Powerpoint: Jest what we needed

By FRANCES GRANT

Telly is a quick-change artist. One minute we're awash in the relived grief and dust and disbelief of a swag of 9/11 anniversary markers and the world seems beyond hope or satire.

The next minute comes the light relief. Suddenly TV One is sparkling with comedy gems: the hit comedies of the year from Australia and Britain, Kath and Kim and The Office.

The welter of reality shows producing such overnight "stars" as Mau the Mad Driver, Aeroflot frontman Jeremy Spake, cruise crooner Jane McDonald and an endless flow of voraciously celebrity-hungry Popstars might have us believe even the most mundane aspects of real life are far beyond satire.

Not so. Aussie character comedy Kath and Kim proves that even the original, scary queen of reality television, the rum-and-Coke-quaffing Noelene of Sylvania Waters, can be eclipsed.

Jane Turner's Kath is the willing target market for every infomercial ever aired. She has the gym equipment in the spare bedroom, the anti-ageing creams, she's done the diets, every piece of clothing has been touched up by the Bedazzler machine she must keep in the bedroom closet. She's done the speed reading course, she's the proud owner of a brand-new Daewoo. She's a paragon of aspiration.

With fellow "suburban nightmare", daughter Kim, she mangles the English language and takes the Australian accent through strangulations not previously thought anatomically possible.

Kath and Kim, the creation of comedy veterans Turner and Gina Riley, is a gentle comedy, its characters so deluded as to be funny (Kim the "hornbag") or strangely endearing (Kath). And this is a shameless comedy of class which allows you to feel validated because at least you drive an old Toyota.

Not so The Office, a sitcom in the form of a mock-docusoap and so sinister you're choking on your laughs. Set in the grim premises of a paper merchants in the unprepossessing English town of Slough, filmed in documentary style, the show is absolutely deadpan. It's flatter than a Monday morning round the water-cooler.

There are no one-liners, no laugh track. Two minutes into the show and you feel trapped. It's the feeling of frozen horror possums must have when caught in the headlights. The abominable, ingratiating bully David Brent — "friend first, boss second, entertainer third" — could be a boss near you.

He's the kind of guy who answers the phone: "Sammy, you old slag, it's the Brentmeister General," or when introduced — "This is Mr Brent" — answers "Guilty". His bulletproof conviction he is beloved by his staff, his casual cruelties and excruciating insecurities simply take your breath away.

Brent is all bad movie star impersonations and awful jokes until the joke's on him. Someone puts together an email spoof of Brent's head on a pornographic image. "I'm angry not because I'm in it but because it degrades women — which I hate."

Comedian Ricky Gervais' brilliant creation, however, is but one part of the horrors of the The Office. A close second is Brent's assistant Gareth, a hollow-eyed fellow with the foetal look of something not quite formed. Gareth, obsessed with guns and his stint as a territorial, is that guy in the office you fear could just come in one day and blow everyone away.

Then there's Tim, Gareth's tormentor, the guy who knows he's trapped in a dead-end job and whose every move speaks filing cabinets about the mind-numbing boredom of his day.

David Brent has been called the offspring of such classic English comic creations of small, self-satisfied pomposity as Dad's Army's Captain Mainwaring and Basil Fawlty. Brent has the smugness of Mainwaring, the slapstick and irritating body language of a Fawlty but unlike those bumbling idiots, he is a powerful reminder that ego-driven idiots actually rule the world.

A little guy from Texas, for example, really can be bristling with the world's biggest armoury and baying for war. No, some things really are beyond satire.