The ABC has broadcast several arts review shows over the years, among them The Book Club, At the Movies and Good Game. But what if the network launched a show about a critic who reviewed anything? Rather than reviewing works of art, this person would instead critique aspects of the human experience, including – and especially – difficult subjects such as murder, divorce, stealing and paying for sex? And what if the critic took requests from viewers, going out and experiencing these things for themselves?
This is the outrageous premise underpinning Review with Myles Barlow, one of ABC TV’s darkest and most peculiar comedies, in which no subject was deemed too problematic or riddled with minefields. In the present era of ABC’s mostly meek and risk-averse programming (notwithstanding occasional exceptions such as Black Comedy and Why Are You Like This?), the series is even more of a gasp-inducing curio than when it launched in 2008, running for two seasons and spawning a US remake starring comedian Andy Daly.
The show’s faux presenter Myles Barlow is played by Phil Lloyd, who created the show and co-wrote it with director Trent O’Donnell. The first episode (watch out for a cameo from Margot Robbie) opens with a critique of stealing: Barlow walks into a service station and pockets a comb, noting afterwards that “Whilst I could easily have afforded this simple item, the fact I have gotten away with it has left me with a certain sense of achievement.” Barlow overwrites every review, here commenting that “Like a child on a ferry staring at the ocean below, a voice was telling me to do it again.” He later reviews a life of destitution as coming “at a high price, itching with the fleas of worthlessness and stinking with the urine of degradation”. Being an addict, meanwhile, is like “filling bottomless shopping trolleys of indulgence” from “the aisles of gluttony”.
Barlow is absurdly devoted to his job, with his enthusiasm inevitably triggering a “slippery slope” trajectory in which things escalate rapidly. In that introductory segment about stealing, for instance, Barlow soon becomes addicted to doing it, stealing from a Big Issue vendor and an elderly lady before committing armed robbery with a sawn-off shotgun. Later critiquing the experience, Barlow explains that he “stumbled about in an orgy of kleptomania, as shops of moral decency came to grief on the rocks below”. Stealing receives three stars.
There are times when the humour is so dark that Review With Myles Barlow approaches the territory of the legendarily disturbing Belgium mockumentary Man Bites Dog, a jet-black satire of the media’s obsession with serial killers. Barlow even reviews murder, explaining how the “barbaric sensation” of killing somebody is soon eclipsed by “endless waves of guilt crashing against you in a storm of remorse”. (Murder gets half a star.)
There are several ways to interpret the satire in Review With Myles Barlow. It could be read as a show about how a certain kind of person – namely white, educated and male – can get away with virtually everything. It could also, in a weird way, be about the importance of using critical thought to engage with the world around us. Or it just could be an elaborate lampooning of criticism itself, taking the mickey out of hoity-toity reviewers who seem to value their own opinions above everything, even basic morality. During one of many laugh-out-loud moments, Barlow even gets into an argument with revered Australian film critic David Stratton, who zings “the best thing for you to do would be to review your own retirement” before the pair get into a punch-on.
The US remake also takes on dark subjects but is executed in a lighter, more self-conscious style, without the dangerous edge of its Australian predecessor. Inspired by that Barlowian tendency for ridiculously inflated prose, I declare this very strange and funny production “a bitterly entertaining walk down the windy tracks of cultural decay, along the sulphur-scented shores of seduction, powered by the rhythmic swell of waves rolling on to a shore of calamitous consequence”. Five stars.
