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SUMMER HEIGHTS HIGH: REACHING NEW COMEDIC HEIGHTS?
Television Without Pity | November 7, 2008

By Angel Cohn

I was so excited to watch Summer Heights High, the new HBO series that debuts this weekend. The press release had me at "Mr. G, a self-important, high-strung drama teacher." And it had a lot of other checks in the pro column: It's an Australian import. It's a mockumentary. It involves a production of Anything Goes. It has one guy playing multiple roles. All things I typically enjoy. And to be fair, there were some moments of genius, but mostly I was just bored by the first episode. Maybe it gets funnier as it goes along? Fingers crossed.

Writer/creator Chris Lilley plays Ja'mie (a stuck up teen girl), Jonah (the school bully) and the aforementioned, awesome Mr. G. Perhaps if this show was all Mr. G, I'd love it more. It would be like a weekly installment of Waiting for Guffman meets Camp (which is kind of my dream TV show).

Ja'mie is fine. She's your typical spoiled princess who is an exchange student from a local private school, where she's the most popular non-Asian attendee. Lilley makes a surprisingly attractive teenage girl.

Mr. G (a.k.a. Greg Gregson) is incredible. He's a nutty drama educator who has to swap off on directing musicals with another teacher each year. Unfortunately, while she's directing your typical fare (such as Anything Goes), he's stifled by being just a choreographer. There are posters plastering his office of the kind of avant garde pieces he prefers. My favorite (and this made me laugh out loud) was "Ian Thorpe: The Man, The Music, The Water." (If you don't know who the Thorpedo is, think Australia's answer to Michael Phelps.) Mr. G also proudly sports a T-shirt for his production of Tsunamarama, which was a musical about the tsunami, set to the music of Bananarama. Very clever.

Unfortunately the show kind of lost me with Jonah, who is a badly behaved kid who just spouts profanity and promotes his bullying ways. It doesn't help that he kind of looks like the "Are You Havin' a Laugh?" character that Ricky Gervais played on Extras, but a much less funny version. And once I remembered how hysterical that was, Jonah immediately paled in comparison. Plus, he's kind of a one-note jerk. He just swears a lot, occasionally breakdances, and acts like an ass. I just didn't find him entertaining at all. Maybe it's just me.

I'll give the show another shot (primarily for Mr. G), but I wasn't all that wowed. Let us know your thoughts.

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