Jonah from Tonga

2010s Australian tv comedy series

Teenager Jonah banished from his native Tonga moves to Australia to start a new life, but from the beginning in the new school he gets in trouble. By choice to be exact.

Another series created by Chris Lilley kept in the mockumentary style of narration. The main character was taken from one of the previous series, which is unusual for Lilley series, since he only plays a single character in this one. This decision wasn’t such a good idea, since so far the characters and make up were the strong points of his productions and this time all we have offered is strory of teenagers bullying others in school and getting in trouble for the fun of it. Very soon the idea wears out, the lack of the jokes becomes very obvious and in general the whole series becomes pretty much pointless.

The Jonah from Tonga was criticized for many things - the racism, mispresentation of Tonga people, excessive swearing and even being the modern minstrel show. And to be honest all of those accusations missed by miles - previous shows from Lilly were very similiar and as comedy show it was bound to be outrageous and perhaps even scandalous. And there is nothing racist about playing character that has slightly different tone of the skin. Yes, the swearing is excessive, yes the character of Jonah is annoying at best, but overall it is just poorly developed comedy series, there is nothing particularly offensive in its content.

The idea of single character played by Lilley would be interesting if the character would be in any way interesting. The plot would be entertaining if there would be plots and not just string of poor quality pranks and bullying. The idea for the show... actually seems to be missing. There is no strong points in that production.

Rating	2.4
Funny	2 / 10
Entertaining	2 / 5
Characters	1 / 5
Nonrepetitive	1 / 5