Kath & Kim

I thought I was getting really good at this working from home, but I’m now in the midst of a full-on spiral having finally bought a monitor and forked out for instant delivery, only to discover it doesn’t have an HDMI port.  So, back to straining my neck to look down at my dirty old laptop screen.  I don’t want to complain though – I’m having quite a nice pandemic.  Greatest current concerns: not having office AC in my flat and the fact that baking powder can’t be found in any nearby supermarket.  Either way, if I damage my eyesight writing this, I now know it’s within the rules to drive to a castle to test my vision.  If I crash into people and cause further deaths, then I’ll know something isn’t right.  Luckily for everyone, I don’t have a car, I’m not a bigoted Tory (bad-)advisor and I don’t hold the British public in contempt (only those that clap the NHS to assuage their own guilt at voting rightwing).  The point in, in these pandemical times, we’re looking for comfort.  And I’ve found a great deal of it in old sitcoms.  My full re-watch of Friends continues, I’m this close to another run through of dinnerladies and, days after I saw it appear in the Netflix menu, I’ve just devoured the four seasons of Kath & Kim that aired between 2002 and 2007.

Just One More Episode has previously extolled the delights of Australian comedy.  But unlike Summer Heights High and Lunatics, this show doesn’t include Chris Lilley.  There’s no way of recalling how I came across this show, but, until now, I had only ever seen the first season.  Nevertheless, its effect stayed with me for subsequent years.  I don’t know how familiar you are with the working-class speech patterns of suburban housewives from Melbourne, but it doesn’t even matter.  So much of this sitcom’s ability to spark joy comes from its use of language.  Sure, there are some Little Britain-esque catchphrases, but these are mere chunks in a rich creamy spread of the silly misuse of the ever-malleable, ever-unruly English idiom.  Achieving near-native fluency in English is nigh-on impossible for most foreign learners, yet Kath’s mishandlings of her mother tongue are persistently charming.  Her forthcoming wedding is referred to as her “connubials” while both she and daughter Kim lament anything that “gets up [their] goat.”  A quick swap of a preposition and suddenly the banal becomes delightfully silly.  More than any of this, though, it is their way of responding to anything they like in the world of (bad) fashion and beyond by saying “that’s nice, that’s different, that’s unusual” that stays with me.  Of course, I would get the order and word choices wrong whenever I tried to wield this phrase facetiously when asked to comment on a colleague’s online shopping (back when we were allowed in our offices) but I’ve worked with many a beloved Australian over the years who was only too happy to correct my language.

Let’s forgive this diversion while I pause to explain who indeed Kath and Kim are.  Played by actors of roughly the same age, Kath and Kim are a mother and daughter team.  Kath (Jane Turner) is the permed older lady, embracing her empty nest (she wishes) while keeping herself trim and indulging a love for shopping at the mall in Fountain Lakes.  Kim (Gina Riley) is her spoiled adult daughter who can’t stop eating Dippity Bix, abandons her marriage to long-suffering Brett at the drop of a hat, is too lazy to hold down a job but who maintains a deep love for shopping at the mall in Fountain Lakes.  Locked in a cycle of co-dependency (and numerous eggcornings of the English language) our story starts when Kim interrupts her mother’s blissful retirement and declares she’s moving back in, jeopardising Kath’s burgeoning romance with local purveyor of fine meats (a vile phrase if ever there was one) and manbag-fan, Kel Knight.

Kath and Kim are the mother-daughter combo that taste forgot, but you root for them as their turns of phrase continue to charm.  Further comedy comes from Kim’s second-best friend, Sharon, whose uninvited arrival at Kath’s is announced every time by the unmistakable squeak of her French windows being slid open.  Sharon is at her best when suffering visible skin complaints or arguing with Kim about eating the last Dippity Bix (“Well, I didn’t know, Kim!” – the classic self-defence of a scoffer), but her penchants for indoor cricket and netball also sparkle.  That’s pretty much it for four series.  There’s a reassuring polyester cheapness throughout, not a great deal happens, but their humdrum lives bumble along and veer between the ridiculous and the plausible.

Its specific style makes it a hard show to recommend to newcomers, and I have many a time played it to pals who have felt lukewarm at best.  But I will carry on regardless in my love for it.  Its creators are talented (not least because Gina Riley actually belts out the theme tune to the opening sequence, something I never once skipped on Netflix) and deserve their cult status.  Sure, they lampoon class, but they also go for the posher snobs – every time Prue and Trude appear (also played by Turner and Riley), sneering at Kath’s jumpers or Kim’s muffin top in their snooty store, I can’t help but smile at their obscene diphthongisations and frankly more disgraceful murder of the English language.  I’m sad each time an episode ends, but while the credits roll, we are treated to wine time, a single-take scene of Kath and Kim quaffing cardonnay [sic] in their garden while wittering on with their usual gubbins.  In lockdown, I can’t tell you what I wouldn’t give for a garden and a family member to drink bad wine with while talking nonsense.

So, join the cult.  Kylie Minogue, Shane Warne and Matt Lucas can’t be wrong.  If you find the idea of a lazy mother telling her newborn baby (Epponnee-Rae) to stop whingeing because it’s mummy’s turn to whinge funny, then you’ll be in the right place.  There’s always a joker in the pack, and that joker is Kath.  And Kim.