Summer Heights High


Summer Heights High is an Australian mockumentary television sitcom written by and starring Chris Lilley. Set in the fictional Summer Heights High School in an outer suburb of Sydney, it is a documentary-like series of high-school life experience from the viewpoints of three individuals: "Director of Performing Arts" Mr G; private-school exchange student Ja'mie King; and disobedient, vulgar Tongan student Jonah Takalua. The series lampoons Australian high-school life and many aspects of the human condition and is filmed as a documentary with non-actors playing supporting characters.
As he did in a previous series, ', Lilley plays multiple characters in Heights, including the aforementioned Mr G, Ja'mie and Jonah. Filmed in Melbourne at Brighton Secondary College, the series premiered on 5 September 2007 at 9:30 pm on ABC TV and continued for 8 weekly episodes until 24 October 2007.
Summer Heights High was a massive ratings success for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and was met with mostly positive critical reaction. In 2008, the series won a Logie Award for Most Popular Light Entertainment/Comedy Program.
On 26 March 2008, it was announced that the show had been sold for international distribution to BBC Three in the United Kingdom, HBO in the United States, and The Comedy Network in Canada.
Following the success of Summer Heights High, Lilley has developed two spin-off shows: ' and Jonah from Tonga.

Format

According to the prologue, a production and filming team travelled to an Australian public high school and followed the daily life of the students and staff for one term. The team would film a documentary from the opinions of the students and staff, especially the three main characters: Ja'mie King, a mean girl-type perfectionist exchanged from a private school; Mr G, a self-proclaimed drama teacher; and Jonah Takalua, a stereotypical Tongan delinquent, all played by the series' writer, Chris Lilley.
The series is filmed in a documentary style, with the supporting cast drawn from the real-life students and staff of the school where the series was filmed. The program explored the facets of a typical Australian public high school such as social problems, bullying, teenage slang, stereotyping, sexism, racism and homophobia by showcasing three different individuals: the bully; the rich private school girl; and the teacher. The three main characters' storylines never intersect. The school principal, Margaret Murray, appears in all of their stories.

Cast and characters

The series focuses on three primary characters, all portrayed by Chris Lilley, at Summer Heights High:
There are also a number of supporting characters:
Summer Heights High was created and written by Chris Lilley, with all all eight episodes directed by Stuart McDonald. Princess Pictures produced the series, with Laura Waters and Bruce Kane serving as executive producers.

Episodes

Release

Broadcast

The series premiered on 5 September 2007 at 9:30 pm on ABC TV and continued for eight weekly episodes until 24 October 2007. Each episode was also made available for download as a vodcast directly after its screening via the ABC website and iTunes. The third episode was accidentally made available to the ABC website a week early, leading to it also being uploaded to YouTube prior to its television broadcast.
The series was sold overseas, with Lilley embarking on a promotional tour of the United States to promote the U.S. broadcast of the series, which began to air on HBO on 9 November 2008. Lilley had previously declined proposals to remake the series for American audiences. The series also aired on BBC Three in June 2008.
CountryBroadcastersTime SlotNotes
AustraliaABC1, ABC2, The Comedy ChannelPremiered 5 September 2007. Currently showing on The Comedy Channel on Foxtel and Austar
United KingdomBBC ThreePremiered 10 June 2008.
United StatesHBOPremiered 9 November 2008. Currently showing on HBO/ HBO Go.
New ZealandTV1, Comedy CentralPremiered 30 August 2008. Currently showing on Comedy Central on Sky
TogoTV H6Tuesdays, 22:30Premiered 12 September 2008.
KenyaTV H6Tuesdays, 21:30Premiered 12 September 2008.
IsraelYes Stars ComedyPremiered 14 December 2008.
IrelandRTÉ TwoWednesdays 2:05 amPremiered September 2009, started repeat on 25 May 2010.
DenmarkTV 2 ZuluPremiered 26 January 2010. Currently showing.
CanadaHBO Canada, Comedy NetworkPremiered on The Comedy Network on 16 May 2010. Currently showing on both channels.
HungaryHBO HungarySundays, 22:00Premiered 18 April 2010. Currently showing on HBO Comedy
CroatiaHBO CroatiaSundays, 22:00Premiered 18 April 2010. Currently showing on HBO Comedy
NorwayTV 2 ZebraSundaysCurrently showing.

Home media

Summer Heights High was released on DVD in Australia on 25 October 2007, and was accompanied by a signing appearance by Lilley at an ABC Shop in Melbourne's CBD. It was a new first-day sales record for an ABC release, with 3,475 copies sold. Overall, Summer Heights High is the highest-selling Australian comedy television series on DVD.

Soundtrack

A soundtrack was released through ABC Shops and the Australian iTunes Store, the latter also containing audio extracts from songs in the series including Mr G's "Bummer Heights High", "Naughty Girl", "She's a Slut" and Jonah's "Being a Poly". Part 2 of the soundtrack of the Summer Heights High album contained songs such as "My Name Is Mr G", "This Time You're Dead" and the Summer Heights High theme. Most of the songs from Part 2 are from the final musical.
"Naughty Girl" was released as a single on 8 March 2008 with remixes by Paul Mac, John Paul Talbot and Stylaz Fuego, peaking at number seven on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart. There was also a new music video clip to go with the song.

