I can’t quite decide whether our introduction to the Betoota Advocate’s editors, during their new TV show, depicts them more like current affairs journos, superheroes or voters for the Nationals. Maybe all three. After shots of insects, a tumbleweed and sun-scorched orange desert, Akubra-wearing editors Clancy Overell and Errol Parker (real names Archer Hamilton and Charles Single) face the camera with a down-to-business look. A voiceover describes the titular satirical news publication – foraying into television via a four-part Paramount+ series – as “an outback media heavyweight” and “Australia’s oldest and most trusted newspaper”.
These blokes maintain a good poker face; it’s clear their straight talkin’, true-blue personas are to some extent sendups of Australian culture, but they don’t push the point or ramp it up too much with ockerisms. Subjects chosen for the first season include Hillsong, the “Super League war” between Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer over the future of football and that terrible stain on the national psyche known as the Cronulla riots (bravely lampooned in Abe Forsythe’s satirical comedy Down Under).
