Angry Boys: Bold, smart, but not very funny

The build-up to this show – Lilley's third solo series, after We Can Be Heroes (2005) and Summer Heights High (2007) – has been long, steeped in secrecy and, undoubtedly helped by those two factors, hotly anticipated. The fact that this is the first Australian television series in which the prestigious US cable network HBO has directly invested only ramped up the sense of expectation. To his credit, Lilley appears to have been unfazed and has gone about his business exactly as he has done in the past – doing it his way, doing it under wraps, and offering a great big Nathan-style bird to the timid.

Nathan is the soon -to-be "profoundly deaf" and "slightly retarded" twin brother of Daniel Sims (both played by Lilley and characters reprised from We Can Be Heroes). He's a largely silent, aloof and alone figure at the farmhouse he lives in with his siblings, his mother and her new boyfriend Steve (dad died when they were younger). He's constantly tormented by Daniel, and his chief response – to everything – is to flip the bird. As anyone who saw the eight-minute trailer for the show released by the ABC a few weeks back knows, he has one other, quite spectacular and repulsively hilarious party trick – big call out to sneaky nuts – but we didn't get to see that last night.

Daniel is the narrator of their life, the highlights of which are finding new ways to tell Steve to f--- off and doing "mainies" – travelling up and down the main street of Dunt, the country town in which they live. In one of last night's best moments, Daniel and his three best mates demonstrated to the invisible but presumed and omnipresent documentary crew filming him (and everyone else) the several variations on maining: "basic mainies", done in the "Pulsie" he's inherited from his mum and hotted up with Southern Cross stars on the bonnet and a mismatched spoiler on the rear; "music mainies", which are basic mainies with the stereo turned up way loud; "BMX mainies", a fave from the pre-P-plate era; and "walking mainies". As a snapshot of teen boredom in country Australia – or even outer suburban Australia – it was spot on.

The other Lilley character we met last night is Gran, aka Ruth Sims. She is a warder at Garingal Juvenile Justice Centre and, as we discovered towards the end of the episode, the grandmother of the Sims twins.

Gran is a beefy, butch barrel of tough love. It's easy to see where Daniel and Nathan's twisted relationship comes from; Gran imagines herself to be the closest thing the teenage boys in the juvey centre have got to a caring mother figure, but she shows her "love" in the most awful ways. Her first words on screen are "You're behaving like a bunch of f---ing little dickheads". She likes to share a friendly joke with her charges: "How many juvenile offenders does it take to finish a crossword? Ten. One to get his mum to do it because he can't spell and the other nine to beat the shit out of him." And her favourite game is "gotcha".

Daniel and Nathan, from Chris Lilley's Angry Boys.

"Hey Trent," she tells one young kid in the yard. "We've just found out you're getting an early release. Let's pack your bags and get you out of here."

As the expectant kid approaches the front gate, Gran muses, "Now where's Mum?" Turning to Trent, she says: "I just wanted to say before you go, 'gotcha'. You've got another nine months in here. We're not letting you out!" Ouch.

There are three more Lilley characters yet to appear in this series: Blake Oakfield, a former world surfing champion who lost his testicles in an accident in the pipeline, and who is now the big kahuna in the Mucca Mad Boys, a Bra Boys-style surfie gang; black American rapper S.mouse; and Japanese mother Jen Okazaki, who has built a massive business out of her faux-gay son's skateboarding career.

So, we can expect some racist catch phrases from Blake, blacking up for S.Mouse, and some yellowing-up, cross-dressing and off-colour gay jokes from Jen to add to last night's offerings (it must be said Lilley went to scant effort to feminise Gran, who has a female "housemate" called Legs).

Clearly, Lilley is unafraid to stomp all over notions of what is acceptable in comedy, and to a large degree that is to be applauded. But breaking taboos, if that is what they are (or have become; let's not forget that in many respects Benny Hill and Dick Emery were here decades before, albeit to different ends), is not much of an ambition in itself. It needs to go somewhere, to have some point, or at least to be really bloody funny, if it's to count as great comedy.

It's way too soon to judge if that's what Angry Boys is, or if it is just a tired reiteration of the now-familiar tropes of Lilley's ouvre.

Certainly, we've seen the mockumentary style from him before, we've seen some of the characters, we've seen from this former schoolteacher an ongoing fascination with the codes and behaviours of teenage boys. Hell, we've even heard the theme music before. But ploughing the same furrow is no crime – just ask Woody Allen – and none of that will matter if he takes us somewhere new and worthwhile.

There are 12 episodes in this series, twice as many as We Can Be Heroes and four more than Summer Heights High. That could make for a compelling journey or a long haul. It took a while for Jonah and Ja'ime and Mr G to establish themselves in Heights, and it's reasonable to expect the same thing to happen here.

The Twittersphere, naturally, is already alive with quotes and lines from last night's episode in a collective celebration of Lilley's "genius". Well, good luck to it and those tweeters who found evidence of that last night. It will take a little more time and a lot more laughs to convince me – but I'm sure as hell up for the challenge.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/blogs/the-vulture/angry-boys-bold-smart-aggressive-but-not-very-funny-yet-20110512-1ejcy.html#ixzz1M5XeD58X