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John Safran will tackle the free-speech debate in Shut Your Big Fat Mouth, a documentary special for SBS, the broadcaster announced at its annual upfront presentation in Sydney on Wednesday.
Predicting a take that will likely annoy both sides of the so-called culture wars, SBS head of unscripted Joseph Maxwell said, “I think we might be failing if we don’t”.
John Safran appears to be channelling Eli Roth’s violent Nazi-bashing character from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds in this promotional image supplied by SBS.Credit: SBS
“John is such a distinctive voice, and he’s really asking us what we can say and what we can’t say in modern-day Australia, and it’s something that I think vexes the left and vexes the right,” said Maxwell. “We can all be a bit confused. Put John Safran in the mix, you’re going to get something very unpredictable and really entertaining and engaging.”
The big-ticket event in next year’s line-up will be the FIFA World Cup, of which SBS is the exclusive Australian broadcaster.
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It will screen all 104 games from the tournament in Canada, the US and Mexico. For the first time, 48 nations will compete (up from 32 in 2022, and a mere 13 in its first iteration in 1930).
The broadcaster will also host extensive coverage on a dedicated FAST (free ad-supported television) digital channel throughout the tournament, which opens on June 11 and finishes with the final on July 19.
The fourth season of survival series Alone Australia leads the reality charge, and next year its 10 contestants will be tested like never before.
“We are about to send them into the Arctic Circle,” said Maxwell, who added the cast had only been informed on Monday where they were going – and even then, only in general terms. “They know the rough environment they’re going to, but we’re not at this stage revealing what country.”
This won’t be the first season of the franchise to be shot in the Arctic Circle, with the Scandinavian iterations and seasons six and 11 of the US series having been set there. But it marks a huge step-up for cast and crew on the winter-time conditions in Australia and New Zealand, where the first three seasons have been set.
Next year’s Alone Australia will be filmed in the Arctic Circle, the location for season 11 of the US series.
“This is totally out of their comfort zone,” said Maxwell. “They will go in autumn, where conditions might seem fairly benign, but then winter will sweep in and conditions will rapidly change. It will be colder and more intense than anyone has ever experienced in Australia before. We’re really excited about it.”
On the drama front, SBS will launch The Chaplain, set in an international airport and co-created by Elise McCredie (Stateless) and Jude Troy (The Clearing).
It will also have Reckless, a co-commission with NITV, in which Tasma Walton and Hunter Page-Lochard star as feuding siblings who struggle with the fallout of a hit-and-run fatality and cover-up.
Coming next month is the previously announced documentary series The People vs Robodebt, a three-parter examining the personal toll of, and fightback against, a bungled government program that targeted almost a million vulnerable Australians.
We Are Jeni, meanwhile, tells the remarkable story of Dr Jeni Haynes, a woman who has a claimed 2500 alter egos. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by her father, Haynes testified against him in court in the guises of six of those alter egos.
Dr Jeni Haynes, the subject of We Are Jeni.Credit: SBS
Also turning the spotlight on a true-crime story, The Jury will return for a second season, while 2.6 Seconds will examine in detail the forces at play in the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker by NT police officer Zachary Rolfe in 2019.
That four-part series, to be directed by Darren Dale of Blackfella Productions (Total Control, First Contact), is “a really good case of SBS going where other people don’t,” said Maxwell. “I’ve been quite shocked to see how little the story of Kumanjayi Walker has been in the papers.”
Maxwell said the line-up, in unscripted particularly, shows SBS trying to carve out a space that is unique in the free-to-air broadcasting landscape.
“Our challenge is not just the types of stories we’re telling, but how we tell them,” he says. “Robodebt is drama-doc, Alone is entirely self-shot, 2.6 Seconds is a thesis-led piece, We Are Jeni is totally distinctive in what it’s doing, John Safran is trouble-making. So there’s not a rinse and repeat, there’s a real sense of how can you challenge the form as much as the subject.
“Our job is not to take a position, our job is to get people to engage with these topics. Our biggest success is if we can get the nation talking about some of these things – not tell them what to think, but let them make up their own mind.”
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