Summer Heights High

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Summer Heights High
Summer Heights High Intertitle
Genre	Mockumentary comedy
Created by	Chris Lilley
Written by	Chris Lilley
Directed by	Stuart McDonald
Starring	Chris Lilley
Country of origin	Australia
Language(s)	English
No. of episodes	8 (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Laura Waters
Running time	27 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC TV
Picture format	16:9
Original run	5 September 2007 – 24 October 2007
Chronology
Related shows	Big Bite We Can Be Heroes
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Summer Heights High is a Logie Award-winning, Australian television mockumentary series written by and starring Chris Lilley. It is a satirical parody of high school life epitomised by its three protagonists, effeminate and megalomaniacal "Director of Performing Arts" Mr. G, self-absorbed, privileged teenager Ja'mie King and disobedient, vulgar Tongan student Jonah Takalua. It lampoons Australian high school life and many aspects of the human condition and is filmed in a documentary style, with lay people 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. The series is filmed in Melbourne, at Brighton Secondary College.^[1] The premiere screening of the series began on Wednesday September 5 at 9:30 pm on ABC TV and continued for eight weekly episodes. Each episode was also released as a weekly podcast directly after its TV screening via both the official website and through any RSS podcast client in either WMV or MPEG4.

Summer Heights High was a significant ratings success for ABC, and was met with mostly positive critical reaction.^[2] The series debuted on 5 September 2007 and the 8-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. ^[3]

Contents 1 Format 2 Characters 2.1 Ja'mie King 2.2 Mr. G 2.3 Jonah Takalua 3 Episode listing 4 Soundtrack 5 Ratings 6 Controversy 7 DVD Release 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Format

According to the prologue, a production and filming team travelled to a typical Australian public high school and follow the events and daily lives surrounding the students and staff for one term. The team would film a slice of life-style documentary from the opinions of the students and staff, especially the three main characters: Ja'mie King, a mean girl-type prefect exchanged from a private school, Mr G, a charismatic drama teacher, and Jonah Takalua, a stereotypical Pacific Islander delinquent, all played by the series' writer Chris Lilley.

The series is filmed in a documentary style, with the supporting cast drawn from the real-life students and staff of the school where the series is set. The programme explores the facets of a typical Australian public high school such as social cliques, bullying, teenage slang, stereotyping, profanity, racism and homophobia by showcasing three different individuals: the bully, the exchange student (originally from a private school) and the teacher. The characters in the show do not interact with each other in any way, however some secondary characters such as Ms. Murray have appeared and been mentioned in the story of more than one character.

[edit] Characters

Main article: Characters in Summer Heights High

There are three primary characters featured in Summer Heights High, all portrayed by Chris Lilley.

[edit] Ja'mie King

Main article: Ja'mie King

Ja'mie King (pronounced "Ja-may") is a 16-year-old, year 11 schoolgirl. Ja'mie featured in Lilley's previous series, We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year, where she attended Hillford Grammar, a private girls' school in Sydney. Ja'mie had in the past sponsored 85 Sudanese children as part of a Global Vision program, however her motives were not due to concern for the children's welfare; Ja'mie saw it as a way of gaining approval and fame, as well as a chance to legitimately go on crash diets in the form of the 40 Hour Famine fundraising event every week. In the new series, Ja'mie is on an exchange program to Summer Heights High, a government school. She swaps schools with another student from Summer Heights, Chantelle Kwong, who will be going to Ja'mie's school, Hillford. The aim of the program is to show students from public and private schools that the schools each other attends are no different to each other, and a good education can be received from both. However, upon arriving at Summer Heights, Ja'mie assumes that the school would be full of "bogans", "sluts", and the facilities would be "crap".

Ja'mie immediately makes friends with the most popular girls at Summer Heights High. It becomes obvious however, that her friendship is not genuine when her so-called friends discover a poster she has made of them calling them "povo skanks". Her manipulative character is enforced when she manages to convince her new friends that the poster was meant as a joke and that they need to "get a sense of humour". Ja'mie exhibited a racist attitude toward Asian people, as well as general snobbishness. She made several attempts to alienate Bec from their group of friends, as she is of Singaporean descent. She also harassed Holly about having unusually large breasts, Jess for having skin problems, and Caitlin for being dumb and doing restricted maths.

During the show, Ja'mie falls in love with year 7 student Sebastian, and decides to go out with him. However, the relationship only lasts a short amount of time as Ja'mie steals Sebastian's mobile phone and finds out a girl named Madeline has been texting him to sit with him in English class. Ja'mie dumps him and claims he made her "question my hotness". Later on in the show, Ja'mie and her friends form a student representative council, and decide to organise a Year 11 Formal. Ja'mie plans to have it at a popular nightclub with an expensive DJ, however at $450 a ticket, the student council faces cancelling the event because students can't afford tickets. Instead, Ja'mie arranges a day to raise money for AIDS in Africa, which is enough to cover Formal expenses. The Head of Senior School learns that the reason for this fundraiser isn't to raise funds as intended, but to fund the expensive Formal. As a compromise, Ja'mie is offered to hold the Formal in the school's staff room, with no DJ and cheap, hand-made decorations. She invites Tamsin to the Formal, a lesbian student, as she wants to make a big impression, but when Tamsin finds out that Ja'mie is not lesbian, she ditches her by SMS, forcing Ja'mie to instead take Sebastian, who she gets back together with just for the night. The Ja'mie segment ends with her leaving the school after her term at Summer Heights High in the car with her mum and friend Brianna. At the very end, she stands up through the car's sun-roof and shouts, "Public schools rock!"

