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Ever tried sorting through online TV service See Saw? It's a strange mix of completely unnecessary offerings from Channel 4 (go and watch them on YouTube, the streaming is far less grumpy) and completely awesome offerings from the BBC (Big Train, Brass Eye and Saxondale FTW).
So far, so to be expected...until you stumble across We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year. Two years ago, its successor Summer Heights High became a sleeper hit on BBC Three, following three characters, all played by Chris Lilley: spoilt Sydneysider Ja'mie, drama teacher/queen Mr G, and tearaway Jonah. This may sound more than a little bit Eddie Murphy, but it worked fabulously well because Lilley vanished into each character, found something dark, self-centred and off-kilter, and then clambered back out again to use it to bash back all boundaries of taste. Watching a 32-year-old man in drag flirting in a playground with a 12-year-old boy is funny, wrong and puts British efforts to (cliché alert) push the boundaries to shame.
That actually sells the show a bit short: it also worked because each character had more dramatic highs and lows picked out over the course of the series than your average X Factor contestant, particularly as Jonah spiralled into more and more trouble. And it all came from one person – which, considering it came from Australia and not from our usual comedic watering holes from the UK or America, helped to add to the sense that this was something exciting and new.
After garnering good ratings and reviews, there were some vague rumblings about the BBC picking up the rights to We Can Be Heroes, Lilley's previous project, but they came to naught. Which is where See Saw comes in: for just the cost to your time of watching a couple of ads, you can watch the whole series here, following Ja'mie and four other competitors for the title of Australian of the Year.
This is really more of the same, but it still works great – there are laughs with Ja'mie's visit to an immigration centre, shudders at former firefighter Phil's efforts to make his heroic reputation pay cash, and burning hot-tears-down-the-face sadness with what happens to suburban housewife Pat.
Lilley is now working on a new show, made with ABC (the Australian one), HBO, and with the BBC co-producing, so hopefully their continued involvement means that We Can Be Heroes might finally make it to TV screens here when the new project is closer to fruition. In the meantime, get a headstart on everyone else with episode one...
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