The Micallef Program
| The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) | |
|---|---|
DVD cover of series 1
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| Also known as | The Micallef Program The Micallef Programme The Micallef Pogram |
| Genre | Satire |
| Presented by | Shaun Micallef |
| Country of origin | Australia |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 3 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | ABC TV |
| Original release | 11 May 1998 – 9 April 2001 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) is an Australian sketch comedy TV series hosted by Shaun Micallef, and written by Micallef and Gary McCaffrie, that ran from 1998 to 2001 on ABC TV. It was known as The Micallef Program in its first series, The Micallef Programme in its second series and The Micallef Pogram in its third series. The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) is an umbrella title used for the DVD releases.
Airing on Mondays (Friday for the second season) at 8pm, 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 characters of Milo Kerrigan and 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 adopted the persona of an arrogant, thin-skinned, self-obsessed pedant. His monologues featured a large amount of deliberately confusing wordplay (garden path sentences; for example, "As a Chinese person who is bilingual might say, "!"), and his interviews would revolve around him confusing and belittling his guests, both real and fictional: 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 (such as Kerrigan) in the sketches, and was himself frequently humiliated by the other members of the cast."
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