million to more than 19.5 million, and according to Nielson Online, this makes iview Australia’s most widely used internet TV service.
Recently Baskaran played a key role in commissioning ABC’s first ‘straight to on-demand’ programs for iview, including the Fresh Blood comedy initiative in partnership with Screen Australia, the post-apocalyptic web series Wastelander Panda, and Noirhouse, a web festival-winning comedy.
He was also responsible for ABC TV’s kids’ digital properties, overseeing the development of the ABC3 and ABC4Kids portals and commissioning a range of games, interactive content and apps for program brands including Play School, Bananas in Pyjamas, Giggle and Hoot,Dance Academy and Nowhere Boys, several of which have been recognized with international awards.
“It’s been a privilege to work at the ABC and to lead our digital expansion, especially with iview which is now a household name in Australia,” said Baskaran. “I’ve had the chance to head an exceptional team working on innovative products and I look forward to the next challenge,” he says.
ABC’s Director of Television, Richard Finlayson, said: “After nearly a decade with the ABC, Arul’s contribution to the growth of iview has been simply outstanding. He has grown a market-leading platform from virtually nothing to one that supports more than 200 million views a year and he leaves the ABC ideally positioned for the next phase of digital transformation. We wish him every success in his future ventures.”
What do you make of all that then?
On the one hand, people leave jobs all the time, especially in the digital realm. Mr Baskaran had been with the ABC for close to a decade: no-one would raise an eyebrow if he simply decided it was time to move on.
On the other hand, here’s the guy in charge of the ABC’s iView platform leaving just a few weeks after the ABC made their first big push into online-first content by putting all of Jonah from Tonga on iView before airing it on ABC1. Considering you’d have to say Jonah‘s current ratings are, um, “not record-breaking“*, and that it doesn’t seem too far out there to think that giving the whole thing away for free before it aired may in part be responsible for those bad ratings, one thing and the other may be somehow connected.
As always, we have absolutely no idea what’s going on. For us to say anything even remotely like “The failure of Jonah‘s online distribution to do anything but lower the show’s free-to-air ratings may have led to the departure of the ABC’s iView chief” would be nothing but wild, baseless speculation on our behalf.
Does seem odd timing though.
*”No doubt ABC will look to the iview offering as indication that the core Chris Lilley audience had already seen the series, however while those numbers were good they were not record-breaking and they should have generated word of mouth rather than having the opposite effect.”
Jonah Week 2: Slip Sliding Away
Wow, Jonah really is stirring up some serious shit:
A new Australian television comedy about a rebellious Tongan teenager has been condemned as “self indulgent” and “deeply offensive” to Pacific Islanders.
Chris Lilley’s six-part ABC TV comedy series Jonah From Tonga follows the life of a 14-year-old schoolboy and his run-ins with family, friends and teachers.
Professor Helen Lee, head of La Trobe University’s department of sociology and anthropology, has told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat she was horrified by the show’s portrayal of Pacific youth.
“I just think it’s dreadful. It’s just awful. It’s creating a terrible stereotype that’s just deeply offensive to Tongans,” she said.
It’s a wonder there haven’t been riots by now – especially as those outraged have been forced to resort to quoting New Zealand hip-hop to make their point:
Australia has a comedy problem if a guy who dresses in blackface, brownface and yellowface is considered a ‘genius’. In what other country could a comedian earn a pass, let alone praise, for resurrecting minstrelsy? Not many, if any.
That’s what Chris Lilley does: racial cross-dressing. In Jonah from Tonga, Lilley’s latest mockumentary, he wears brown makeup, fake curls, a phoney tatatau, and uses a fob accent and Polynesian mannerisms. Lilley appropriates the Polynesian appearance and experience to make an obvious point about racism in Australia: Polynesians are marginalised.
Oh wait, we forgot: no-one in the real world gives a shit about any of this stuff, because no-one in the real world is watching Jonah from Tonga:
Chris Lilley, once a homegrown critical and audience success story for the ABC, is now a ratings failure.
