The Games (Australian TV series)
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The Games was an Australian mockumentary TV series about the run-up to the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
The show was broadcast on the ABC and starred satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe along with Australian comedian Gina Riley and actor Nicholas Bell, and was written by John Clarke and Ross Stevenson. It centred on the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), and satirised corruption and cronyism in the Olympic movement, bureaucratism within the Australian Public Service, and unethical behaviour within politics and the media. The show is unusual in that characters were given the name of the actors who played them, a decision to enhance the illusion of a documentary on the Sydney Games.
John Clarke played "Olympic Supremo" and head of the "liaison and logistics team", an undefined but important subsection of SOCOG. Clarke was apparently a former Olympic champion, but ducked the question whenever asked about which event. Gina Riley played the harassed head of marketing and Bryan Dawe was the team's pessimistic head of accounting. The series also featured actor Nicholas Bell as the conniving Secretary to the Minister for the Olympics, a foil for Clarke's character.
The series had two seasons of 13 episodes, the first in 1998 and the second in 2000, the final episode broadcast days before the opening ceremony of the real Games. In this episode, the three stars and Bell were forced to stand in for The Seekers at the closing ceremony rehearsal to sing "The Carnival Is Over". The Seekers did indeed perform this song, but at the closing ceremony of the Paralympics some weeks later.
Australian celebrities appearing on the show included John Farnham, Dave Graney, Frank Woodley, Barrie Cassidy, Maxine McKew, along with New Zealand actor Sam Neill.
In one moment, the actor John Howard appeared on a video message intended for overseas release and read an apology to Aboriginal people for crimes committed against them by the Australian government. In the episode, a group of overseas countries threatened to boycott the Games unless Prime Minister John Howard gave a public apology to Aboriginal people. The message was accompanied by John Clarke's saying "that's not the Prime Minister," to which Gina Riley replied, "He never said he was. He said he was John Howard." The confusion between the two men has become a frequent joke in Australia, exploited by the small-L liberal actor.
The Games was named Most Outstanding Comedy Program at the Logie Awards of 2001.
Season 1 was released on DVD in 2005, a release of Season 2 is still to appear. Most episodes are on PAL format VHS.
In New Zealand, the series was one of the first programmes on TVNZ 6 on September 30, 2007, the day of the channel's launch.
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