In one of the first scenes of Stan’s new original series, The Other Guy, the lead character AJ – played by Matt Okine, who co-wrote the series with Becky Lucas – is lying in a pool of piss on a mattress, passed out drunk next to a stranger.
AJ has just broken up with Liv (Valene Kane), his girlfriend of nine years, after she cheated on him with his best friend and housemate. The piss may or may not be his. (It’s probably his.)
Authenticity is a commodity in contemporary TV dramedy – think Girls or Josh Thomas’s Please Like Me – and in terms of the story at least, The Other Guy has it in spades.
The stand-up comic and former Triple J host’s own nine-year relationship ended after a similar infidelity (“Am I the only fucking idiot who’s faithful?” he has asked), and when we meet at Stan’s offices, overlooking the Sydney CBD, I offer that the bed-pissing is not far from the truth either.
This comes as a surprise to Harriet Dyer, who plays AJ’s best friend Stevie. “Wait, did you wee the bed?” she asks, bemused.
“I did not!” Okine protests, before: “I’m still not sure.”
I remind him of a 2014 interview with this publication, in which he admitted to it.
“Oh that time!” he laughs. “No no no, that was by myself, in Edinburgh. I had a real low point at that stage.”
In that interview, Okine told the story of being nominated for best newcomer at the 2013 Edinburgh festival; that evening, he returned to his hotel room and fell asleep on a pile of dirty clothing – the night before, he had gotten so wasted he wet the bed.
“Yeah, that was all a very tough part or time of my life,” he says now. “From there I went about writing a stage show and then turning it into this.”
The Other Guy, which premiered on Stan on Thursday night, is the streaming service’s latest go at original content. Just a few weeks ago, cop comedy No Activity was picked up for a US remake – a collaboration between Australian producers Jungle, CBS TV, and Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company.
Dyer has a starring role in both, but her character in The Other Guy, a loud-mouthed hot mess of a woman, is a very different offering – as is the show itself.
After AJ asks Liv to move out, we watch him try to wrest back control of his life, which is spent between the studio where he works as a youth radio host, and back home in the kind of dank Sydney crash-pad that gives any inner-city dweller shuddering flashbacks. He and his best friend Stevie – high-functioning alcoholics in the same way much of Australia’s young creative class is – are stuck in a bender for at least the first two episodes.
“I think it’s an accurate representation,” Dyer says, “but it’s certainly something you couldn’t get away with on network television ... It’s not like we’re saying, ‘Hey, everyone do drugs!’ We’re saying, ‘Hey, some people do drugs, and this is that story’.”
For Okine, it’s closer to the truth than most people will acknowledge. “I’ve had an interesting relationship with alcohol for years now – I think a lot of creative people do ... I find that’s something that I’ve always had to confront.”
“Every Monday,” Dyer quips, and Okine laughs: “I was confronting it yesterday, goddamn! But again, that’s another part of my life that I am putting out there and opening up to criticism.”
Notably absent from the first episode is the scene most would expect: AJ walking in on his girlfriend and his best friend, before a clothes-out-the-window/fists-thrown bust-up ensues. But real life didn’t play out that way, and Okine didn’t want to fake it.
“It didn’t happen like that,” he says. “It unfolds after a series of long conversations that are all very difficult, and you’re spending a lot of nights bawling your eyes out with each other trying to figure out if you can save the relationship – and then you go into work at 4.30 the next morning pretending to a million people that everything’s fine, and that you really do care about this new band from Colombia’s latest single. The reality is you just – you’re numb to everything.
“10 years doesn’t just go away because someone made a mistake. You have to honour it ... You can’t just switch off from someone after 10 years.”
Dyer, nodding along, remembers a past break-up of her own. She and her partner had a holiday booked with another couple before they split, and took the trip together regardless – a similar situation to one that pans out in episode five of The Other Guy.
“It was like, ‘Hey, we’re probably breaking up, but can we still come with you?’,” she remembers. “[Our friends] were excellent about it – like, ‘yeah, no worries!’, and they were really neutral, keeping the vibe up all the time. But then the door would close at the end of the night, and you’re just on the bed, back to back, silent.”
Guardian critic Luke Buckmaster gave the show an unsparing review, but I found a lot to like in The Other Guy – at least in the first two episodes I’ve watched. The characters are unlikeable because they’re meant to be – and while TV viewers may have had enough of The Saga of the Sad Man-Child, there are refreshing moments here too.
It’s still remarkably unusual to see a platonic male/female friendship play out in lead roles on TV, for a start – and Dyer, as a mess of inane banter and douchebaggery that tends to be relegated to the male supporting lead, is often hilarious. More generally, the cast is diverse – across racial, gender, sexuality and disability lines – without making a song and dance of it.
“In a lot of instances we would decide the opposite of what I imagined, or what I’m used to seeing on TV ... Although someone like Briggs [who plays AJ’s internet troll Dog Murphy] – Briggs trolls me in real life all the time, so I literally just wrote him into it. And I’ve known Michael Hing [who plays AJ’s co-host Sam, a gay father] for a really long time,” Okine says.
“It’s all the little things,” he continues. “The Uber driver, being an Indigenous woman. The doctor being an older woman … every opportunity that we could, we would try to do something different – and not labour on it, you know? We’re not having Indigenous cast members that are talking about being Indigenous, we’re not trying to make a sociopolitical point about the hardships Indigenous people have to face every day – which they do – or gay guys with kids. We’re just kind of seeing everyday living by different faces.”
“I think there is a big change coming through Australian television now,” Dyer says. “I’m missing out on plenty of roles for diversity casting that I’m happy to – because [other groups] have been under-represented for so long.” She talks of two recent roles she was close to getting, before her agent informed her they were going for “diversity” instead. “It’s a bit thin on the ground for the blondes,” she says, laughing, “but it’s like, whatever. We’ve had our time!”
• The Other Guy is available to stream on Stan now
