Netflix has signed the comedian Chris Lilley for a 10-part comedy project which has begun production in Queensland.
The as-yet-unnamed series is the first for Lilley since 2014’s Jonah from Tonga was screened by the ABC and the BBC and came under fire for its portrayal of Tongan culture and Lilley’s use of “brown face”.
Jonah from Tonga was withdrawn from Māori Television after New Zealand’s minister for Pacific peoples Alfred Ngaro said the series perpetuated “negative stereotypes”.
Netflix will be hoping to emulate the success Lilley had more than a decade ago with Summer Heights High, which featured a range of his characters and led to a deal with the ABC, the BBC and HBO.
His longtime collaborator Laura Waters, whose production company Princess Pictures made We Can Be Heroes, Angry Boys, Ja’mie: Private School Girl and Jonah, told Guardian Australia she was working with Lilley in a personal capacity and Princess Pictures was not involved. She declined to give any more details about the project.
The series was announced not by Netflix but by the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, who claimed it would generate $6.35m for the local economy.
“I am delighted to have enticed Chris Lilley and producer Laura Waters to Queensland,” the premier said. “The series will employ up to 250 Queensland cast and extras, plus around 100 Queensland crew.”
The comedy will add to Netflix’s Australian slate, which includes Tidelands, Pine Gap, The New Legends of Monkey, Glitch, Beat Bugs, Bottersnikes & Gumbles, Kazoops, Mako Mermaids: An H20 Adventure and White Rabbit Project.
Lilley has had patchy success on Australian television. Summer Heights High was the ABC’s bestselling comedy DVD and had audiences in excess of 1.2 million. Its ratings success in 2007 was not repeated by ABC TV productions of Ja’mie and Jonah in 2014.
The Hollywood Reporter said the Ja’mie character was funnier in short, searing scenes in Summer Heights High, and could not carry a whole series. “ Centering one of Lilley’s most annoying characters in a series to ramble on incessantly robs the character of its past effectiveness and makes her – and the series – almost unbearable to watch.”
Last year Lilley faced more controversy when he posted a remix on his Instagram account of a music clip from his Angry Boys character S.Mouse, called Squashed Nigga, amid protests about the death of the Indigenous boy Elijah Doughty.
Doughty had been killed when he was run over by a man driving a Nissan Navara in August 2016. Lilley later deleted the video and apologised, saying it was in no way connected to Doughty’s death.