Week two of the 39-year-old comedian’s latest ABC1 television series, Jonah from Tonga, fell from a modest start of 441,000 viewers to just 287,000.
This put Jonah in 37th spot in Wednesday’s ratings, below standard afternoon fare such as The Bold and The Beautiful on Ten.
That’s a long way from the success of the 2007 series Summer Heights High, which catapulted him to fame and regularly attracted more than 1.2 million viewers. It was the ABC’s bestselling comedy DVD.
The disappointing figures come on the back of an equally poor reception for Jonah’s predecessor Ja’mie: Private School Girl, also on ABC1.
The figures suggest Australian audiences have grown tired of Lilley, who once attracted a three-country deal with HBO and the BBC on the strength of Summer Heights High.
Okay, all snark aside for the moment, that really is an astonishingly poor result only two weeks in. Perhaps someone should have told Lilley that the first episode of Jonah shouldn’t have been all about hitting the reset button on a character who’s story had already been wrapped up back in 2007. At the time – was it really only last week? – it seemed like a reasonable decision to return Jonah to a place where Lilley could move forward from. Now it seems like a massive mistake: whatever people might actually want from Lilley in 2014, “more of the same” is certainly not it.
But wait – surely we can expect a press release from the ABC any minute now touting the series’ “massive” iView figures because no real Chris Lilley fan would be caught dead watching it on a television which they don’t even own anyway because it’s the future? Oh right: the ABC already shot their iView load with that “whole series over one weekend” deal. Plus – and this is something we can never say enough because it’s what happens every time with Lilley’s shows – the show’s television ratings dropped; did 150,000 people lose their television sets between weeks one and two? No? Guess they tried the show and didn’t like it.
The sad thing about all this is that, on the whole, Jonah from Tonga is a step up from Ja’mie: Private School Girl. That’s not hard to do: three hours staring at a photo of Rove McManus would be a step up from Ja’mie. But still, Jonah features a lead character who, while as one-note and unchanging as everything else Lilley does, at least has a gimmick funnier than just “treat everyone else like shit”.
We’re not going to go as far as Fairfax has yet again –
We’re half way through this six-parter following the life and times of Jonah Takalua and the show is shaping up as possibly Chris Lilley’s best work yet. And yet Jonah could only loosely be termed a comedy – and then only in the same way as is Ricky Gervais’ The Office. Much of the time the show makes for uncomfortable viewing as we watch the awkward, lost, man-boy Jonah grope his way toward some sort of self-awareness and maturity. It’s important for this journey that Jonah is not really a bad kid. At least, not in a vicious, violent way. Sure, he is enormously irritating, disrespectful and far from the sharpest tool in the shed, but Lilley tempers Jonah’s many unsavoury aspects with brief flashes of vulnerable pathos, never allowing us to fully give up on him.
– because seriously, comparing Lilley to The Office in 2014 is a fool’s move: he’s made almost twice as many hours of television as all of the UK The Office put together, so we can safely consider that particular strip mined out. If Lilley can’t transcend his influences by now, he’s nothing but a hack.
But we do appreciate the way that in this series Chris Lilley is actually letting people who aren’t Chris Lilley have more than a handful of lines. It’s still a show where Jonah welds a “ranga’s” locker shut then rounds up all the school’s “rangas”, cages them in back-to-back soccer nets then tries to make one of them eat dog shit, but… what was our point again?
Oh right: everything in this article is wrong:
It’s hard to think of anyone on TV who excites as much interest or divides audiences as dramatically as Chris Lilley
Maybe Ms Enker should think a little harder: last time we checked Chris Lilley wasn’t exciting as much interest from Australian television audiences as The Bold and the Beautiful.
