‘Look at Moiye,Kimmie,Look at Moiye!’: Kath and Kim and the Australian Comedy of Taste

Abstract

This paper traces the genealogy of the ABC comedy series, Kath and Kim, in terms of its production history, the origins of its characters and themes, and its relationship to new hybrid comedy forms such as the mock-documentary (Roscoe and Hight, 2001). Issues such as the gender, class and taste politics of the comedy are explored in an attempt to rationalise the author's own ambivalent reactions to the show. Particular attention is paid to a number of shopping scenes in which Kath and Kim's failed suburban aesthetic becomes the source of what McCallum has described as a ‘comedy of recognition’ (McCallum, 1998). It is argued that the question of whether Kath and Kim is judged to be self-celebratory or self-critical has been rendered irrelevant by an extra-diagetic narrative which constructs the series as a little Aussie battler succeeding against the odds.