HBO's import 'Summer Heights High' a curiosity at best

Here's a little chemistry lesson, class. Take Ricky Gervais' original version of "The Office," with its mockumentary style, mix in the crass down-under comedy of the original "Kath & Kim" and set it in the presence of an Australian public school, with one star playing three roles, and you get Chris Lilley's "Summer Heights High."

The question, however, is whether you'll also get something that translates at all to U.S. viewers when the eight-part series debuts at 9:30 p.m. Sunday on premium-cable HBO.

I don't know what has given HBO its current fixation on Oceania, but it has already produced one excellent, but little-seen comedy in "Flight of the Conchords," which at least takes place in Manhattan, even if it stars a couple of transplanted New Zealand musos. Imported from Australia and with a distinctly Ozzie comic sensibility, "Summer Heights High" is such a nervy mix of the highbrow and the low, the sophisticated and the pandering, it's all but guaranteed to make a U.S. viewer look even more askance at the television.

Lilley, who might best be described as a sort of Ozzie Martin Short, plays three roles: flair-for-drama teacher Greg Gregson, elitist private-school exchange student Ja'mie (affectedly pronounced "Jah-migh") and Tongan juvenile delinquent Jonah.

Some elements of the humor are quite wry, most involving the self-proclaimed "Mr. G." A dropout from industrial productions, Mr. G has instead discovered a job "where I can sing and I can dance and I can act every day and get paid for it, and it's drama teaching."

Blink and you'll miss some of the rapid-fire jokes, such as the productions Gregson has previously worked on ("Ian Thorpe: The Man, the Water, the Musical" and a theatrical story of the 2004 tsunami set to the music of Bananarama).

There are times when Lilley is so dry in the role, he seems to have stepped right out of a Christopher Guest satire like "Best in Show," as when he explains, "Most of what I do has a grounding in education," a remarkable boast for a teacher to make. He also has a little dog with what he claims is an "oversize brain."

Yet, step away from Mr. G, and Lilley's comic targets get a lot lower. Ja'mie is an Ozzie "Clueless" reject, a smug priss who says matter-of-factly, "I'm the smartest non-Asian in Year 11."

The subtle racism implicit in that statement is spot on, which makes the considerably less subtle Jonah a bit confounding. He might technically be Tongan, but he could just as well be an Aborigine, and he's no doubt seen that way down under. I don't know if Lilley is trying to draw attention to how out of place minorities are still made to feel in the Australian public-school system, but he doesn't do much to elevate Jonah to the level of a critique on that system. He's just a bully and a lout who argues of his behavior, "It's not disruptive. That's entertainment."

If Jonah had the spark of a star in the making - someone like so many standup comedians who look back on the origins of their careers as the class clown - that would be one thing, but he just seems a displaced loser.

By contrast, the lack of sensitivity is a hoot when Mr. G refers to special-education students as simply "specials."

So make of it what you will, Aware One. I have to admit I prefer "Summer Heights High" to "Entourage," the popular HBO show it follows, but that doesn't mean either one makes for appointment viewing. Besides, "Summer Heights High" would seem a better fit to pair with "Flight of the Conchords" when it returns next year, not to ghettoize Oceanic comedies.

Lilley's series might be better than the improvised U.S. equivalents like "10 Items or Less" or "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," but I think most U.S. viewers will still regard it as a curiosity from down under. "Summer Heights High" is more Men at Work than Midnight Oil, much less the Go-Betweens, which is to say it's a novelty, not something that translates on its own merits.