The “bloody hell” in the title is a clue that SBS’ latest history program leans towards the irreverent and zany, but don’t be misled – this documentary series has a habit of weaving back and forth across the line between light entertainment and proper history with all its grim detail.
The hosts of Who the Bloody Hell Are We?, MasterChef alumnus Adam Liaw, comedian Cal Wilson and career provocateur John Safran, are tasked with looking at Australian history through the lens of three of its multicultural communities, Chinese, Kiwi and Jewish respectively.
The series starts with Safran, never one to shy away from a thorny topic. Anti-Semitism runs deep in our colonial history, he explains, noting that there were a dozen Jewish convicts on the First Fleet in 1788 and in the early days all convicts had to attend Anglican services.
Soon we learn of the notorious English-Jewish bushranger Edward Davis who plundered the highways and byways of the Hunter Valley in the 1840s, becoming known as “Teddy the Jewboy”. Historian David Hunt relates enthusiastically that Davis and his gang appeared to avoid committing any of their crimes on the Sabbath.
Safran also casts an eye over the more conventional of our leading Jewish-Australians, including Helena Rubenstein, who started a global cosmetics empire from Melbourne’s Collins Street, Sir John Monash, the great World War I general, and Sir Isaac Isaacs, the first Australian-born Governor-General.
Read the article by John Mangan in WAToday.