Television
Summer Heights High is a Logie Award-winning Australian television mockumentary series written by and starring Chris Lilley. It is a parody of high school life epitomised by its three protagonists: effeminate and megalomaniac "Director of Performing Arts" Mr G; self-absorbed, privileged teenager Ja'mie King; and disobedient, vulgar Tongan student Jonah Takalua, all played by Lilley. It lampoons Australian high school life and many aspects of the human condition and is filmed in a documentary style, with non-actors playing supporting characters.
Following a similar format to Lilley's previous series, We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year, Lilley plays multiple characters in the show. Filmed in Melbourne at Brighton Secondary College, the series premiered on 5 September 2007 at 9:30pm on ABC TV and continued for eight weekly episodes. Each episode was also released as a weekly podcast directly after its screening via both the official website and through any RSS podcast client in either WMV or MPEG4.
Summer Heights High was a massive ratings success for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and was met with mostly positive critical reaction. The series debuted on 5 September 2007 and the eight-part series ended on 24 October 2007. On 26 March 2008, it was announced that the show had been sold for international distribution to BBC Three in the United Kingdom and HBO in the United States and Canada.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Tonga
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy.... In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“Photographs may be more memorable than moving images because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)