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8MMM Aboriginal Radio

ABC's new comedy centres around a blackfella community radio station where white fellas get in the way.

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When he’s looking for validation, 8MMM Aboriginal Radio general manager Jake (Ian Meadows) asks his Indigenous trainee GM Jessie (Shari Sebbens) if he is “A little bit Deadly?”

As the resident missionary of the Alice Springs Community Radio, he tries to feebly bridge the divide between white and black cultures but never quite gets it right. He’s not the only one.

Volunteering at the station there is online news producer and misfit hippy, Koala (Laura Hughes) who’s far too quick to embrace all things Koori.

“I just love the Aboriginal people and their culture. The babies are so cute,” she says.

And there is also new Training Manager Dave Cross (Geoff Morrell) who lands in a desk job he resents and whose mercenary ways are punctuated by casual racism.

These three MMMs (missionary, misfit and mercenary) are the key to the title of ABC’s new comedy about a struggling community radio station in Central Australia. While it tries to broadcast to its Indigenous community, 8MMM also serves as a magnet for white fellas getting in the way. Some have no respect, others have too much.

Three other characters form the ensemble of this character comedy: DJ Benjamin (Zac James), who is so light-skinned he goes by the name of ‘Jampajinpa’ and espouses radical views, indifferent receptionist Millie (Elaine Crombie) who would rather attend to her nail polish than work, and traditional owner and unpaid tea lady Lola (Trisha Morton-Smith) who suffers the white folk who seemingly know better.

Morton-Smith, best known for Redfern Now and Radiance, is also the writer and producer of this under-achiever comedy penned from the Blackfella viewpoint.

In the first episode Dave Cross arrives at the station, to replace the late Training Manager who recently passed away. He doesn’t really want the job, nor do they particularly welcome him. He even drops a few racist clangers (ones that other shows would attract headlines for using), and is instructed, “Aboriginal people don’t like being called Aborigines.”

There’s also a plot in which trainee GM Jessie confronts a local politician over her frustrations at community members living in inept public housing, resulting in a scene before local media. That’s when she isn’t being directed to public servants in Canberra to try to get a plughole fixed.

For general manager Jake it’s all a bit much, when all he is trying to do is run a functional community radio station. “Work comes before mob,” he tells his team. Millie, who steals every scene she is in with bugger all dialogue, curls her lip at the thought of menial labor.

8MMM Aboriginal Radio was originally produced for ABC2 but has landed on ABC’s Wednesday night comedy line-up, which is undoubtedly a big ask. It’s light on punchlines, and the writing is somewhat uneven.

But while it lacks the precision of some of Black Comedy‘s better sketches (not all of them were solid) you do have to admire its sense of self-irreverence. Even the Indigenous character with the light-skin is probably a jab at Andrew Bolt’s dubious statements about “Aboriginality.”

The humour is in the character interaction rather than “jokes”, leaving this just a little bit deadly after all.

8MMM Aboriginal Radio airs 9:30pm Wednesdays on ABC.

2 Responses

  1. I get this sneaking suspicion that production companies are finding it hard to get funding now with the government cuts that they are going after the somewhat easier (smaller pool of candidates) funding to get with indigenous programs.

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