Housos

Elle Dawe encapsulates the spirit and attitude of Australia in one amazing character. Never seen a women smash a wine bottle over a bogan's head with more vigor and passion. If she doesn't end her career with an Oscar something is wrong.

Then add 20 more cast members who scream every word. And fill every second of every episode wall to wall with all that screaming. Then double that And double it again. Get in a fight with the cops, especially if you're drunk and pregnant. Huff glue, run down a few cops at a DUO chcheckpoint.and in your free time stand around screaming throwing bottles and do random drive bystanders at nothing about nothing. Keep screaming. Every second. I wanted to like this but I don't get it. It's like Gilmore Girls meets Benny Hill on meth with Outrageous Fortune drunk and high and committing felonies while screaming at the top of your lungs.

Kudos to Paul Fenech for this late-night satire! I don't know what Dame Edna would think of series but reckon for sure Sir Les Patterson would be tickled pink/ruddy-red with humour. Lead character Frankie is to all intents a down-under Warren Beatty/Warren Zevon love-child who's basically an anti-authoritarian outlaw jailbird on the run. Off the grid so to speak... (man a guy like Frank could do with a lawyer like Saul Goodman but that's a different story) although Frank's often goes back to home town Sunnyvale so he can sort stuff out if U know what I mean. Anyhow sit back and enjoy the ride folks (all U kiddies watching should go back to bed, as Roy & HG would say :)

Frenech's Housos like Kath and Kim is masterful, frequent comic writing. He's a talent this guy, and that includes his acting too. As just recently becoming a confirmed Housos's addict, it's genius the way his whole comedy, no matter how off the wall it is, has a too underlying truth about it. Using fictional name Sunnyvale as a suburb, you want to wisely avoid (the show is set in Mt Druitt and Parramatta) we see the struggles of the lower class, taking to crime while sharing many sexcapades. The humor is foul, as is Shazza's mouth, but it's undeniably funny, with sharp cutting dialogue. Turps is great to see as the out of house father, who spends his days at the pub playing pokies, in not a half bad performance. Off the wall it is, trashy it is, but it's funny trash, but look underneath and you'll find a reality that's all so true about the lower class. The Centrelink angle cracks me up. May'be viewers can better understand what the lower class endure, where for them it's a vicious bloody circle, and how this problem really needs to be addressed, but for the viewer this show is bold and bloody funny.

I could see how a lot of viewers would be utterly appalled by this crude, rude comedy. Full of F words, bongs, debauchery, drugs, dole bludgers, street riots, trashing police cars, burning government buildings...this is normal life in the fictional Sunnyvale. But underneath it all, there is some merit to it. Absolutely everyone is sent up, from Frankie's Maltese background, to pokies loving elderly people, Lebanese mothers in burqas, dwarf bikies, heroin addicts, eastern suburbs TV reporters, inept police, Centrelink staff and Aussie dole bludgers. All these characters are not only sent up, they're often bashed and humiliated. It's not a pretty show, but you can't look away, and there are some genuinely funny scenes. And the show does take risks. Kids, for example, aren't depicted as sweet, rascally moppets. They get tasered, they're left home alone, they're shunted around as part of scams to get the adults more social welfare benefits, or left outside the pub while their parents get drunk. In one episode, a gang of kids sets fire to a neighbour's house. It's not pretty, but many of the plots are not outside the realms of real life possibility. Housos does go totally over the top, often, but it does have some value and it can be really funny.