By Sharon Willdin
The ABC launched its broadcast television service in Australia on the November 5, 1956, and since that time comedy at the ABC has evolved into a richly seasoned and diversely sanctioned critique of our social norms and cultural institutions.
At the time of the ABC’s first television service, comedy was supported on the broadcaster’s national radio platform in the form of imported content and some locally produced radio plays.
The imported comedy included the British radio play Badger’s Green. It featured satirical elements based on a building development takeover of the picturesque village of Badger’s Green. The residents initiate a resistance campaign but eventually decide to settle the future of the village by playing a cricket match.
Local content at the time was produced by the Macquarie Network and included Moonshine.
Writer, actor and producer Robyn Butler, who has co-created a number of hit comedies including The Librarians with husband Wayne Hope, believes that comedic audiences “expect a level of relatability, and a world that is recognisably ridiculous.”
Moonshine was just that, an unconventional comedy about a jobless gambler who dreams he can make a fortune on the horses. His eccentric aunt, who lives on psychic powers and witches’ brews, promises to cure him of his addiction and dabbles with the supernatural to help him win 50,000 pounds.
The first three sitcoms shown on ABC television were American: My Hero featured a blundering real-estate agent; Amos n’ Andy dealt with ploys to get rich; and Life with Elizabeth was about day-to-day events of a young couple.
In the 60s the ABC featured the American shows, F Troop and Mr Ed, and British programs such as The Worker, The Larkins, Two of A Kind, Fire Crackers, and The Arthur Haynes Show.
By the end 1960s there was outward criticism about the lack of Australian content on television. There were only two main Australian sitcoms: Nice ‘n Juicy, about two brothers managing a citrus orchard in NSW; and I’ve Married a Bachelor, about the problems faced by a pair of newlyweds.
The outcry for more Australian content was met with a response in the form of Our Man in Canberra. The pilot episode featured a newly elected Member for Danforth who deals with preparing his maiden speech to Federal Parliament and a bus driver who insists on wearing anti-regulation sandshoes that results in a bus drivers strike.
It screened for one episode in 1971 before being taken off air. The ABC wasn’t ready for content that mocked the government.
While the show wasn’t successful in breaking through the cultural barrier of imposed ideologies it demonstrated a readiness from the Australian public to do just that.
For the first part of the 70s, British shows dominated comedy on the ABC. There was only a smattering of Australian comic content but crucially one of those shows was the irreverent, dissident and unapologetic Aunty Jack Show. It packed a punch both literally and metaphorically.
Wayne Hope, who directs in addition to writing, acting and producing, views comedy as “the subversion of the normal and mundane in a stylised way.”
The Aunty Jack Show was subversive and zany. It was a “very clever satiric comment on Aussie lifestyles”. The episode Kulture mocked cultural pretentiousness and stated that everyone is just “ordinary”.
The intensely aggressive and obese Aunty Jack rode a motor bike, wore army boots and sported a boxing glove. She threatened to jump through the TV screen and “rip yer bloody arms off” if you didn’t watch the show. Aunty Jack appeared off and on TV screens until 1975.
By the mid-70s the ABC started to take risks and make increasingly brave choices over content.
In 1975 Garry McDonald appeared on screens as Norman Gunston. The show was a subversive parody of a tonight show and it featured interviews with celebrities. Gunston was the antithesis of the perfect host. He was an unprepared nerd, sexually repressed, and looked like he’d had a fight with a razor blade.
The show outraged sections of the public who were concerned with international perceptions. Gunston was called the “image of an Ugly Australian”.
However, McDonald deftly tapped into the nation’s inferiority complex. He made Gunston so ineptly embarrassing that it enabled Australians to laugh at themselves.
Conservative programming values were permanently ousted with the scheduling of Alvin Purple. It premiered on ABC on August 13, 1976. The show was about an ordinary waterbed salesman who had an incredible effect on women and was constantly seduced by them.
It was goodbye to the status quo and the traditional expectations that preceded it.
Since that time the ABC has been entertaining audiences with unique Australian comedy for over five decades. The transformation of content that occurred in the 70s provided the gateway for the range and diversity seen today.
“There’s a saying at the ABC, ‘You can’t say Toyota and c…’,” said Wayne Hope.
“Actually, you can say c…, not Toyota,” responded Robyn Butler.
Featured image: Future newsreader Roger Climpson (left) on the set of Moonshine. Photo: YouTube