KEY POINTS:
Aussie comedian Chris Lilley probably won't be welcome in the kingdom of Tonga should he ever try to set foot there. His comic creation, a delinquent, hyperactive Tongan schoolboy called Jonah, is the star turn of his new show, Summer Heights High.
Lilley seems not so much to
impersonate or to act, as to channel. Anyone familiar with his mockumentary series We Can be Heroes will recall his versatility and how he seems to inhabit characters in a way alarmingly close to possession, from Pat, housewife, recovering cancer patient and champion cross-country roller, to Chinese physics genius and amateur thespian Ricky Wong.
In Summer Heights High, Lilley confines himself to three characters, all the better to capture them in every alarming detail. One, the smug private school girl Ja'mie King, returns from his gallery of caricatures in Heroes.
Ja'mie is a creepily accurate send-up of hair-tossing girlish vacuity, in this outing slumming it at a public school as an exchange student. She bridges the social divide with contempt and condescension, bringing her conviction, as rock solid as Paris Hilton's, of her unquestionable right to be regarded as hot.
Lilley is scarily good at teenage female affectations but his talent for observation, mimicry and brazen disregard for causing cultural affront is at its best in expletive-spouting Jonah. While his Ricky Wong doing an Aboriginal musical was pushing the boundaries, Jonah is a character you feel also might get the complaints phone line to the Race Relations ringing hot.
He would never get away with such an act in New Zealand. What about bro'Town, you say? Well, that was Samoans getting down and sending up the brown and other minorities. But a white guy in the brown equivalent of "blackface" and a wig of what only can be described as woolly hair?
The last of Lilley's trio is a drama teacher, a character that has now become a modern comedy cliche: the self-deluded wannabe star. He has his moments - his track-panted workouts on stage are particularly funny - but as a comic creation he's nothing we haven't seen before. You could almost hear him say a la David Brent, "I'm an entertainer first, friend second and teacher third".
With reality telly choc-a-block with the tragically self-obsessed and deluded, it's been a relief to have a comedy mocking those who confine their ambitions to being The Librarians.
The comedy bowed out last week in a fine ironic finale, as the monstrous boss Frances, a neurotic whirl of racism and insensitivity to all minorities, was lauded by the visiting State Premier as a shining example of tolerance and diversity.
New teen show Gossip Girl is, unfortunately, devoid of satire and would make a favourite show for the likes of Ja'mie. It's the tired old genre of rich kids with glamorous problems - The OC moves to Manhattan.
And as in the former, there's no getting down with the black or the brown in this latest cloyingly sentimental adulation of privilege. If this is the young generation's aspirational America, Barack Obama indeed is pushing the proverbial uphill.
However, let's finish on a repeat moan, that the third season of a teen show about a not very rich, but oh-so-smart girl, Veronica Mars, is playing years out of date, in an obscure slot and liable, on any given week, to be rudely interrupted.
Veronica's problem is no doubt her sophisticated, sarcastic view of Barbie America. But let us bemoan, for the record, its treatment by TV2. Let it not be said we condone such abuse of rare quality entertainment for young persons.