Reception

Critical response

When Summer Heights High aired in Australia, reviewers generally praised Chris Lilley's humour. Writing for TV Tonight, David Knox called the series "a treat" and stated "Lilley is the best comic to emerge from the ABC since Kath & Kim came into their own". The Daily Telegraph published a review calling the series "astonishing work that will be long remembered".
Summer Heights High received generally favourable reviews from American critics; it holds a Metacritic score of 67 out of 100. Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times praised Lilley's performance of Jonah, saying the character "gives the series the heart without which it would otherwise expire". Some critics noted the humour may not translate to American audiences; David Hinckley of the New York Daily News said "while its outrageous characters are often amusing, their palate of jokes runs thin".

Ratings

The premiere episode of Summer Heights High did well in the ratings as a strong lead-in from the return of The Chaser's War on Everything. It peaked at 1.6 million viewers with an average of 1.22 million. Along with Spicks and Specks, Summer Heights High helped ABC TV to achieve its strongest midweek ratings for 2007. The second episode rated stronger than the premiere with an average of 1.375 million viewers tuning in.
The third episode managed to rate very well with 1.275 million viewers while the fourth episode fared well with 1.235 against the season premiere of Prison Break. The fifth episode only managed 1.156 million viewers, the lowest ratings for an episode of the show, although the program remained the highest-rating show in its timeslot. The sixth episode picked up slightly in viewers from the previous week with 1.192 million tuning in. The seventh episode grew in ratings as the penultimate episode, picking up to average 1.307 million viewers for the night. The eighth and final episode achieved the highest ratings for Summer Heights High with a total of 1.512 million viewers watching the concluding episode to the series.
Summer Heights High was the third most-downloaded ABC vodcast in 2007, with 1.2 million downloads in total.

Accolades

The series was nominated for both Most Outstanding Comedy Program and Most Popular Light Entertainment Program at the Logie Awards of 2008, winning the former. Lilley also won Most Popular Actor, and received nominations for Most Outstanding Actor and the Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television for his work on the series. Summer Heights High won the award for Best Television Comedy at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards, with Lilley also winning Best Performance in a Television Comedy and the Byron Kennedy Award for outstanding creative enterprise. Stuart McDonald won Best Direction in a TV Comedy Series at the Australian Directors Awards in 2008.
Summer Heights High was nominated for Best Television Theme, as well as Best Music for a Television Series, at the 2008 Screen Music Awards; it lost in both categories to Underbelly. The first episode of Summer Heights High was nominated for the Best Comedy award at the Banff World Television Festival in 2008, losing to Extras.

Controversies

The series is renowned for its controversial portrayal of such issues as mental disabilities, homosexuality, sexual abuse, and racism. Even before Summer Heights High aired, some community groups complained about a "rape joke" and Mr G's inappropriate "touching" of a boy with Down syndrome.
The Herald Sun reported that parents and some teachers have considered the possibility that the show is influencing children to misbehave at school. Students were reportedly imitating Jonah and Ja'mie, repeating lines that were bullying, racist, and homophobic. Education Union branch president Mary Bluett stated in response that the show was "clearly tongue-in-cheek".
After episode three, in which a character called Annabel dies after taking ecstasy, the family of Annabel Catt, a girl who died taking drugs at the 2007 Good Vibrations Festival in Sydney, complained that the program had been lampooning Annabel's death. ABC apologised to the family, stating that the situation was purely coincidental and assured them that the filming of the episode in question had been completed eleven days before her daughter's death. ABC thereafter began to display a message before each episode stating that there is no link between the series' characters and people in real life.
A writer for the 2000 Network Ten series Sit Down, Shut Up claimed that Lilley had borrowed ideas for characters and plots from the series including the school name and aspects of the Mr G character.
In response to the George Floyd protests, Summer Heights High was one of several of Lilley's series that Netflix removed from its streaming service due to the use of blackface and brownface in the portrayal of characters. Writing for The Guardian, Seini F. Taumoepeau called Lilley's Jonah character a "racist construct" who did not accurately represent Tongans. The creators of the 2004 ABC TV documentary series Our Boys stated that Lilley drew inspiration for the Jonah character from their work. The subject of Our Boys recalled being "absolutely embarrassed, full of hate, angry and exploited" by the "racist" Jonah character that was based on him. The series' director, as well as a teacher at Canterbury Boys High School also felt that the character "exploited" the Tongan students who Lilley had met while visiting the school after seeing Our Boys on television in 2004.

Cultural impact

Responding to suggestions there could be a second series, Lilley stated in June 2008 that he was yet to decide what to do next as he had not considered writing further episodes as "it was always a one-off thing". Lilley has since developed two spin-offs from Summer Heights High: which premiered in 2013 and focused on the character of Ja'mie King, and Jonah from Tonga which continued the story of Jonah Takalua and premiered in 2014.