OPENING: SHOT OF SWEEPING COASTAL VISTA
SHOT OF KEVIN McCLOUD AT FOOT OF HILL LEADING UP TO IT
KEVIN (every bored married woman’s dreamboat voice): Anthony, Richard, Jim, Penny and Tanya are middle-aged professionals who run a marketing consultancy for the corporation known as the current Labor government. They’re also in a five-person polycule, and they’ve been building their dream home on the top of a polling bump for some time now. But the project has run into problems.
ANTHONY (looking at unfinished roofing, the way they always do 35 minutes into any episode): We were hoping to build something on top of the polling bump, where you could see for miles around.
KEVIN (married woman’s what happens at sales conference stays at sales conference voice): To enjoy the views of this magnificent country?
ANTHONY: No, so you could see every bastard sneaking up to stab you in the back.
KEVIN: Construction of the commanding position began in 2022, but issues quickly began piling up.
JIM: Pretty soon we found that we were building a bougie, self-indulgent view of sparkling blue water in a gentle dip, not on a modest poll rise.
KEVIN: What caused that?
JIM: Probably building a bougie, self-indulgent view of sparkling blue water on a modest poll rise is my guess.
KEVIN: There have also been problems with suppliers and contractors….
MONTAGE OF CFMEU BLOKES TEASING ANTHONY, SHOVING HIM AROUND IN MUDDY, HALF-BUILT FOUNDATIONS, GOOSING HIM, STEALING LUNCHBOX, ETC.
KEVIN (CONT’D): …with an already substantial $20,000 bill for bathroom tiling blowing out somewhat to a whopping half-trillion dollars for a submarine system that will draw the country into US wars of projective aggression with no chance of withdrawal… and some design differences.
SHOT OF ALL FIVE STANDING AROUND A PIT IN HALF-FINISHED LIVING ROOM.
ANTHONY: I don’t really understand why we need a pit filled with spikes in the middle of the living room.
JIM, RICHARD, TANYA: Yeah we really need a spike-filled pit in living room/must have a pit filled with spikes/spike-filled pit’s the go.
ANTHONY: But someone could get pushed in and killed, and it would look like an accident?
JIM, RICHARD, TANYA: Yeah we really need a spike-filled pit in living room/must have a pit filled with spikes/spike-filled pit’s the go.
JIM: By February. Has to be in place by February.
KEVIN: By November, the divet they were building in had become so deep that the entire building had to be sealed off from the outside world.
ANTHONY: We just can’t understand why building a “dream home for the next chapter of our lives” is pushing the ground down further.
KEVIN: The danger of subsidence was matched only by the fear that the author had over-extended the satirical allegory, and couldn’t easily find a way out…
ANTHONY: See, we forgot to put any exits in!
JIM (sizing up an open window over a cliff): Well, when you think of it Anthony, anything’s an exit
KEVIN: We’ll be back in six months to check in on how Jim, Richard and Tanya’s dream home is going. Tune in next week for a marvel of engineering when Max Chandler-Mather builds a commanding forward position on a giant bluff. And of course, ladies, I’ll see you in your dreams of running a teashop with me in the windswept Scottish Highlands. Till then…
ABC VOICE Up next, Antiques Roadshow, in which a Mr Lachlan M asks experts about the value of some ancient relics he found in the op-ed section of a newspaper bequeathed to him by his father. And two episodes of ER, still better than anything else on.
