Mediaweek: Austin is another hit Aussie comedy as audiences warm to local sitcoms
Austin (Sunday on ABC, all episodes on iview) is a fantastic new Aussie comedy that nails it from the first episode. Whoever decided to centre a sitcom around Michael Theo, based on his work in Love On The Spectrum, is a deadset genius because he is more than a reality star, he is an actor with brilliant comedy chops. Let’s give credit to the team at Northern Pictures, also the home of Love on the Spectrum.
Theo plays Austin, an autistic forklift driver who announces to visiting author Julian Hartswood (Ben Miller) that he is his long-lost son. The cast also includes Julian’s wife Ingrid (Sally Phillips), Austin’s mum (Gia Carides) and grandad (Roy Billing). And as a five-piece ensemble, they are perfection.
Filmed in the UK and Canberra (and who knew the nation’s capital could deliver such a comedy gem), Austin is the latest in a long line of co-productions between the UK and Australia. Since the earliest days of TV, Australia has always put out a welcome mate for visiting English comedians.
Miriam Carlin became infamous for her militant catchphrase “Everybody out!” which she used in the UK sitcom The Rag Trade (1961) when ordering co-workers to strike. In 1966, she became a regular on The Mavis Bramston Show (Seven) despite the show poking fun at Australia’s worship of English stars.
In 1972, Seven and the BBC teamed up to make a sitcom called Birds In The Bush, in which an Englishman (Hugh Lloyd) and his Aussie brother (Ron Frazer) inherited an outback property full of scantily clad young girls (Briony Behets, Ann Sidney, Elli Maclure etc).
In the 80s, sitcoms like Are You Being Served? and Father Dear Father came down under to repeat the format in an Aussie setting. This phenomenon thankfully came to an end with Love Thy Neighbour in Australia, in which Jack Smethurst moaned about having to live in… wait for it… Blacktown.
Nobody back then could have imagined a day when we would stop punching down at minorities and find a new way to make them the centre of the action. Austin’s neurodivergence isn’t milked for cheap laughs, because nobody needs to see that when his deadpan delivery is so brutally hilarious.
Bravo to the ABC for not only commissioning a new Aussie comedy, but giving it a great lead-in on Sundays with Spicks and Specks. The quiz show now only runs for a tight 30 minutes, thereby allowing it to be paired with Austin as a must-see double bill. Austin is so good that I expect most of its audience to binge it all on iview.
