Chris Lilley says his comedy is meant to challenge stereotypes – but in places this show, about to air on HBO, just feels like a misjudged 1970s sitcom

I always have to steel myself before watching television at Christmas. The deluge repeats from the late 1960s and 70s means that there will be at least one racial reference of questionable acceptability, and who wants to be the Grinch calling out Porridge from the sofa in the middle of a dip into the box of Roses?

It's easier to forgive a racist slip from the past because it was the Past and people, we are led to believe, at least, didn't know any better. I find it more difficult to get my head around today's creative minds using racial "otherness" as a point of comic relief and building entire characters around our collective differences. Occasionally, when done well, it can be thought-provoking and witty (see Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Goodness Gracious Me). When done badly, however, it can feel very Working Men's Club, 1972.

Chris Lilley's latest comedy Jonah from Tonga, which was on BBC3 in the UK earlier this year, has found itself at the centre of controversy yet again as it prepares to air on HBO in the US. A recent Huffington Post piece struck a chord with me; its author Cleo Paskal calls for the network to pull the show, complaining that Jonah is played by Lilley, "a 39-year old white guy in a permed wig and brownface. Yes, brownface. In 2014."

Some may dismiss Paskal's concerns with the old line that it's "political correctness gone mad". Perhaps she doesn't know that Jonah began as one of the featured characters in Lilley's brilliant Summer Heights High, alongside the perfect creations that were Mr G and Ja'mie King. But within that show there was a democracy of satire. We weren't just laughing at Jonah. We were laughing at all the characters.

In a standalone series, however, Jonah from Tonga forces us to consider what the audience is actually laughing at. The first episode does a bit of scene-setting, as Jonah is kicked out of Tonga for graffiti-ing "HOMO" on his uncle's truck and is then sent back to Australia. In these early scenes, the joke centres around Lilley as that "39-year-old white guy" playing a 14-year-old boy. Here, as when he drags up to play Ja'mie, the humour comes from the strange physicality of Lilley-as-Jonah, sitting halfway up a tree or playing with his "contemporaries".

But as the show goes on there's an uncomfortable shift. Mr Joseph, Jonah's teacher in Australia, describes children who come to the school as being from "low socio-economic" backgrounds and "first generation, migrant families", before stating that "we've got a few Pacific islanders. They're pretty hard to control." To me, these generalisations are not about cleverly subverting a lazy cliche, they are about reinforcing a widely held stereotype, here offered by a figure of authority; an insider.

Later Lilley – in full Jonah brownface - tells the mockumentary crew about the multiculturalism in the school, using the words "wogs", "curries" and "Africans". The camera pans across the playground showing us the different racial cliques, and I found it distressing. I felt as if Lilley and the writers were breaking a fourth wall, somehow giving the nod that it's OK to laugh at this derogatory namecalling. The double-joke, that Lilley is saying these things as a white comic in brownface, made it almost unwatchable for me.

Lilley, who has also played black and Japanese characters such as S.mouse, Ricky Wong and Jen Okazaki, told Esquire that he didn't think there "should be any rules" and that his humour is designed to be "confronting" and "challenging". But Jonah from Tonga feels less like a witty satire confronting racist stereotypes, and more like a coded way of reinforcing them.