"Big Girl's Blouse" (1994) TV series

Seasons:

1

Genre:

Comedy

Cast

Magda Szubanski	...	Various Characters (9 episodes, 1994)
Jane Turner	...	Various Characters (9 episodes, 1994)
Gina Riley	...	Various Characters (9 episodes, 1994)

Country:

Australia

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Company:

7 Network

Movie Connections:

Spin off "Kath & Kim" (2002)

the girls without Marg

This sketch comedy series features 3 of the 4 funny ladies from the comedy show Fast Forward. The 4th, Marg Downey would rejoin the 3 for their next series Something Stupid. As is the nature of sketch comedy, the material here is hit and miss. What makes the show remarkable is the ambition of Gina, Jane and Magda, who co-wrote and produced the series. The most obvious reference point is the Kim's Wedding episodes which would evolve into the later Kath and Kim series, and also the rich society ladies here blonde and also featuring Magda who would later become grey-haired and far more verbally arch. Girls Talk, featuring Patty Stacker who is "freaking out", is an extension of the Fast Forward genre parody, here sending up 1960's Australian conventionality, with faux-British accents and faulty film stock. Midweek Ladies, and The Coralee Hollow Dance Company both use a mock-documentary approach to expose the political machinations of a pensioner tennis club, and a pretentious artist. Other highlights are The Order of Saint Gary, nuns dedicated to their patron Gary Sweet; Community Access TV with Gina and Jane as drag queens; and the frumpy shoppers played by Jane and a poignant hook-nosed Magda. Gina shines as Claire the bitchy editor of the Big Girls Blouse tabloid magazine who attempt to out Jesus and the parallel staffed Playschool, as the murderous cabaret singer Funny Lady, yet another Liza Minnelli, and a girl suffering from the Juliette Lewis Syndrome. Jane is the geriatric dancing Margaret Bland and the diminutive jockey Dale Cummings. And Magda does the grotesque canteen lady Lyn with her catchphrase "I said love, I said pet", an hysterical Katharine Hepburn, has a wonderful aria as a downtrodden minion of Claire, and the womanizer Neville Crawley.