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You Can’t Ask That: Aug 3

ABC series with insight from marginalised Australians begins with questions about what it’s really like to be a wheelchair user.

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The first episode of You Can’t Ask That has an ABC broadcast tomorrow night, together with a run on iview.

The series, in which misunderstood, marginalised Australians answering anonymous, online questions begins with questions about “what it’s really like to be a wheelchair user.”

What would happen if you gave people the chance to ask society’s outsiders the questions they were too embarrassed, too shy, too awkward and too scared to ask? What would happen if those stereotyped
minorities were given the right to answer those questions with dignity and depth?

The answer is an exercise is stereotype busting. You Can’t Ask That, a ten part ABC original series, confronts prejudice and discrimination in a highly entertaining format, offering genuine insight into the lives of Australians who live with labels, whose days are filled with the sidelong glances and silent disapproval of others. The series plunges joyfully into the lives of short statured Australians, wheelchair users, the transgendered, Muslims, ex-prisoners, fat people, Indigenous, sex workers, the terminally ill and the polyamorous. It asks forthright and at times uncomfortable questions, which result in illuminating, moving and surprising answers.

Series guests include: 76 year-old transgender woman Dr. Rosemary Jones, disability rights advocate and wheelchair user Kelly Vincent, short statured comic Imaan Hadchiti, sex worker and porn star Lucie Bee, former prisoner and infamous escapee John Killick, niqab-wearing Muslims Anisa and Sadia Khan, and Indigenous dancers from Elcho Island in far North-Eastern Arnhem Land, Danzal Baker and Wakara Ganderra. These are just some of the 70 faces who make this one of the most diverse projects to grace Australian television.

You Can’t Ask That is life-affirming, insightful, hilarious and refreshingly inappropriate television. But more importantly, it gives some of the most judged and least understood Australians the chance to be heard.

9:20pm Wednesday on ABC.

One Response

  1. This show was a big surprise. Terrific television. Brave programming for ABC’s ‘Comedy Wednesday’, but it worked. Beautifully put together.

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