Australia meant little in the UK in the early 80s. First came Men At Work with their clever comedy song Down Under containing its stereotypical view of Australian life. Then came the soap operas Neighbours and Home and Away.
(Early Neighbours cast including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Jim Dale who would all go onto to international success)
The BBC bought Neighbours to fill holes in its daytime TV schedule – Breakfast TV (a new thing then) really meant you had to fill the whole day. Originally it was shown around 9.30am and 1.45pm (after the lunch news). I found out about when one of my friends at university, Gary Hibbard, watched it. Gary loved soap operas (proving categorically that being accepted to Cambridge does not mean that you have any taste). Initially he thought that it was odd as he watched it on Mondays and Fridays and the plot from Friday led straight into Monday but then there would be a jump to Friday. It was on everyday, but he was in lectures on the other days, so it was not advanced storytelling as he claimed.
It was successful and the two slots were changed to lunch and pre The Six O’Clock News, just after children’s TV, which garnered an even bigger audience. More and more Australian TV was bought up as it was relatively cheap and in English – Prisoner Cell Block H on late night TV, The Henderson Kids on Sunday morning’s.
(Will, Neil, Jay and Simon)
The Inbetweeners arrived in 2008. A conscious attempt to do something about teenagers that was not as glamourous as Skins, about the kids who were not the popular ones and not the geeks. It was a slow burn, I picked up the first series on DVD for a couple of quid on impulse one Sunday morning at Sainsbury’s. Apparently something similar happened to a LOT of people. I watched it and laughed so much at episode 2 when Simon threw up on Carly’s brother that my ribs hurt. Then the same thing happened with the third episode at Thorpe Park. That is the episode where Simon passes his driving test, breaks up a funeral cortege, Neil walks around in speedos and they go on Nemesis.
It ran for three series, but the same problem happened that always happens when young roles are played by people older than the characters, very quickly it becomes apparent that they are too old (none quite as bad as Charisma Carpenter, at 27, being cast as a 16-year-old in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a 30-year-old Gabrielle Carteris as a 16-year-old in Beverly Hills 90210).
There was money in the franchise though. The first film sent them to Malia and, unlike many of the 70s films that spun off TV series, was really good. Even though to save money they did not shoot most of it in Malia (I’ve been there twice). A typical destination for the teenage rite of passage on leaving school. The second film was uncertain for a while. It starts with Simon and Will at university and a Harry Potter scene that is brilliant then takes them to the typical university backpacker destination – Australia.
By this time Australia is rooted in the British psyche as somewhere exotic to go and it is only New Zealand that is perceived as the end of the world (a perception that would change with Jacinda Ardern’s handling of COVID-19). It is normal to go there and explore – almost the second rite of passage for British youth. Australia is the glamourous, open space on the other side of the world, that is close to us due to our common TV shows.
(The scenes in the water park are pure gold).
(Simon, Will, Jay and Neil stuck in the Outback)
Men At Work were very successful – even more in the USA than the UK. This song was used to background a whole episode of Scrubs with the lead singer walking next to JD for the entire episode. It is an unusual song as the chorus is not really distinct musically from the verses.
Overkill
Five Miles Out 