The Micallef P(r)ogram(me)
The Micallef Program (also known as The Micallef Programme in its second season, The Micallef Pogram in its third season, and The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) as an umbrella title for the DVDs) was an Australian sketch comedy TV series hosted by Shaun Micallef that ran from 1998 to 2001 on ABC TV.
Format and Cast
The show took the loose guise of a fictional variety show that featured mock interviews, host monologues, audience participation segments and competitions, bookending character-based sketches. The character of David McGhan from Micallef's previous sketch series Full Frontal also reappeared in this series. The show was written and produced by Micallef and Gary McCaffrie: the small number of writers and small cast, as well as the different requirements of the ABC, meant that the show was far more surreal and abrupt than Full Frontal - the humour was frequently bizarre (notoriously evidenced by Attentione, Il Est Myron, a recurring parody of European claymation programs).
As host, Micallef played a kind of quasi-character quite unlike his real self: he adopted a cold, bigoted, arrogant personality and a pedantic and oddly stilted but media-obsessed presentation style. He took great pleasure in confusing and humiliating his real and fictional guests: these included John Clarke, Tim Freedman of The Whitlams, Tim Rogers, and Andrew Denton. To balance this out, however, Micallef tended to play shabby and frequently crazy "low status" characters in the sketches, and was frequently humiliated himself by the other members of the cast.
As the program went on, it became stranger and more surreal. The third season was particularly notable for this, and gained much media coverage from a sketch that never made it to air. The sketch was supposed to show Shaun introducing a segment in which war hero Weary Dunlop would be shown as a transsexual and a few seconds into the sketch it would cut to the ABC switchboard lighting up with complaints. However, the sketch got complaints before it was even shown and subsequently never went to air - the irony of the situation lost on many of those who complained. Micallef made light of this by putting several sketches in his book Smithereens that ended with Dunlop entering in a dress.
Although the show made frequent use of minor celebrities, it shied away from direct parodies of television or actors, although the David McGhan character performed in stereotypical medical and legal dramas in the first two seasons. Its use of popular culture was better demonstrated in the opening show of the third season, where chanteuse Julie Anthony gave a strange rendition of Mi-Sex's 1979 hit "Computer Games" while a small dog pulled around a plastic cart with a single orange in it.
The show featured the talents of Wayne Hope, Roz Hammond, Francis Greenslade and, in the third season, Daina Reid. Micallef would go on to host a short-lived "real" variety show, Micallef Tonight, for the Nine Network in 2003.
Name Changes
The name of the show changed each season, due to audience complaints that Micallef turned into a running gag. The first season entitled The Micallef Program encountered complaints from ABC viewers who objected to the American spelling of "program". This linguistic issue is particularly sensitive among viewers of ABC, which broadcasts a relatively large amount of British content. In the second season, the title was changed to the British spelling of The Micallef Programme , and Micallef “thanked” his viewers in the season premiere:
“There's been a few changes since last season: we're spelling "programme" correctly this time, the French way with two m's and an e. That's entirely due to your feedback and we thank you for that. Certainly don't get that level of pedantry from viewers of commercial television.” [1]
In the third season Micallef continued this gag by settling the linguistic debate with the arguably more offensive The Micallef Pogram (with connotations to the word pogrom).
DVD Releases
The second season ('Programme') was released on DVD in 2004, preceding the first and third seasons because the distributor, Shock Records, thought that the second season was most marketable. The third season ('Pogram') was released in November 2005, and the first season ('Program') was released in early 2006. A Seven Network pilot for a solo program with Micallef is also available on DVD, together with a compilation of his work on Full Frontal.