TV: Twenty Something is Something Special

A series that farewells our screens tonight is boisterously remapping the terrain of Australian comedy.

Twenty Something, the  brainchild of real-life best friends Jess Harris and Josh Schmidt, winds up its six-week run tonight on ABC2, but will no doubt have an extended life on iview and DVD.

Plucked from obscurity after the original series developed a cult following on community station Channel 31, this uncompromising comedy breaks all the rules but succeeds anyway.

Jess (Jess Harris) and Josh (Josh Schmidt) are best friends in their twenties who share a house and live in each other's pockets. As their friends start to pair off, take on mortgages and get serious about their careers they refuse to conform, retaining a party lifestyle and opting for a series of dodgy business ventures that begin promisingly yet always land them in hot water. 

Jess is the dominating instigator of the pair while Josh is always carried away by her enthusiasm. Hovering on the edges is Josh's conservative older brother, Nick (Simon Russell), a comic foil who fruitlessly tries to wrest the sweet-natured, easily swayed Josh away from Jess’s influence and into the family advertising business. When all else fails, Jess falls back on the support of loyal ex-boyfriend Billy (Hamish Blake).

Given that these two actors have relatively limited television experience (apart from the first series, Harris has appeared on Rove and on Hamish & Andy's Real Stories), their assuredness is remarkable. There is a very strong visual element to their stunts, which sometimes borrow a little of the surreal, over-the-top garnishing of reality that comedies such as The IT Crowd and Black Books made possible.

Harris in particular has great comic timing and emotional intelligence, and gives the show its out-there chutzpah; tiny details – the little skip in Jess’s walk as she hands out flyers advertising her latest scheme, or her suggestive body language as she leans against a van wearing a skimpy costume while talking to Billy on her mobile – reveal the character's excessive self-confidence superbly. 

But the whole thing is anchored by the strong rapport between the two actors. Having co-created and starred in the first series, they had the same hands-on approach to this one, producing it together, with Harris writing the scripts and creating the opening titles.

What makes this show so powerful is that it’s actually quite dark. There’s a pathetic edge to Jess’s relentless drive to make a buck the easy way, and Josh's eagerness to be led. The self-defeating, let’s-try-what-didn’t-work-last-time rings with the lost, helpless feelings that can descend in early adulthood when you are scrabbling around for a career, an identity and a future.

Yet to harp on this too much would be to misrepresent the show completely. It’s constantly funny and upbeat. That the relationship between Jess and Josh is dysfunctional and Jess thoroughly unlikable only enhance the show’s appeal. Nor does Jess’s bossiness make Josh appear like a victim; in contrast, the relationship seems to suit their personalities.

Given the often appalling lack of women in Australian comedy, let alone those not stereotypically feminine, Jess's 'bad girl' stance is refreshing. Her bossiness and continual ideas drive the show and are her undoing at the same time. Yet the show refuses to punish her; just as she never seems to learn from her mistakes, they don't cost her too dearly in the long run and  her optimism never flags. There is no sense in which the viewer wants her to reform; as an audience member I accept that her shortcomings are the price I pay to get to see what she does next. 

Just as there is an undercurrent of discomfort and existential angst in the show, there’s also a subversive element. Jess and Josh are as self-absorbed and apolitical as the most stereotypical Gen Y, but their refusal to knuckle down to regular jobs and a mortgage gives the finger to the bleak conformist landscape of modern corporate culture, not to mention the Macjobs available to the ambitious young.

Unlike earlier generations Jess and Josh don’t seem to have easy access to a narrative of rebellion that has politics as its basis (this isn’t to say of course that it’s not there); in fact, the characters are annoying precisely because they want to have it all without working for it. But you only have to look at the recent UK riots or the self-interested contribution of the ‘business community’ to the recent tax summit to understand that this apolitical consumerist desire is itself the result of of a political system that privileges naked and materialistic self-interest.

The show also receives extra bite from the uneasy slippage between the characters and the actors who play them. That Harris and Schmidt are real-life best friends is apparent in their body language in every frame. In interviews Harris emphasises that, despite sharing with the characters first names, years of career uncertainty and also being twenty-somethings (just – Harris is pushing thirty), she and Schmidt are nothing like their screen counterparts, and of course this is true. But the similarities that do prevail certainly bring power and authenticity to the mise en scene.

Let's hope a second series is on the cards, and that overseas audiences get to see this silly pair at work - and are suitably warned of the price of non-conformity.