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The Ones To Watch - Chris Lilley
theage(melbourne)magazine | January 2006

The story so far: Like most overnight success stories, Chris Lilley put in the hard yards first. He started his working life as a stand-up comedian in his early 20s, then scored a regular spot on Channel Seven, first in The Big Bite, and then the ill-fated (and under-rated) Hamish and Andy. In 2003 Lilley approached the ABC with an idea for a mockumentary about nominees for Australian of the Year, featuring a Perth housewife, a teenage girl, an Asian physics student, a Queensland police officer and two country bumpkins. And he wanted to play all six characters himself.
Showing one of those brilliant leaps of faith that still occasionally distinguishes our national broardcaster, the ABC said yes. “I’d seen Chris on The Big Bite and he stood out as an incredible performer,” says the ABC’s head of arts and entertainment, Courtney Gibson. “He came to us with a really ambitious, quite extreme idea and we liked that he was taking the genre in an entirely fresh direction.”
The result was We Can Be Heroes, the slow-burn TV hit of 2005. “I knew I was going to be happy with it, but I didn’t think it would appeal to a mass audience,” Lilley says. “I thought it might get a niche, a cult following. But I really didn’t think I’d have so many people watching it.” So convincing was he in all the roles that many first-time viewers thought they were watching a documentary, not a comedy, and when he appeared in character on radio as Ja’mie, the obnoxious schoolgirl, the switchboard lit up with appalled listeners, convinced the self-obsessed brat was genuine.
Lilley ended up with an audience of more than 5 million people over the six episodes and the DVDs have sold an astonishing 25,000 copies in six months – the highest-selling ABC comedy this year. Sadly, it doesn’t mean instant riches for Lilley – as the production was fully funded by the ABC, it’s their bank balance that improves, not his. “But it makes the ABC happy, and it makes them want to fund another series. So it’s good for me, too. It means I can keep doing silly things.”
What’s coming up in 2006: The next “silly thing” starts production in March; it’s another mockumentary, this time set in a school. “It’s similar, but different,” Lilley says. “I’ll be playing a number of roles again. It’ll be eight episodes, another little self-contained package. But it’s about an environment, rather than an event.” He’s also about to release a book based on We Can Be Heroes and a soundtrack (“It’s a way of keeping the characters alive a bit longer.”) “So it is looking like a big year,” he says. “But what I’m really most excited about is this new series.” Courtney Gibson agrees: “We’re looking forward to a long association with Chris. We’re planning years ahead. ABC comedy can really go places with him, and we know he can deliver.”
Brian Courtis, Age television critic, says: “At a time when television appeared to be plummeting into yet another black hole, Lilley made us laugh at our foolish obsession with winners. Like Barry Humphries, Norman Gunston or Paul Hogan, he proved a comic chameleon and, with an acute sense of timing and balance, won us over. A funny man (woman, and girl) with great potential.”