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In the struggle for more freedom of expression, activists' new worry is being labelled 'political' The guessing games of civil society

Stiff Political Spirit of wide screen TV and electoral bear pits:
It sounds a bit too good to be true: John Clarke writing and directing a telemovie from one of Shane Maloney's comic detective stories, starring David Wenham as the deadpan catastrophe Murray Whelan, a Labor Party hack who becomes a reluctant sleuth.
The Murray Whelan series began about 10 years ago when writer Shane Maloney - a one-time manager of the Comedy Festival who had also worked on Melbourne's doomed bid for the Olympics - decided to invent a shambling character who ends up on the trail of murder. Stiff, which introduces Murray Whelan, is mainly set in Sydney Road, Brunswick, and is replete with Turkish characters, including the beautiful Ayisha (Tamara Searle).
Maloney is not insensitive to his luck in being adapted by his friend John Clarke. John is a man who reinvents everything he touches. He sends up politicians without ever impersonating them. He presents the organisation of the Games and makes it worse than we could ever have expected. He's not someone who'll settle for the relentlessly plot-driven puzzle.
Clarke is as equipped as anyone possibly could be to make comedy drama out of those woebegone Murray Whelan stories that soothe the mind like a drug even as they insinuate that politics is a nightmare and family life can be a sad thing. He's a man who likes to contemplate the cusp between the realistic and the fanciful. He also has the greatest respect for the common person's sophistication in the face of artistic work.
· Winter of our discontent: Comedy doesn't have have a better friend than drama... the work of Kafka is funny [SEEN @ SE7EN ]
· See Also Clever dicks of Antipodean telemovies [ via Isobel Kerr]
· See Also Free Whelans Murrays, Pauls, Johns...
· See Also Wenham back to slay
· See Also Small screen, big ambitions
· See Also The Political Games
· See Also Who dun it?