Urvi Went to an All Girls’ School and Westerners: ABC Fresh Blood pilots reviewed

The Fresh Blood scheme is the ABC’s long running program to foster new comedy talent. So it’s probably not a good sign that to date it hasn’t actually led to any comedy careers on the ABC. In fact, the only entrants who did manage to get a sitcom this decade – Aunty Donna, with 2022’s Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café – saw it axed after one season.

But just because the program doesn’t currently seem to lead anywhere doesn’t mean this showcase isn’t without value on its own. The winning entrants get a half-hour pilot commissioned, and this year the ABC is screening two winners on the free-to-air network, as well as making them available on iView.

While it’s definitely a step up as far as visibility goes, bumping them up to broadcast television is also papering over a very large crack in the ABC’s scripted comedy line-up for 2025.

Aside from the recently completed dramedy Optics and the possible return of Mother & Son later in the year, the ABC doesn’t have any local half-hour comedies lined up for 2025 (a second season of Austin is also planned, but calling a show half filmed in the UK and with two UK leads ‘local’ is a bit of a stretch). So if you’re looking for fresh comedy faces on the ABC, this is pretty much it.

Fresh Blood: Urvi Went to an All Girls’ School

The first pilot to air on the ABC, this week’s Urvi Went to an All Girls’ School, is a sharply observed look at high school life back in 2010. Urvi (series creator Urvi Majumdar) juggles her Indian parents demands to study maths and become a doctor with her burning desire to follow in Grogan Girl’s High alumni Nicole Kidman’s footsteps and star in the upcoming production of ‘Grogan Rouge’. Seems the producer couldn’t get the rights to the original.

There are plenty of amusing moments here, and some decent comedy characters orbiting around Urvi and her younger sister Maya (who’s been bumped up a grade and promptly makes friends with the bullies (AKA Spicy Mayo) after claiming she was adopted and is secretly mixed-race).

But it feels more like a slightly heightened memoir than a fully-fledged sitcom; it’s a dramedy worth watching for Urvi’s heartfelt struggle to live out her acting dreams alongside the legendary ‘Hot Ryan’. Will the growing rift between the sisters ever heal? To be continued …

Watch Fresh Blood: Urvi Went to an All Girls’ School.

Fresh Blood: Westerners

Next week’s Westerners continues the coming-of-age, culture-clash theme, only this time the focus is on a pair of arty twenty-somethings struggling with entry-level jobs and their own personal dramas.

The adventures of Jackie (Natasha Cheng) and Taz (Sana’a Shaik) in the Sydney art world lean heavily on the surreal. There’s a nice mix of odd observations (just how does their friend Dulla get to his multiple gigs so quickly?) and outright jokes (shoutout to DJ Op Shop performing at Bruno the dog’s funeral). There’s even an appearance from Aunty Donna’s Mark Bonanno luring Jackie into the world of paid panel events.

It’s more-joke heavy than Urvi, though it definitely helps to know something about the Australian arts and media scene; if you don’t find increasingly ludicrous arts panels funny then parts of this are going to fall flat. But the central conflict between Jackie and Taz – what happens when one friend becomes successful and leaves the other behind – is well handled and surprisingly emotional.

Both pilots are polished, professional pieces of work with unique points of view. Looking back over the other Fresh Blood entrants, it’s easy to see why they stood out. But professional polish and comedy don’t always go hand-in-hand – just look at 10’s current talk show, the ramshackle but often very funny Sam Pang Tonight. And with these two pilots, at times it seems as if the ABC’s top priority wasn’t comedy in their quest for new comedy series.

Perhaps the third winner, the announced but not yet released Going Under, might be more about bringing laughs … though considering the ABC press release last year described it as ‘a comedy-drama that explores the lies people tell to save face’, possibly not.

Presumably the ABC doesn’t want to set up a pilot program just for dramedy, even if that’s the only kind of series that win. And with the ABC increasingly disinterested in comedy overall – they recently abolished their comedy department – it’s possibly for the best that they don’t get anyone’s hopes up.

Both these pilots deserve to go to series. So did a lot of the Fresh Blood runners-up. And no doubt there’s plenty of other sitcom pitches and scripts piling up at the ABC we’d love to see. But for now, these two stand-alone episodes are all we’ve got.

Despite their obvious quality, it’s hard not to feel a little disappointed.

Watch Fresh Blood: Westerners.

Urvi Went to an All Girls’ School and Westerners are available now on ABC iView; Westerners will also air on the ABC Wednesday April 16 at 10pm.

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