SBS: Serious Business Service

As reported in TVTonight, Screenworks' Regional to Global conference was held last month. At a panel titled "Commissioner Confidential: What They're Really Looking For", SBS Head of Scripted Nakul Legha stated:

Audiences don’t really come to SBS for comedy.

It's a small statement with massive implications. Before I dig into it, a few parameters:

First: this is only about scripted shows, so while RocKwiz, Faboriginal and Big Backyard Quiz (which returned last week) are dear to my heart, they're not our concern right now.

Second: it's easy to be flippant and point at SBS's history and reputation in other areas of programming. World news is serious. Sports broadcasting like soccer and the Tour de France is serious. Eurovision is incredibly serious. There's a lot to discuss about the value and viewership of these completely different types of programs. Another time, another article.

Legha went on to mention SBS's Digital Originals program, which over the years has produced short series such as Homecoming Queens and Latecomers:

It is the most well resourced short form initiative in the world [...] I don’t think there’s another initiative like this in the world that is an open call out. You don’t need credits. What you need is just a compelling story to tell that can be told in 6 x 10 minute formats. Teams of two.

Here's an interesting little bit of history: before there were Digital Originals, the SBS Comedy Runway supported and presented a series of shorts, not unlike ABC's recent Fresh Blood (though the SBS ones were actually shown on TV, not just unceremoniously dumped on YouTube), specifically to "find the next generation of comedic talent".

SBS used to produce full comedy series too: Pauly Fenech's Pizza and Housos, surrealist sketch satire (and Mad as Hell precursor) Newstopia, lifestyle programming send-up Life Support. Which brings us to one of Rummagist's core interests: niche Australian DVDs.

Whether they're to your taste or not, these shows are all unapologetically different and weird. Bogan Pride is a TV musical, an incredibly rare thing for Australia. Danger 5 remains unlike anything else ever made here, and we're all the poorer for it. I'm including US Wilfred too: after all, how does the Elijah Wood glow-up version happen without its low-budget, stoner comedy progenitor?

SBS was also the home of many international comedy series, from Canadian sitcoms Corner Gas and Kim's Convenience to Danish Bridget-Jonesian Nynne (a favourite of my mum's) and "alternative" comedies like Bullet in the Face and South Park.

Nurturing comedic talent isn't just about plucking creatives out of underemployment to make a few minisodes. It's also about sharing those works, and others, so people can discover them. To paraphrase Brian Eno: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace didn't have many viewers, but everyone who saw it went out and became a comedian.

Legha's comments weren't the only recent Australian TV comedy update. Local comedian-founded Humdinger Studios launched their rebrand (having been known for many years as Stupid Old Studios). Their professional studio and coworking spaces have proven integral to Melbourne's recorded comedy scene, from podcasts and specials to the Big Big Big x Grouse House miniseries Descent.

Seizing the means of production isn't a quick or immediately practical solution — and if public broadcasters were actually doing their jobs it wouldn't be so necessary. 30 years ago if you wanted to make a sci-fi sitcom about a comedy trio in a submarine the ABC would pay for everything and film it on-site. Back when SBS ran the Comedy Runway, a hypothetical expansion to a full series wasn't an unreasonable idea; for any comic Digital Original teams, the pipeline is almost certainly a pipe dream.

Even acknowledging that SBS is ad-supported, the focus on local ratings doesn't make sense to me. If they're solely committed to producing work purely aimed at an Australian audience, isn't that already niche enough that genre is hardly a concern? If they're serious about exporting SBS productions globally, are domestic ratings all that important anyway? On some level I think the discussion around viewing habits is missing the point, that broadcasters should believe themselves capable of at least partly defining popular taste, not merely responding to it (or what they believe it to be). As Legha defined it, SBS is looking for:

...provocations that make audiences lean in, noisy hooks, moral quandaries, complicated two handers, psychological torsion [...] it’s that lean-in thing that we want from audiences.

Let's stay the course and assume a public demand driven commissioning system. Comedic or not, scripted or not, what Australian audiences consistently show up for are mostly shows about crime, food, and dogs. People were captivated by the 'mushroom murders', and that didn't even have a dog!* I've been half-joking about 'Inspector Rex Down Under' for over a decade!** It might be shallow and populist—TV always has been—but the first person to find the right mix of crooks, cooking and canines would surely be God Emperor of the Tube.

*Although there was that part where they brought down a pair of niche tech-focused sniffer dogs, Georgia and Alma, from Queensland to look for electronics. Georgia went on to be crowned AFP's Dog of the Year.

**Yes I'm mentioning it here to manifest it once again, yes I have a bunch of plots in a folder somewhere, yes I think Australian Rex would get really into sausage rolls and dimmies, yes I'd even agree to find a role for Asher Keddie if that would get it over the line.

All joking aside, the implication—and it's essentially true—is that only certain kinds of stories get to enjoy a national audience. Without more shows like Legally Brown or The Family Law, maybe only white Anglo people get to be funny on TV in Australia. Sure, if you're Aaron Chen you might get to play second fiddle on Guy Montgomery's Guy-Mont Spelling Bee or third fiddle on Fisk or fourth fiddle on Back in Very Small Business or a one-ep bit part as a Menulog delivery guy in Fam Time. But even the casts of those old DVDs are overwhelmingly white: without new productions, that's all SBS comedy will ever be.

One element of the SBS charter is to "make use of Australia's diverse creative resources"; another is to promote the "cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Australian people". In rejecting comedy outright, SBS is telling local diverse writers to express themselves a certain way—without joy or irony, sarcasm or silliness. It's reductive, unimaginative, and limits our understanding and appreciation of Australian cultural diversity. I guess all we can do is laugh.