By GREG DIXON
Have a look at the dictionary, it'll tell you. Satire, it says, is the use of ridicule, irony and sarcasm to expose folly or vice or to lampoon an individual.
But there are just a couple of things it doesn't mention - and they're pretty darn crucial things it has to be said. The first is that satire done well can be the most viciously funny of all man's creations. The second is that erstwhile Kiwi John Clarke is one of its finest creators.
The guy's got a huge comic brain on him. Certainly when he left this country for Australia nearly 20 years ago the nation's IQ seemed to drop by half and we were left in the hands of lesser talents like McPhail, Gadsby and the make-up and wigs department at TVNZ.
All we've had to remember Clarke by since then are the fading memories of the singular Fred Dagg; Australia has had the best of his rest. A loss? Nay, his departure was - is - a national tragedy. Blub, blub, blub.
All of which might have made his latest dispatch from across the ditch, The Games (TV One, 10 pm), something of a bittersweet reminder of what might have been.
Fortunately, this rapid-fire satire on the Sydney Olympics (and big business, the media, advertising, politics ...) doesn't give you time to get sentimental. It gets straight to its very sharp point.
Clarke, looking rather scarily like Bob Jones, is John Clarke, the head of administration and logistics for the games. He's the frustrated boss of two rather untalented bureaucrats, Bryan Dawe and Gina Riley (played, respectively, by Bryan Dawe and Gina Riley).
Talk about a crisis, mate, it's just one thing after another for poor John. First there's the budget blow-out ("50 per cent up?" gasps Clarke, "that's not terribly good, is it?"), then there's the advertising agency's video postcard for Sydney ("as we say around here," the vid's BBC-like voice-over intones, "no wuken furries") and finally there is Dawe's latest sponsorship deal. It's with a tobacco company.
"Well done, Bryan," Clarke enthuses. "That really is terrific news. Now here is a [phone] number. I want you to see if you can go find some more. You ring that, that's the Cambodian embassy, they'll give you the number for the estate of the late Pol Pot. See if you can get them to tip some money into a humanitarian sponsorship of some kind - you seem to be pretty good at that."
Now either you find that funny or you don't. The Games certainly isn't telling you that you should. It has no laugh track to tell you it's joking, there are no gags, no one-liners and no skinny stars talking about sex.
It's very dry, very straight, very nasty. It could be real life - as naming the characters after the actors would suggest - and it probably is. With the truth added.
Certainly the show (now into a second series in Australia) has proven extremely accurate. Tonight's episode exposes a slight flaw in the construction of the 100m track. The real Aussie Olympics organisers had their own slight flaw in the triathlon course. It was 2km short - proving Clarke a sage as well as a satirist.
But you just can't helping wondering "What if?" Imagine Clarke doing something like The Games about Te Papa or the America's Cup circus or even Bob Jones versus the world.
It'd be more than a Dagg, no wuken furries.
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
Latest from Lifestyle
Heather Mills: ‘I lost my leg, had a million illnesses. You just carry on’
The former model and ex-wife of a Beatle on saving herself... and her vegan food empire.