IT’S so frustrating to watch that you want to rip your hair out. But Rob Sitch says ABC’s Utopia has become more reality than satire in season two.
From the creators of 'Frontline' and 'Hollowmen' comes a new comedy that takes a swipe at government.
UTOPIA may have won the Logie for best comedy this year, but co-creator and star Rob Sitch admits he’d lost faith in the project on more than one occasion.
A comedy about a bunch of bureaucrats at the Nation Building Authority who fail to achieve anything doesn’t necessarily scream “champagne comedy”.
When we spoke ahead of the program’s launch last year, Sitch sounded a little nervous about the public’s reaction to the show.
This is perhaps unsurprising: after years of creating comedy classics including Frontline and The Dish, the Working Dog team had hit a rough patch following a solid response to political satire The Hollowmen in 2008.
For a group that had rarely stumbled, facing failure was tough: first their $11 million feature Any Questions for Ben? bombed at the box office, then the Brian Nankervis-hosted biographical show Pictures of You was cancelled after one season. Comedy game show Have You Been Paying Attention? was a prime time ratings disaster on Ten, with some episodes last year attracting as few as 164,000 viewers.
So Utopia’s success meant a lot and seems to have turned around their fortunes. The show quickly became a comedy favourite and won the peer-voted Logie this year for Most Outstanding Comedy. And in a nice bit of serendipity, HYBPA has finally become a modest hit in the ratings.
One of the smartest Aussie comedies of recent years, Utopia combines the based-in-truth satire of government found in Yes Minister (albeit a much gentler version) with the comedy of the modern workplace found in The Office.
The program’s become synonymous with government waste and ineptitude — “it’s like an episode of Utopia” is a frequently heard refrain.
“It was really a delight that people got it in a way that we never thought they’d get it,” says Sitch, who plays the long suffering head of the NBA, Tony.
Season two sees the NBA failing their way to ever greater success.
“That was our rule: They officially don’t achieve anything but all along the way their political masters are even more appreciative of what a great job they’re doing,” he laughs.
Born in 1962, Sitch has been a familiar face on Aussie TV since 1986, when sketch comedy, The D-Generation, began on the ABC.
Honing their comedy skills on radio, the team moved into production in 1990, borrowing a camcorder earmarked as the major prize for Australia’s Funniest Home Videos to film the very first Shitscared sketch in the Channel 9 carpark.
Sitch, Jane Kennedy, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and producer Michael Hirsh formed Working Dog in 1993 to make current affairs satire Frontline, and the team’s quality control over every aspect of production since has resulted in some of Australia’s best loved comedy, including The Castle, The Dish, The Panel and Thank God You’re Here.
Sitch and Kennedy married and have five children together — including Joshua Sitch, who’s currently appearing in ABC comedy Little Lunch.
How do they find the time for such a big family and Working Dog too? “Outsourcing,” he laughs.
Sitch is particularly thoughtful for a comedian, and you get the impression he’s constantly analysing the world from six different perspectives.
He constantly offers up considered observations about why things happen, or aspects of issues he’s noticed that no one else has. Sitch chuckles constantly, and at one point starts laughing so hard recalling a sketch from cult comedy series Big Train it takes him three attempts to finish his sentence.
A favoured phrase is: “the interesting thing about that”, and for Sitch, the most enjoyable aspect of making Utopia is the research phase, chatting to bureaucrats and insiders for material to base episodes on.
One of the great delights of the first season was watching the satire become reality: an episode sending up the myriad public announcements over decades that have never resulted in a Very Fast Train was broadcast just days before a new VFT report was launched.
A similar thing occurred as they shot this year’s season opener, about work on a multi-billion dollar project similar to the East West Link in Melbourne being delayed at a cost of millions simply so politicians can attend a publicity launch.
This infuriates the Spanish tunnelling team who are forced to sit on their hands during weeks of delays.