The Aunty Jack Show-Complete First Series (1972)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Menu Audio Audio Commentary-Grahame Bond And Maurice Murphy - Episode 'Kulture' Seamless Branching-Golden Glove Feature-Special Colour Segments Featurette-The History Of Aunty Jack
Rating
Year Of Production	1972
Running Time	245:20 (Case: 290)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Maurice Murphy
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Grahame Bond Rory O'Donoghue John Derum Sandra McGregor
Case	Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual
RPI	$39.95	Music	None Given

    The Aunty Jack Show has become something of a legend of Australian television. First screened in November 1972, the series hasn't been repeated since the 1970s, apart from a "Best of" show in the early 1990s. Rumours abounded that the ABC was involved in a copyright dispute with star Grahame Bond, or that some episodes were missing. Now that a stage show featuring Aunty Jack is planned for 2006 the first series has suddenly materialised on DVD, restored by the efforts of the ABC archives and the National Archives of Australia.

    The show had its origins in university architecture revues in the mid-1960s featuring Bond and colleague Peter Weir. When Weir went off to become a film director he was replaced by musician Rory O'Donoghue. In 1968 a pilot for a radio show for children was made featuring the character of Aunty Jack, voiced by Bond. The pilot was deemed unsuitable for children and never went to air.

    Maurice Murphy was an ABC director and producer who was sent to England to learn how to make comedy programmes. While there he worked on Complete and Utter History of Britain with Terry Jones and Michael Palin, directed episodes of Doctor in the House and worked on two series with Ronnie Barker. On his return to the ABC he worked on a series called The Comedy Game, which featured a number of self-contained comedies which were considered as pilots for future series. Several of these featured Bond and O'Donoghue, including a two-part comedy about an inept bushranger called Flash Nick From Jindavick. This would eventually become a four-part series in 1974. One of the episodes of The Comedy Game was Aunty Jack's Travelling Show, screened in late 1971. Someone saw some potential in this and a series of seven episodes was commissioned.

    1972 fell within a period of social change in Australia. Just a couple of weeks after the first episode was screened Gough Whitlam was elected Prime Minister, the first change of government in 23 years. Censorship had opened up in the cinemas, and though there had been nudity on television before, the premiere of Number 96 (caricatured here as George Street) in March 1972 caused something of a ruckus. Into this came an anarchic sketch comedy series that was quite unlike anything seen here before. While there are similarities to Monty Python's Flying Circus, the ABC did not pick up the BBC comedy until 1972 and in fact screened it at the same time as Aunty Jack.

    The Aunty Jack character is a very large ("big, round and fat" as the song goes) gruff-voiced woman with her hair tied in buns, wearing a 19th century velvet dress, a single golden boxing glove and a prominent moustache. Despite a penchant for violence, punching some of the other characters and always threatening to rip someone's bloody arms off, Aunty Jack is surprisingly demure and easily shocked - especially by the mention of s-e-x. As played by Grahame Bond she quickly became an iconic figure, riding a black Harley with sidecar. Bond also portrayed international meat stylist Kev Kavanagh.

    The comedy team featured the very skinny, shaggy-haired O'Donoghue as Thin Arthur, who had a penchant for striped leotards. John Derum appeared in the first series as Narrator Neville, a sort of lily-livered ringmaster, while Sandra McGregor was the superheroine Flange Desire. The performers all played other characters as well, some recurring such as Neil and Errol or Len and Ron, and some just one-offs. Derum left the show after the first series to go to where all good and not-so-good ABC comedy goes to die: Channel 7. He was replaced by Garry McDonald, who played a silly character called Kid Eager and a more durable one named Norman Gunston. Some of the extras who can be seen in the first series are Lex Marinos, Chris Haywood and Carla Hoogeveen. Sex also features unbilled appearances from Jack Palance and Guy Madison in Herco the Magnificent, a 1961 movie called Sword of the Conqueror compressed and re-dubbed with Australian audiences in mind.

    This DVD contains all seven episodes of series one plus the pilot. Each of the half-hour episodes takes a particular theme: Radio, War, Kulture, Anonymous, Family, Sex and Horror. Each were directed by Murphy and featured prominent writers including Geoffrey Atherden. Some material written by Peter Weir for the 1960s revues found its way into the series uncredited.

    I'm not sure whether I saw The Aunty Jack Show in 1972/3, but I am certain I was aware of it and I definitely saw repeats in 1974 or 1975 when it screened on Friday nights along with This Day Tonight, either The Two Ronnies or Dave Allen at Large, Pot Black and the trots from Harold Park. On watching the pilot I had the sinking feeling that the series would not be as funny as I dimly remembered it. However, once the series proper gets underway it becomes funnier and funnier, some of the humour not dating at all. Of course there are bits that don't work at all and probably didn't work in 1972 either. But this show must have seemed quite fresh and unusual when first screened, when seen by an audience raised on British and American sitcoms and local product like The Mavis Bramston Show and My Name's McGooley, What's Yours? By their own accounts the show's talent had not seen Monty Python, but there is a similarity in the free-format nature of the sketches and the occasional lack of a punchline, with sketches segueing directly into other sketches. On the other hand you could also argue that the show had just as large an influence from Benny Hill or even by Laurel and Hardy.

    It was also controversial, breaching taboo subjects and with a level of innuendo that surprisingly only led to one instance of censorship, which is discussed in the audio commentary.

