TV: Games satire beats reality

By LOUISA CLEAVE

Viewers of John Clarke's television satire about preparations for the Olympic Games can be forgiven for wondering if any of it is fiction.

The Games (Prime, 8 pm) has pre-empted several real hiccups in Sydney, and who knows how many storylines have actually happened behind the closed doors of the organising committee?

Fiascos such as the too-short 100m track, baggage handling problems at Sydney Airport, budget blow-outs and ticketing problems, have later surfaced in the news making the show right on the mark.

It is almost criminal that Clarke and co-creator Ross Stevenson managed to let the "Colosseum controversy" - the revelation that the wrong historical site has been embossed on the medals - slip past their scripts.

In the pseudo-documentary, Clarke plays the chief heading a small cast of administrators who include bean counter Bryan Dawe and marketing manager Gina Riley.

After 15 weeks of intensive filming, The Games will come to a close on Australian television in the week before the real competition begins.

Here, it will screen until the start of November.

During a break from filming, Dawe says by phone from Melbourne that the project has been one of the most important he has worked on.

He has worked with Clarke for 11 years, making a weekly political comedy segment for current affairs programmes, first on Channel Nine then the ABC.

Dawe also travels Australia as a professional after-dinner speaker with his character Sir Murray Rivers, QC, a pompous former Supreme Court Judge.

The Games, Dawe says, has given people an insight into the backroom politics of organising an event like the Olympics. The blame-shifting, political manoeuvring and spin doctoring portrayed in the show would plague any big organisation.

While the show has achieved a small following in New Zealand, Dawe says it has "rated its pants off" in Australia. "We've become an alternative opinion about the Games. I think that's been John and Ross' contribution to it all, that this is a way for the audience to get nearer to the truth about what is going on than [through] the current affairs programmes, which are now doing comedy.

"We've gone though a lot of walls here." He says the most hard-hitting was a speech apologising for the treatment of Aboriginal people and read by an Australian actor named John Howard.

"The audience is always wanting something that they can trust as an audience and if you deliver it to them they will follow everything you are doing."

Asked whether he will attend the Olympics, Dawe, deadpan as his character, says he will be otherwise engaged. "I've got a children's fete at a kindergarten. It's a long one, it goes for about a week."

He says a newspaper offered to put the cast up in a hotel during the Olympics and give them a corporate box for the closing ceremony, but was turned down.

"After everything we've been doing, they're either completely stupid or having us on. You can see the headline, 'Everyone's got their price.' You imagine the first reporter who looked up and saw us at the Games? It would be a photo and headline and that would be it."