Australian Tumbleweeds

Too sexist for this shirt

Australia’s Sexiest Tradie took a bit of a turn last week, ditching The Office-esque comedy of awkwardness, and the toilet humour, to delve a bit further into the toxic masculinity of lead character Franky Wood.

Previous episodes have firmly established that Franky is a massive tool – selfish, disrespectful, a misogynist – and generally the sort of bloke who shouldn’t have friends or a family who cares about him…yet somehow does. But in episode four things changed. What had been yet another comedy about a dickhead who people react to with shock and distaste, became a semi-drama about awful men. And not one that ended with the awful man in question getting his comeuppance.

Episode four opened with the announcement that Franky and long-time girlfriend Leanne (“Hammer”), who’d broken up in a previous episode, were suddenly back together – and engaged. Then we discover that thanks to one of his videos going viral, Franky was in the lead to win Australia’s Sexiest Tradie. Cue the arrival of Summer, a fellow Australia’s Sexiest Tradie contestant, who Franky fancies, manipulating Franky into helping her stay in the competition by Instagramming his support for her. Franky, who thought he might finally be in with a chance with the good-looking Summer, let her take over his social media.

Later, Summer joins the Wood family for a special dinner to celebrate Franky’s engagement and his success in the competition. But things get awkward when Leanne gives a speech about how happy she is to be engaged and Franky, with one eye on Summer, denies their relationship entirely. Mum Barbara, quite rightly, asks Franky why he’s messing Leanne around.

We’re used to Australia’s Sexiest Tradie being uncomfortable viewing, but mainly in the sense of the awkward comedy it generates. Franky Wood is an awful man but in earlier episodes, we could laugh at his awfulness and thus tolerate him. In episode four, the dynamic changed, and the show became uncomfortable in the sense that it was traumatic to watch the way Franky treated Leanne. And near impossible not to want to turn off the TV and never watch this again.

This is bad news for a show that’s meant to be a comedy. It’s also a testament to how hard it is to take a big, complex and difficult topic like toxic masculinity and use it as the basis for a sitcom. There probably is a way to do this well but Australia’s Sexiest Tradie hasn’t managed it. It was too ambitious an idea for this show, which has only really succeeded at toilet humour and cringe comedy. It’s also easily misinterpreted by the audience as condoning toxic and abusive behaviours.

It doesn’t matter that Franky kinda got what he deserved when Summer left him the second after she made it into the final of the competition. The fact that Franky was able to hurt his vulnerable fiancé in the meantime, and still be the hero of the show, makes it look as if his behaviour was okay. When it absolutely was not.

Australia’s latest mockumentary

You could be forgiven for thinking that Australia’s Sexiest Tradie (which airs on 7Mate after Fat Pizza: Back In Business) is the real deal: an actual tradie being followed by an actual documentary crew. But in fact, the show is the creation of actor Rick Donald (Home & Away, Wentworth), who also plays the lead character Frankie Wood.

Frankie is a plumber who lives with his parents and girlfriend but wants to become an actor. The best route to fame, he thinks, is entering a local radio competition to find Australia’s Sexist Tradie. Somewhere along the way, a documentary crew start to follow him and voila, he’s on his way to superstardom.

Or is he? Because he’s clearly a misogynist, homophobic tool with no discernible talent other than stupidity and insensitiveness and that doesn’t play so well in 2021. Out on a job at the house of a pregnant woman with a sleeping baby, he refuses to turn down his radio so as not to wake up her child and makes insensitive, sexist comments about her breasts. Later, when forced to apologise to her by his boss (Peter Phelps), he finds it almost impossible.

At the radio station, when he meets the other contestants, he finds himself torn between a desperation to win and a strong desire for hot female contestant Summer (Annabelle Stephenson), who gives him an erection every time he sees her. This leads to some painful manscaping and his attention-seeking appearance at a competition photo shoot wearing only Speedos…quickly followed by the inevitable erection when he watches Summer’s sexy photo session.

Frankie, you might say, isn’t the type of man capable of forming a mature relationship or behaving in any way like an adult. Within hours of setting eyes on Summer, he’s dumped long-time girlfriend Leanne (Briallen Clarke), a sweet-natured doormat who’s endured his idiocy and his sexist nickname for her, Hammer, for years. Meanwhile, Frankie starts ordering about his best mate Grub (Jason Perini) and making him film his social media videos. One such video, in which Frankie adds about half a jar of Nescafe to a bottle of iced coffee, then skulls the lot, leads to a funny, albeit pretty gross, sequence at a customer’s house.

Generally speaking, the gross-out comedy is the funniest stuff in Australia’s Sexiest Tradie. Most of the other laughs come from scenes in which Frankie says something idiotic and everyone around him pauses and looks shocked and uncomfortable. And while this can be funny, after 20 years of mockumentaries and sitcoms chock-full of roughly these kinds of jokes and situations, the fart gags and gross-out material are welcome.

One way in which Australia’s Sexiest Tradie is a bit different to the likes of The Office and the work of Chris Lilley though, is that it digs deeper into why the main character is like he is. Frankie’s Dad Terry (Steve Le Marquand) is equally insensitive, sexist and incapable of basic decency to others. This gives us both an insight into the line of toxic males that gave us Frankie Wood but also gives the makers of this show a slightly different way of taking the piss out of this type of bloke. Although, this also means that Terry’s treatment of wife Barbara (Pippa Grandison) is every bit as upsetting as Frankie’s treatment of Leanne.

The female characters, we hope, will leave these idiots, and go off to lead independent, more fulfilling lives (although for the comedy to work they’ll have to stay put). Meanwhile, there are three more episodes to go before we see whether Frankie will become Australia’s Sexiest Tradie or remain just another tool in the toolbox.