Centrifugal Spin: The Second Cycle
We don’t always talk up upcoming shows unless they fill us with a sense of dread but this one snuck up on us: Dirty Laundry Live is back! Yes, the only survivor (to date) from the 2013 round of panel shows returns tomorrow night on ABC2 to deliver the same mix of celebrity gossip and smutty jokes. Or at least, we assume so. The show’s broadcast live, it’s not like we could sneak a look early or anything.
With the ABC basically giving everything an automatic second series these days – except for the really good shows like Very Small Business and The Bazura Project – it’d be easy to undersell this particular return. So let’s say it again: the only survivor (to date) from the 2013 round of panel shows is back! Not quite as high profile as Tractor Monkeys! Not quite as strong a lead-in as the one This Week Live had!
Still, much as we’d like to think the show’s success is down to the ABC (for once) taking the right approach when it comes to panel shows – start them off small in a no-pressure timeslot and build them around people who are funny together, not big names who talk over each other to boost their profile – the ABC also gave Tractor Monkeys a second series. So it’s probably safe to say this season’s a gimme: if they want a third, they’re going to have to earn it.
Which may be a struggle. Extending the show to 45 minutes probably seemed a good idea at the time – hey, it’s live and the guys are having fun, why not let them ramble – but brevity, as they say, is the soul of laffs. Shorter is pretty much always better with this kind of thing, which is why we’re also a little concerned about the new series of Have You Been Paying Attention dragging out what was a perfectly decent half hour show into an hour.
Last year’s version of Dirty Laundry Live never quite nailed down the format either. It’s one thing to have a bunch of guys messing about on a panel, but even live (especially live?) the energy level is going to flag on occasion. The quiz doesn’t add much more than a loose format to make sure people keep talking, and the inventiveness and spontaneity that should make a live show something special rarely got a look in. As we said last year, if you can’t make a live show feel at least a little bit dangerous, why bother doing it live?
But overall, the pluses with this one outweigh the minuses. It’s an Australian panel show that’s funny more often than not, with a cast that work well together and a bunch of guests that actually add to proceedings. As we say all too often around these parts, it’s the bare minimum we should expect from this kind of show… which somehow means it ends up well above average. Which really means just better than Tractor Monkeys. We’ll stop talking now.
Vale Whatever That Latest Agony Series Was Called
The most recent series of Adam Zwar’s Agony wrapped up this week and… yeah. Don’t get us wrong, we watched it each week – ok, we had it on in the background each week, but we seriously meant to watch it. Apart from that one week we fell asleep during it. That counts as a review, right?
The ABC is well within every possible standard you can hold a television network to when it comes to airing shows like this. They can’t all be winners; they can’t all even be shows that are trying to be winners. Sometimes you have to go for “good enough”. Sometimes you have to go for “yeah, guess that’ll do”. Sometimes you even have to go for “we could probably make this by asking people to record clips on their phones and send them in.”
And that’s not to slight any of the many funny people and Kate Langbroek who appear on Agony whenever it turns up on our screens, as all of them have done very funny and interesting work in shows that don’t have Agony in the title. Because Agony just isn’t the series for that kind of thing: it’s the show for your B-material, the half-baked insight, the down-the-pub chat, the broad generalisation, the anecdote you’ve already told everyone else. The moderately embarrassing thing that happened to you that one time a decade ago? This is its last stop before it’s gone forever, your last chance to wring a final drop of amusement out of its ragged, shriveled carcass.
Sure, it’s sad and annoying and just a little pathetic as viewers that this series keeps on keeping on, and keeps on being shown in a “comedy” timeslot while it’s at it. It might contain laughs, it might be a pill that goes down smooth, it’s a solid payday and good exposure for people who deserve it, but for those playing at home? It’s really little more than a deconstructed panel show with the difficult bits sanded off. None of the guests interact with each other; they all have plenty of time to figure out what they’re going to say; they don’t even have to leave their houses to do it. Someone somewhere must have put some work in but it’s not anyone in front of the camera.