[edit] Mr. G

Main article: Mr G

Helen "Greg" Gregson, aka Mr G is a 36-year-old drama teacher at the school. Mr G not only believes that he is an incredibly talented and well liked teacher, but also that his students share his intense passion for drama and performance. His narcissism places him in constant conflict with other members of staff, and the school principal in particular. His self centred attitude extends to frequently losing his temper with the students, and he is hostile to the disabled students being involved in his musical as he is under the belief that they will damage its quality. It is clear that he is unaware that his own perception of his teaching abilities is not shared by most students. He has written several musicals for the school, including "Mate, You Can't Skate", based on the Avril Lavigne hit single Sk8er Boi; and "Tsunamarama", based on the events of the 2004 Tsunami disaster, set to the music of Bananarama. Mr. G has previously been featured on the Seven Network sketch series Big Bite.^[4]

[edit] Jonah Takalua

Main article: Jonah Takalua

Jonah Takalua is a 13-year-old school boy in Year 8 at Summer Heights High, which is his third school after being expelled from two others for acts of vandalism. He causes trouble at the school by treating his teachers with disrespect and bullying younger students. His most hated teacher appears to be Ms. Wheatley, his English teacher. There is constant conflict between the two characters and as a result he is at serious risk of being expelled. Jonah also has difficulties learning, and attends "Gumnut Cottage", a remedial English class for students at Summer Heights High who have reading difficulties. After threatening Ms. Wheatley, Jonah is expelled from Summer Heights High. In the closing scene his graffiti tag *dick*tation appears at numerous locations around the school, and this is seen as his final revenge.

[edit] Episode listing

Main article: List of Summer Heights High episodes

[edit] Soundtrack

A soundtrack has been released on the Australian iTunes store containing audio extracts from songs in the series including Mr. G's "Bummer Heights High", "Naughty Girl", "She's A Slut" and Jonah's "Being A Poly". Part 2 of the soundtrack of the Summer Heights High album contained songs such as "My Name is Mr G", "This Time You're Dead" and the Summer Heights High Theme. Most of the songs from Part 2 are from the final musical.

"Naughty Girl" was released as a single on 8 March 2008 with remixes by Paul Mac, John Paul Talbot and Stylaz Fuego.^[5] There is also a new music video clip to go with the song. It has peaked at number 7 on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart to date.

[edit] Ratings

The premiere episode of Summer Heights High did well in the ratings due to the lead-in from the return of The Chaser's War on Everything.^{[citation needed]} It peaked at 1.6 million viewers nationally with an average of 1.22 million.^[6] Along with Spicks and Specks, Summer Heights High helped ABC TV to achieve its strongest midweek ratings for 2007.^[7] The second episode rated stronger than the premiere with an average of 1.375 million viewers tuning in nationally.^[8]

The third episode managed to rate very well with 1.275 million viewers nationally^[9] while the fourth episode fared well with 1.235 against the season premiere of Prison Break.^[10] The fifth episode only managed 1.156 million viewers, the lowest ratings so far for an episode of the show, although the programme remained the highest rating show in its timeslot.^[11] The sixth episode picked up slightly in viewers from the previous week with 1.192 million tuning in.^[12] The seventh show grew in ratings as the penultimate episode, picking up to average 1.307 million viewers for the night.^[13] The eighth and final episode achieved the highest ratings for Summer Heights High with a total of 1.512 million viewers watching the concluding episode to the series.^[14]

[edit] Controversy

Even before Summer Heights High aired, some community groups were complaining about a "rape joke", and Mr G's inappropriate "touching" of a boy with Down syndrome.^[15]

The Herald Sun reported that parents and some teachers have considered the possibility that the show is influencing children to misbehave at school. Students were reportedly imitating Jonah and Ja'mie, repeating lines that were bullying, racist and homophobic.^[16] The use of irony to confront powerful social issues allows for criticism through parody. Education Union branch president Mary Bluett stated in response that the show was "...clearly tongue-in-cheek".^[17]

After episode three, the family of a girl who died taking drugs at the 2007 Good Vibrations music festival in Sydney, Annabel Catt, complained that the program had been lampooning her death.^[15] The ABC apologised to the family, stating that the situation was purely coincidental and assured them that filming of the episode in question had been completed eleven days before their daughter's death. The ABC thereafter began to display a message before each episode stating that there is no link between the series' characters and people in real life.^[15]

It was also claimed by Michael Reed, the writer for a similar Network Ten series called Sit Down Shut Up in 2000, that Lilley had borrowed ideas for characters and plots from the series including the school name and aspects of the Mr. G character.^[18]

[edit] DVD Release

Summer Heights High
	Set Details	Special Features
	8 Episodes 2 Disc Set 16:9 Aspect Ratio Subtitles: Yes English (2.0 Stereo) Total running time: Approx 465 minutes	3 hours and 48 minutes of deleted scenes, bloopers and outtakes[19] Mr. G: 80 minutes Ja'mie: 80 minutes Jonah: 50 minutes
	Release Dates
	Region 4
	25 October 2007

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Summer Heights High Official website
• Summer Heights High MySpace page
• MySpace - Mr G's MySpace page
• Ja'mie's MySpace page
• Jonah's MySpace page
• Chris Lilley's MySpace page

v • d • e Chris Lilley Characters Daniel Sims • Ja'mie King • Pat Mullins • Phil Olivetti • Ricky Wong • Mr G • Jonah Takalua • Characters in Summer Heights High Television series Big Bite • Hamish & Andy • We Can Be Heroes • Summer Heights High (List of episodes) Miscellaneous Ned (film) • "Naughty Girl" (song) • Hamish & Andy (radio show)