Chris Lilley, once a homegrown critical and audience success story for the ABC, is now a ratings failure.



Week two of the 39-year-old comedian’s latest ABC1 television series, Jonah from Tonga, fell from a modest start of 441,000 viewers to just 287,000.

This put Jonah in 37th spot in Wednesday’s ratings, below standard afternoon fare such as The Bold and The Beautiful on Ten.

That’s a long way from the success of the 2007 series Summer Heights High, which catapulted him to fame and regularly attracted more than 1.2 million viewers. It was the ABC’s bestselling comedy DVD.

The disappointing figures come on the back of an equally poor reception for Jonah’s predecessor Ja’mie: Private School Girl, also on ABC1.

The figures suggest Australian audiences have grown tired of Lilley, who once attracted a three-country deal with HBO and the BBC on the strength of Summer Heights High.

Concentrating on one character for an entire series rather than several diverse characters as he did in Summer Heights High may have been Lilley’s downfall.

As the Hollywood Reporter wrote in a review of Ja’mie: “Ja’mie is funnier in short, searing scenes. She was surrounded in Summer Heights High with tons of other great Lilley creations and popped from the screen when given the chance to be, well, rich and bitchy. But centering one of Lilley’s most annoying characters in a series to ramble on incessantly robs the character of its past effectiveness and makes her – and the series – almost unbearable to watch.”

The figures may also reflect the fact that many Lilley fans watched the series online on iView.

The ABC and the UK’s BBC3 claimed to have “created an international buzz on social media” by making the entire series available for one weekend – before it screened on television – a first for the ABC.

According to the ABC, there were 551,000 plays over 48 hours, making it the most popular program on iView that weekend.

“ABC TV is committed to innovation in new platforms to connect audiences with our incredible Australian-made shows and I’m over the moon viewers have embraced our bold initiative to preview the show before its first traditional TV broadcast on Wednesday night,” the ABC’s director of television, Richard Finlayson, said after the Jonah binge weekend.

“The Jonah preview binge rewrites the traditional TV rulebook but is also creating huge anticipation for the broadcast premiere at 9pm this Wednesday night.

“Big congratulations go to Chris Lilley and Laura Waters from Princess Pictures, who had the guts and foresight to support this initiative in advance of the series launch on ABC1 and BBC Three this week.”

Lilley was also pleased with the online reaction to Jonah: "I’m overwhelmed by the positive fan reaction to Jonah from Tonga. It seems that people really do like watching a whole series in one hit.”

This year Lilley won the most popular actor Logie for Ja'mie: Private School Girl.