Perhaps if we’d paid more attention we’d be seriously riled up about the idea that we could possibly learn anything about modern life from the collection of c-list celebrities and disengaged comedians served up here. But we’re already kind of riled up that the ABC has already given us what – over 20 episodes now? – worth of a show that’s about as close to utterly pointless as it’s possible to be. It’s a show where the clip footage used in the cutaways is basically as interesting as the segments themselves. Over twenty episodes so far. It’ll probably be back next year.
Again and for the last time, we get it. Not every show gets the big budgets and the huge support crew. Not every show has to be a matter of life and death. Sometimes you’ve got to take it easy, throw something together, keep it light. Don’t bother telling us it takes a lot of hard work to make a show this casual. Whatever dude. Whatever.
Jonah From Tonga episode 1: The Phantom Menace
There’s been a lot of talk online about Jonah From Tonga this past weekend, with all six episodes of the series being made available to view for 48 hours only in Australia on iView and in the UK on the BBC’s iPlayer. As Paul Kalina observed in the Sydney Morning Herald, this sort of thing is now a common strategy, allowing audiences to “binge watch” series and hopefully create a buzz which entices casual views to tune in to the broadcast or catch up afterwards.
This broadcast model also changes the experience of watching TV and therefore how TV should be reviewed. Chris Lilley’s work having been a hot topic on this blog over the years, we here at Australian Tumbleweeds decided we’d review each episode of Jonah From Tonga. But when to do it? After each episode is first broadcast on ABC1, surely? Here’s the problem: we, along with many of you, watched as many episodes as we could during the 48 hour preview period, meaning we watched two or three episodes at once rather than waiting a week in between each one. And in a “binge watch” the distinction between individual episodes, and their problems, starts to blur…especially when, in typical Lilley fashion, Jonah From Tonga is light on plot and structure.
In many ways, binge watching suits Lilley’s work. Unless you instantly hate it so much that you turn off after 5 minutes, you can find yourself watching up to four episodes in one go, blobbing out in your chair as its purposelessness laps over you gently like soft waves. And Jonah From Tonga isn’t a show which requires or demands your absolute concentration, it’s basically a series of scenes in which Jonah and his gang bully other kids in the school and exchange toilet humour-peppered barbs with other characters.
In some ways it’s a more sophisticated Housos, a sitcom with minimal plot about Australians who aren’t white and living in the inner suburbs, but with less slapstick and better-written characters. No, really, we mean that about the characters. After his self-indulgent screen-hogging in Summer Heights High, Angry Boys and Ja’mie: Private School Girl, Lilley actually gives the other characters some meaningful dialogue, even one or two gags. We really weren’t expecting that.
But let’s not get over-excited. Lilley’s still treading an uncomfortable line when it comes to race, gender and sexuality, and not really getting it right. For every half-decent schoolboy dick joke there’s a scene of homophobic, racist or sexist bullying that seems utterly gratuitous, isn’t telling us anything and isn’t funny. Yes, it’s the kind of thing troubled teenage boys do, but so what?
And with Lilley already out there telling us how his characters don’t change but that’s okay, we can be almost certain that even though it looks like Jonah might get his comeuppance later in the series that won’t happen. In Lilley’s shows his main characters never go down, they triumph. And with comedy tending to be funnier when losers lose, that’s bad news for comedy, no matter how good Jonah’s characterisation or toilet humour is.
That which is done is what will be done.
First you have this*:
Regardless of the content of the show, simply by choosing to wear ‘racial drag’ Lilley has put his work in the company of pieces of entertainment history as regrettable as the Al Jolson Minstrel Show. Yet for the most part we seem at peace with one of Australian TV’s favorite sons doing something that we would not, and have not let anyone else get away with.
