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).
Co-directed by Andrew Watson and Tom Rohr, the underpinning philosophy of The Betoota Advocate Presents seems to be: cover familiar stories but don’t be boring. Thus the pace is fast and bumpy, careening between interviewees, archival footage, tongue-in-cheek animated reenactments and the aforementioned Clancy and Errol, who narrate and commentate.
The show’s bouncy tempo helps it avoid feeling like a televisual adaptation of a Wikipedia page, which is common in the “recap” style of documentary, and its comedic spirits keep the creators hunting for humorous perspectives and satirical overlays. Comedy is tragedy plus time, as they say, though some of this material (like Cronulla’s violent race riots) will always be painfully shameful. So how do you make that funny?
The Betoota’s tactics include questioning established narratives and unexpected interruptions. In the Cronulla episode, for instance, interviewee Kathy Lette (a Cronulla local and co-author of Puberty Blues) is quick to mention the “racist, sexist, tribal” nature of the place. But the editors interrupt that train of thought. “We can get to the misogynistic, racist underbelly in a minute,” one says, “but let’s just keep talking about how nice the place is.” Later, covering the influence of Alan Jones, vision is inserted of a mock Betoota headline: “Normal bloke John recommends murdering teenagers on live radio.” That chaffing mock headline does a lot of the work. The show could have benefited from more embellishments of a similar kind, bringing it closer in spirit to the Betoota’s website.
The creators are always looking for absurd things to highlight and, for maximum sensationalism, to re-enact. They find something hysterically funny in the Hillsong episode when they interview a former member of Frank Houston’s church about the Pentecostal tradition of speaking in tongues. Discovering that people speaking in tongues will repeat any phrase “as long as we said it with enough charisma and force”, congregation member David Bradley and his friend decided to move to the front of the chapel and see whether worshippers would take their lead and repeat “yabba-dabba do!” Indeed they did – including Houston himself.
The editors’ descriptions and summarising statements are often funny too. In the Super League episode, which recounts the corporate war between the Murdoch-backed Super League and the Packer-backed ARL, the story is described as essentially being “a tale of two families measuring their dicks”. Murdoch is described as a “media tycoon whose main hobby was getting rich enough to pay for his other hobby: getting divorced.” We are told that, as a media magnate, he understood what ordinary Australians wanted: “Boobs, boobs, horse racing and boobs.”
Their observations aren’t necessarily original, although fresh perspectives would be difficult with topics as well-trod as these. Perhaps the next series can break new ground, or cover topics that haven’t been so extensively pored over? I for one await the return of our Betoota overlords.
The Betoota Advocate Presents starts on Paramount+ on Wednesday 14 June
