Agony Uncles, ABC1, Wednesday, 9.30pm
Des Dowling, Scott Brennan and Adam Elliot come clean about their experiences of
sex and love in this new series.
With tongue firmly in cheek, writer and actor Adam Zwar (Wilfred, Lowdown)
bravely goes where few people have hitherto dared: inside the psyche of men and the
rituals of love and romance.
On paper, this could have been a stinker. A bunch of self-satisfied blokes sitting
around discussing their experiences of women and the game of love has the vague
stench of locker-room misogyny.
The clip-and-talking-head format of this also bears strong similarities to the tedious
Grumpy Old … franchise, in which washed-up boomer-era comedians nostalgically
kvetch about what’s wrong with the world today.
For starters Zwar, who narrates and can often be heard in the background laughing
at the responses the discussions elicit, has rounded up a diverse bunch of men who
span generations, cultural backgrounds, personalities and sexual preferences.
There are blokes’ blokes like broadcaster Tim Ross and comedian Lawrence Mooney,
SNAGS such as Josh Lawson and Damian Walshe-Howling, Muslim academic
Waleed Aly, out-and-proud gay filmmaker Adam Elliot and the odd-couple pairing of
father-and-son John and Tom Elliott, among others.
As they talk about the first tentative steps that single men take in their quest to meet
Mr or Miss Right, or to paraphrase Robin Williams, Mr and Miss Right Now, what
emerges is a far cry from the stereotype of blokes bragging about their sexual
conquests, an image reinforced by background, Puberty Blues-era footage of leering
surfers standing next to their shining ”shaggin’ wagons”.
These are sweaty-palmed, nervous Romeos whose approaches, as we see in episode
one, The Single Man, mostly end in embarrassment, humiliation and disappointment.
As Lawrence Mooney nicely puts it, he was the guy lining up for a kebab at the end of
the night while his Lothario friend sped off in a taxi with a girl he’d just met. It helps
that Zwar clearly identifies with the underdog, eroding the notion that Alfie-type
bed-hopping is the norm of his or any other generation.
Nor does he seem to believe, in sharp contrast to the army of sexperts in the media
prescribing what’s right or wrong in today’s supposedly permissive climate, that he
or anyone else has a definitive answer to most of the questions that will continue to
dumbfound men.
The difference between now and then, as Zwar says, is that when he grew up little
guidance was available to men (and presumably women), other than sex education
classes warning youngsters about the perils of intimacy.
But it’s less for advice than for entertainment that one might turn to Agony Uncles,
with its emblematic subtitle, ”when you have absolutely no one else to turn to”.
Future episodes deal with dating, the ”just friends” syndrome, relationships and the
eternal quandary of when you should and should not lie to your partner, chivalry,
trust, jealousy, moving in, cheating, breaking up and unexpectedly finding oneself
single again.
The latter is a sensible acknowledgement that mating for life is a phenomenon that
humankind hasn’t yet mastered.
Agony Uncles’ tone is light and breezy and filled with humour, some of which is the
product of its comedic storytellers knowing how to deliver a punchline; some of it
less intentional; and some designed to jar, as when businessman and Liberal Party
stalwart John Elliott infers that women swarm around men like himself because he’s
rich and successful and recommends old-school charms such as serenading after
love-making and using lines like ”a beautiful girl like you not married?”
If Zwar is to be commended for nothing else, it should be for making palatable the
potentially ugly scenario of men talking among themselves about women in the third
person.
Paul Kalina – SMH – March 15, 2012