    The strength of the show comes in the performances and the writing, the latter being generally disciplined, the sketches seeming thought out rather than just cobbled together. Musically Bond and O'Donoghue contribute some clever comic songs, especially in the Neil and Errol segments. There is also a celebrated version of "I've Been Everywhere" sung by the Farrelly Brothers, plus the anthemic "Farewell Aunty Jack". The latter, released as a single from the album Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong, became the number one Australian hit of 1974. There is also a clever send-up of a theatrical phenomenon of the 1970s in "Tarzan Superape: an Origami Rock Opera".

    The show made numerous references to Wollongong, Aunty Jack's parents having been King and Queen of the South Coast city if I recall correctly. The local council thought the area was being ridiculed and called for the series to be banned. This led to even more references to the area being incorporated into the show, with Gunston's "What's On in Wollongong" segment in the second series. After Aunty Jack finished with the second series in 1973, several of the characters combined for 1975's Wollongong the Brave, which only lasted a single series. Bond and O'Donoghue kept running foul of the ABC's management, with a 1977 sketch show titled The Off Show being cancelled without an episode being screened. The first episode, featuring a sitcom called Leave it to Jesus (with Herod the Wonder Dog), was filmed but the ABC wiped the tapes. I seem to recall that the show was scheduled to be screened but at the appointed time an indignant Norman May came on and said that "The Off Show is off", and an alternative programme screened in its place. I might though be confusing this with a jokey start to their next, less offensive series called The Of Show, which was something of a let down. There was an abortive attempt at an Aunty Jack special on Channel 10 in the 1980s, but the character has lain dormant ever since.

    That is, apart from a show of highlights in colour screened in the early 1990s. The original series was in black and white, but some segments were also filmed in colour to be shown at the Montreux Film Festival. The colour sequences are included as extras on this disc.

    Apparently the second series and the one-off 1973 special Aunty Jack Rox On will also be released on DVD, and if the quality of the set is up to that of this one it will be well worth getting. While not all of the comedy has survived the passing of the years, there is still plenty here to enjoy.

    As Aunty Jack herself would say, "Watch it!"

Video

    The series is presented in the original black and white and in the original aspect ratio of 1.29:1.

    Given the age and quality of the source material there are bound to be problems with the additional clarity of DVD, but the transfer is on a par with BBC material of the same vintage that I have reviewed. It looks like the show was shot on a combination of video and 16mm film. I would guess that only those sequences filmed in colour survive as film, as while some sequences were obviously shot on film, the DVD transfers look to have come from video recordings of the shows.

    The transfer is probably as sharp as it can be, but displays all of the problems one would associate with old video recordings. The image is soft, with some blurriness at times and a lack of detail in wide shots. There are all sorts of video artefacts, mainly lots of analogue video tracking errors but also posterisation, flaring and poor contrast. There are overbright whites (leading to clipping artefacts) and featureless blacks on display. Shadow detail is not good but this isn't really a problem for enjoyment of the content.

    The film sequences also show numerous film artefacts, but these would have been present when the material was originally screened, so their appearance here is authentic.

    The pilot episode looks the worst, with numerous MPEG artefacts including a mottled appearance, but the rest of the series looks better apart from Horror which is in a pretty poor state.

    Optional subtitles are available in English. These must be selected from the main menu as they cannot be selected on the fly, presumably because of the Golden Gloves feature below which uses the subtitles for seamless branching. The subtitles appear to transcribe the dialogue accurately.

    Disc One is RSDL-formatted, the layer change occurring at 4:15 in Anonymous. It is a little disruptive as it takes place at the start of a musical number. Disc Two does not seem to have a layer break during the programmes.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is presented in the original mono in a Dolby Digital 2.0 format.

    Dialogue is pretty clear and the audio comes across well despite some harshness and occasional mild distortion. Bass comes across reasonably if a little lacking in body. There are some audio sync issues due to lip-synching to songs, but nothing serious.

    The music is mainly by Bond and O'Donoghue, though there is a lot of material that the ABC must have had to pay license fees for, including some old pop songs and music from movies. The theme from Number 96 also makes an appearance.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu Audio

    The Aunty Jack Theme can be heard with the menu, preceded by a short message from Aunty Jack herself.

Audio Commentary-Grahame Bond And Maurice Murphy - Episode 'Kulture'

    An interesting commentary on this episode covering the genesis of the characters, the problems they had with ABC management and the censorship of this episode. They also cover the dangerous aspects of the filming of a couple of segments.

Seamless Branching-Golden Glove Feature-Special Colour Segments

    The colour sequences can be accessed by clicking on the Select button on your remote when the Golden Glove appears. This will play the segment in colour, then return to the black and white material repeating the segment you have just watched. I noticed from this that some of the colour material is from alternate takes, as there are slight differences.

Featurette-The History Of Aunty Jack (22:06)

    This featurette is in 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced, and features recent interviews with Bond, Murphy, Atherden and Jean-Luc Picard. No, that's Rory O'Donoghue, who now bears a striking resemblance to Patrick Stewart. Individually and together they recall their favourite bits of the show, and reveal what they have been up to since. The subtitles appear to default to being on, but can be switched off on the fly.

    The Region 4 release is unique at present, but don't be too surprised if the Aunty Jack phenomenon sweeps the world.

    Classic Australian humour, from a time when Australian TV comedy was actually funny and didn't revolve around panel shows. Where did it all go wrong?

    The video and audio are not the best but are as good as could possibly be expected, all things considered.

    The extras are very good and worth a look.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall