The body politic

Summer Heights High (BBC3, Monday) is one of the funniest things on TV, and I almost want to sack myself for not having discovered this earlier in the series. It’s one of those very deadpan spoof documentaries in the manner of The Office, set in an Australian state high school, with the versatile scriptwriter Chris Lilley playing three of the main characters — a moronic Tongan called Jonah Talua, a bitchy, manipulative private school exchange student Ja’mie King, and the camp, fantastically tactless drama teacher Mr G.

In the latest episode, Mr G heard that a Year 11 student Annabelle Dickson had died of a drugs overdose, and decided that this would be the ideal opportunity for a school drama celebrating her brief life called Annabelle Dickson: The Musical. The head gives the go-ahead, provided it’s done tastefully. Cut to scenes of Mr G, composing some of the songs: ‘She’s a slut on a Saturday night’ and ‘E. E. E. E. Ecstasy’. I do like the Aussies. They seem to have a rugged common-sense and cheery loathing for PC so painfully absent from most of the rest of the Western world. Summer Heights High makes me respect them even more.

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Catherine Kraina

January 11th, 2009 4:18am Report this comment

Those who enjoyed Summer Heights High may relish a New Zealand offering, Seven Periods With Mr Gormsby. A bit more Mr Chipps-ish, but satsfyingly un-PC, with episode titles such as The Retarded Boy and a heartwarming tale of personal redemption through arson.

With the London Olympics threatening, it might also be worth trawling the archives for The Games, eerily true to life in representing the run-up to the Sydney games. The fiascos depicted in the series were often mirrored a few days later in the national news.

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