Chris Lilley From 'Summer Heights High' Is Getting His Own Netflix Show
6 March 2018, 10:37 | Updated: 6 March 2018, 10:40
The 'Angry Boys' creator will return to TV with a new show set to begin filming later this year.
Australian comic Chris Lilley is set to create a new 10 episode series for Netflix.
Deadline reports that the Summer Heights High and Angry Boys creator will star in the series which will be shot on Australia's Gold Coast. The currently untitled show has been developed by Lilley with his longtime production partner Laura Waters.
Plot details are also currently being kept under wraps although we certainly hope we might get to see a reprisal of the egomaniacal drama school teacher Mr G.
Saying a prayer that this new @ChrisLilley Netflix series is a Mr G spin off because I need to know what happened to my spirit animal. pic.twitter.com/pyHFyrJuOb
— Sam Simkin (@SamSimkin_) March 5, 2018
Fingers crossed.
However, not everyone is happy with the decision given Lilley's history of using blackface in his previous shows.
I think a lot of people - myself included - became Chris Lilley fans because of his warm, empathetic series Summer Heights High. Plenty of anti-racist activists were unhappy about his portrayal of Jonah Takalua, a Tongan-Australian teen.
— Muffin MacGuffin (@MuffMacGuff) March 5, 2018
People like me ignored them because the show seemed to take Jonah seriously, cast other Polynesian actors opposite him, and explored the ways the Australian school system was set up to fail brown students.
— Muffin MacGuffin (@MuffMacGuff) March 5, 2018
We were wrong. I was wrong. Chris Lilley was showing us who he was. So anyway I'm not thrilled about a new Chris Lilley show, though I've watched all of them.
— Muffin MacGuffin (@MuffMacGuff) March 5, 2018
Lilley was forced to apologise as recently as last summer when he posted a fan-made remix video of a song from Angry Boys featuring the comedian in blackface rapping about an Aboriginal boy being run over by a truck, just days after a controversial court verdict over the death of indigenous teenager Elijah Doughty by a 56 year old driver.
