The first season of Austin was a droll, moreish treat, appealingly combining Australian and British humour to tell the story of an autistic man in his late 20s connecting for the first time with his biological father. The former is Austin (Michael Theo, from the reality TV show Love on the Spectrum); the latter is children’s book author Julian (UK comedian Ben Miller), who learns about the son he never knew in the middle of a career crisis – while managing, or mismanaging, the fallout from sharing a white supremacist’s social media post.
Our sympathies naturally align with the titular character (charmingly played by Theo); Julian’s a more slippery fish, flailing and floundering, clutching on to spurious excuses likely to make audiences think: “dig up, dig up!” The show’s modest in many ways, and probably not appointment viewing, but I was a big fan: the writing was sharp and pacey, the jokes often laugh-out-loud funny, and the supporting cast also entertaining – including Sally Phillips as Julian’s exasperated wife and book illustrator Ingrid, and the ever-huggable Roy Billing as Austin’s grandfather Bill.