Then you have this:
http://youtu.be/SphOu1L-GEY?t=18m57s
And back in 2011 we said this:
you might be wondering why S.Mouse won’t be causing outrage, considering that for that character Lilley gets around in make-up designed to turn him into an African-American. But remember, the Murdoch press had no problem whatsoever with the blackface sketch on Hey Hey It’s Saturday, thanks to reader’s polls saying they were a-ok with blackface acts even before chief columnist Andrew Bolt announced Somers et al were guilty of nothing more than stupidity. So while Lilley’s racist comments will fan the flames of hate, his suddenly dark-skinned face will breeze by with a smile and a wave.
But let’s look on the bright side. Maybe there’s no controversy around Lilley’s antics because everyone can see full well that controversy is exactly what Lilley’s after – it’s not like he couldn’t tell the exact same story if Jonah was white.
And why would you give someone obviously trying to stir up trouble the one thing he oh-so-desperately wants?
*We’d also suggest Green gets it wrong by comparing Jonah to an act of blackface – Lilley might be constantly trying to stir up controversy with his numerous dubious stereotypes, but all his characters are firmly shown to be individuals rather than “all Asians” or “all Islanders”, and they’re set against a backdrop where their bad behaviour is clearly frowned upon by other members of whatever race he’s pretending to be. He’s not funny, but he’s not stupid either.
Hate To Say I Told You So
Press release time!
AUSTRALIA BINGES ON A PUCKLOAD OF JONAH!
The ABC created an Australian first for audiences, serving up the ultimate binge-fest with Chris Lilley’s series JONAH FROM TONGA having its world premiere on ABC iview in a weekend-long event. With the ABC initiative replicated in the UK by BBC Three, the binge weekend was a global event that created an international buzz on social media.
ABC iview, Australia’s leading online TV platform, gave superfans the chance to watch every episode of the new six-part series, online and on mobile devices, wherever and whenever they wanted to from 6pm Friday May 2 until 6pm Sunday May 4 AEST.
During the 48 hours there were 551,000 plays of JONAH FROM TONGA making it the most played program on iview over the weekend.
Activity to iview was up 50% over the two days compared to April, peaking on Saturday with a total of 976,000 program plays. And JONAH FROM TONGA delivered 30% of those plays.
“ABC TV is committed to innovation in new platforms to connect audiences with our incredible Australian-made shows and I’m over the moon viewers have embraced our bold initiative to preview the show before its first traditional TV broadcast on Wednesday night,” said ABC Director of Television, Richard Finlayson.
“The Jonah preview binge re-writes the traditional TV rule book but is also creating huge anticipation for the broadcast premiere at 9pm this Wednesday night.”
“Big congratulations go to Chris Lilley and Laura Waters from Princess Pictures, who had the guts and foresight to support this initiative in advance of the series launch on ABC1 and BBC Three this week,” he said.
The ABC was the first into the online video market with iview in 2008. Today, with more than 15 million monthly program plays*, iview is Australia’s most accessible TV on demand service, available on 15 connected platforms including computers, tablets, smart phones, internet-enabled TVs, gaming consoles and set top boxes. ABC audiences need never miss a moment.
Chris Lilley, who’s en route back to Australia to support the Australian premiere on ABC1, adds: “I’m overwhelmed by the positive fan reaction to JONAH FROM TONGA. It seems that people really do like watching a whole series in one hit. I’m really excited for everyone to experience Episode 1 again on Wednesday night on ABC1. It’s the kind of show you can watch multiple times and find the things you didn’t notice the first time.”
JONAH FROM TONGA will screen Wednesday nights from May 7 at 9pm on ABC1, with each episode being made available again on iview after broadcast.
Remember when we said this:
So what this binge session really is – sorry “superfans” – is a naked attempt to rig the ratings: by releasing the whole series in one blurt, they can then claim the initial high ratings figures (that Lilley hopefully still manages to get in week one) are the figures for the entire series.
And then Chris Lilley said this:
“I’m overwhelmed by the positive fan reaction to JONAH FROM TONGA. It seems that people really do like watching a whole series in one hit.
