When Shaun Micallef agreed to present Origin Odyssey for SBS the concept was still very much a work in progress.
He would accompany six comedians to their country of heritage for new insights. The format was developed by Endemol Shine Australia in association with SBS before Micallef was approached. But he welcomed its loose approach.
“I’m so pleased that they didn’t tell me that’s what the show was when we started. Because if they’d said, ‘Your brief is to find out what they’re really like. You’ve got to question them and interrogate them and cross examine them…’ I would have said, ‘No,’” he tells TV Tonight.
“A) I’m not the person to do that and B) I don’t want to do that. I don’t think that’s a decent, trusting show. I think that’s a cynical exercise.”
Yet in his treks both he and the subject have found moments of reflection, revelation and humour. But each episode is also shaped by the subject rather than following a strict format.
“We were so early in working out what the show is that we hadn’t happened across a formula yet, which I think is actually to the benefit of the show,” he suggests.
“There’s no dusty documents, no libraries, no tedious conversations with archivists”
“You’ve got your Who Do You Think You Are? moments But there’s no dusty documents, no libraries, no tedious conversations with archivists and that sort of thing.
“It does tend to depend on who it is that I’m with, and what story it is they’re telling. So the show is completely different every time. You don’t tune in at 10 to 8 and see the same beat that you saw the previous week.”
“What sort of life would he have had?”
Episode 1 centres around Aaron Chen in China where Aaron is keen to learn about the sacrifices his father Peter made before he moved to Australia in the late 1980s.
“We’re kind of entertaining the fanciful Sliding Doors idea that if Aaron’s father hadn’t left China for Australia in the 1980s then Aaron could quite have easily been born in China. What sort of life would he have had? He’s probably unlikely to have become a comedian, or at least enjoyed (being) the success that he is. So what would you been doing instead?” Micallef continues.
“There’s something about the documentary camera, which is different from the in-studio camera. You’ve got a mic on your lapel, you’ve got a camera in your face for any number of hours of the day. We had it all the time. It gets to the point with all of them, where you forget that you’ve got a camera on you, and that you’re wearing a mic.
“Suddenly you’re seeing two people who aren’t performing anymore”
“There’s a there’s a moment where that falls away, and suddenly you’re seeing two people who aren’t performing anymore, being observed.”
Indeed, there are cracks in the usually-deadpan facade of Chen in a final dinner scene, which appears to catch both off-guard.
“It’s a genuinely real moment, rather than something that’s prefabbed or there’s a kind of a cynical editing or producerial intervention.
“We’re not chasing them, but those moments when they occur, we welcome them, and we there is a place for them. I don’t feel like we’re exploiting anybody to create them.”
Other episodes feature Lizzy Hoo, Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli, Dilruk Jayasinha, Nina Oyama and Arj Barker.
“Lizzie’s story deals with a great, great, great, great grandfather. Arj Barker ‘s story about his dad, I suppose, but he left quite young…. Dilruk has a completely different story, because he’s the one who decided to leave Colombo in Sri Lanka,” says Micallef.
“Wippa’s kind of an outlier episode, and he’s dealing with his grandfather, so you’ve got a bit of distance there.”
Across the six week shoot Micallef also found insights from the comedians came during the act of travel itself.
“Often we’re in a van or on a train or plane, getting from A to B, and in the process of the journey to the destination we can get comedy, we can get a bit of unpacking of what we’ve just seen. So we’re always on the move until the end, usually, when we sit down and have a meal and we take a breath, and then we hop on the plane and go to the next place,” he recalls.
“We looked tired. I look like crap”
But unlike other armchair travel docos, which are slicky-produced with glamorous hosts, Origin Odyssey keeps it real.
“We actually sweat. I’m lugging around this bag on my shoulder for the entire trip, which I regret now. It’s hard slog to pull yourself from one place to another. We looked tired. I look like crap,” he insists.
“There were moments when Lizzie Hoo was looking out for me, like I was her grandfather. She was making sure my seatbelt was fastened…”
For Micallef, who vowed to help younger and more diverse performers tell their stories when he stepped away from Mad as Hell, the series goes part of the way to addressing exactly that.
‘Every now and again, it becomes like a therapy session”
“In a funny way, every now and again, it becomes like a therapy session where I’m just listening. I’m the audience. I’m listening to them work something out. That’s a pretty rare thing, I think, in Television, which is a very cold and sometimes cruel exercise. Because what the person behind the camera wants, is a moment that is almost taken from the person, whereas I’m hopeful that this show is about that person giving that moment, and it’s their decision to share that moment with the audience,” he explains.
“I think the show at its heart is probably more fun and hopefully joyous a bit. You get a moment of real humanity every now and again and that’s worthwhile.
“That’s worth sharing.”
Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey screens 7:30pm Tuesdays on SBS.
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