Ja'ime: Private School Girl, TV review: Chris Lilley's latest creation is sometimes more accurate than she is amusing
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Your support makes all the difference.Drama teacher Mr G used to stage vanity-masquerading-as-charity project in BBC3 mockumentary Summer Heights High. Remember Tsunamarama? "The events of the 2004 tsunami set to the music of Bananarama"?
Mr G was one of several creations by Australian comedian Chris Lilley to feature in that show and Lilley's latest programme, Ja'ime: Private School Girl, focuses on another – obnoxious Year 12 Ja'ime King.
If you've ever met a teenage girl, or, God forbid, had the misfortune to be one yourself, then lots about Ja'ime and her Hillford Girls cohorts will ring painfully true. As Ja'ime applied lip-gloss, prattled on about "quiche" boys ("It basically means hot, but it's also a step above hot...") and how she's got "the most Facebook friends in the whole school", it was alarmingly easy to forget that this is actually a 39-year-old man dressed in school uniform.
This is the first of Lilley's shows in which he's concentrated all his efforts on realising a single character and, as you'd expect, Ja'ime is spot-on. The only problem is sometimes she's more accurate than she is amusing.
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