The Jesters: Mar 15

If you think this scene from The Jesters looks familiar, you’re right.

Tonight’s episode is a deliberate case of art imitating life imitating art.

Mick Molloy plays faded comedy star Dave Davies, who has a reunion of his former comedy series ‘Remembering’ (strange name, but anyway….).

It parodies the sort of sketches that were the staple of comedies such as Fast Forward and The Comedy Company.

Davies even performs an old comedy duo sketch as a camp airline steward, joined by a former comedy partner (played here by Pete Rowsthorn). It surely resembles the long-running sketch that Steve Vizard and Michael Veitch used to do in Fast Forward -although Molloy actually channels his best John Michael Howson impression, but I digress.

As the sketch is now being revived in 2011, Davies’ manager, perfectly played by Deborah Kennedy, tells him if he is under threat of an anti-discrimination case by a gay activist.

Keeping up, so far?

The irony of course is that Molloy and Eddie McGuire were at the centre of a media uproar for gags about flamboyant ice skater Johnny Weir during Nine’s Winter Olympics broadcast. It became the subject of an anti-discrimination complaint, which was eventually resolved.

The Jesters episode, which airs at 8:30pm tonight on Movie Extra, feels like comedy payback.