Looks our crystal ball was crystal clear.
We’d love to know exactly how those 551,000 iview plays broke down – did people watch the whole six episodes right through, did they skip around, did they get ten minutes into episode one and quit – but surprisingly it seems the ABC (despite presumably having such information) ain’t talking. Guess they have to keep something in reserve for when the ABC1 ratings come through; we’re sure we’re not the only ones interested to see if the big weekend giveaway proves detrimental to those still-important free-to-air figures.
Of course, the real question is this: if activity on iview was up 50% for the weekend and Jonah only caused 30% of it, where did the other 20% come from? Because if they can get an extra 20% just out of nowhere, that does sound a little like Jonah isn’t quite the awesome draw he’s being touted as.
It’s a Whale of a Sale
For one weekend only, the ABC have made available for streaming all six episodes of Chris Lilley’s new series Jonah from Tonga. We’ll be honest: we couldn’t make it all the way through. Here’s why:
‘Most of my characters never change as [a series] goes along,” says Lilley. ”There’s a familiar structure to television where the character is a certain way and then they go through a certain experience and they become different, but I like the idea that people don’t change. That represents reality more.”
And here we were thinking Lilley’s complete and total inability to write characters with more than one dimension was a design fault. Turns out it’s meant to be a feature. Because we all tune into comedy series first and foremost looking for realism, right guys? Guys? Come back, Lilley’s about to say something funny!
”Jonah’s not the brightest kid. He doesn’t think things through. Watching him make the wrong decisions is fascinating,” Lilley explains. ”The show doesn’t have the cues of a normal sitcom, so some people feel uncomfortable because that hits close to home, but that’s cool and what I like about it.”
It’s an old joke, but it’s one that never fails to make us laugh: “my work is so edgy and out there, the haters are freaked out by it”. But Lilley’s right; his work doesn’t have the cues of a normal sitcom. Or a good sitcom. Or a shit sitcom. It doesn’t have any cues at all, because all it has to offer is “and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened” 95% of the time.
So imagine our excitement when, ten minutes into the first episode, Lilley had managed to throw out everything that was remotely interesting about Jonah’s first appearance in Summer Heights High – basically, the idea that he was acting out because he had learning difficulties that made him frustrated at school, and the idea that his bad behaviour would have actual consequences – in favour of having him back at yet another high school acting like, to quote every adult authority figure on the show, “a fuckwit”.
The formula re-established, Lilley settles into a rut like he was born to it. Oh look, “ranga” jokes. Jonah stuffing a little kid into a locker. A teacher who swears and is physically aggressive towards Jonah. When exactly is this series set – 1955? At least – and we’ll give him this – the theme music wasn’t the usual children’s choir guff he’s bolted onto the opening of everything else he’s done. But there’s still time to fix that before the episodes reach television.
And why is Jonah such a fuckwit? Because, as we see on Tonga itself, he just is. “I like the idea that people don’t change,” says Lilley, and fair enough. But why does he like the idea that they also have to be unbearable idiots at the same time?
Look, we don’t doubt for a second that Jonah will meet an authority figure he bonds with, just like we don’t doubt his stupidity will eventually have actual consequences and he’ll reveal a side that isn’t 100% fuckwit (or that there’ll be a bunch of shit “offensive” songs and lame stage performances): Lilley’s not so stupid that he can’t at least replicate the Jonah formula from Summer Heights High. But he’s already told that story, and it wasn’t that funny the first time.
We’re going to keep watching Jonah from Tonga, and we’ll be reviewing each episode (to some extent at least) as they go to air. But three hours of this shit in one burst? Let’s leave the last word to the Fairfax journalist who interviewed Lilley:
“Jonah pushes the boundary of comic offensiveness, testing both his teachers’ and the audience’s capacity for his incessant retorts and ludicrous attention-seeking.
And when Fairfax is saying that about you, you know you’re in trouble.