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Eddie Cockrell picks the Free-to-air, Pay TV and Streaming highlights this week.
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As early as 1965, then 22-year-old Mick Jagger may or may not have said something along the lines of not being caught dead singing Satisfaction past the age of, well, 30, 32, 40 or 45, depending on the source. We all know how that turned out.
The point is, he was idealistic, his creation at once inspired the young and shocked the old, and, behind his rock-star posing and dissatisfaction with a culture controlled by older people, he, like the rest of us, didn’t relish growing into the generation he was rebelling against.
All this by way of introducing Why are You Like This?, a raucous and outspoken new comedy series of six half-hours in which a trio of self-absorbed 20-something Melburnians navigate a world where — to quote the equally raucous ABC press kit — “every thought is soaked in the corrosive brine of identity politics and no opinion is left unsaid”. Surprising, profane and possibly culturally baffling to anybody without a 20-something in their own life, these purposefully exaggerated modern moral dilemmas will nevertheless prompt a high degree of proudly un-woke comedic satisfaction.
Seemingly the only woman in a tech start-up, anxious yet righteous crusader Penny (Naomi Higgins) is prone to saying things like “as a white person it is my job to shield you from microaggressions wherever possible”, whether her intended target needs or even wants the advocacy. Penny shares a house with out-of-work artist and aspiring drag performer Austin (Wil King), who performs under a series of outrageous names and thinks his perpetual depression will shortly dissipate after having seen an off-screen therapist exactly once. Their fast friend is Mia (Olivia Junkeer, Yashvi Rebecchi on Neighbours), a bi, South Asian woman possessed of unchecked narcissism who sabotages job after job while offering unwanted opinions along the lines of “Incels. They love free speech until a woman uses it to do something sexy online.”
Each fast-paced episode charts their parallel and often intertwined adventures in a world they’re trying hard to understand but can’t seem to get out of their own ways long enough to do so.
Highlights include Penny mobilising a group of marginalised female employees at a...