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Airdate: Dumb, Drunk and Racist

ABC2's series brings 4 Indians to Australia to show them the best and the worst to determine if we're more than just a bunch of stereotypes.

ABC2 this week begins it sometimes-volatile series Dumb, Drunk and Racist, presented by News Limited’s Joe Hildebrand.

Produced by Cordell Jigsaw (Go Back To Where You Came From), it sees four Indians visit Australia to decide for themselves whether we are racist or whether there is more to us than stereotypes.

This is a six part, half-hour series in which they are taken to see the best and the worst of us.

There’s definitely some worthy stuff here, but it’s a bit uneven which may hint at why it’s on ABC2. It’s also the series which made news itself earlier this year when the crew came under attack in Alice Springs.

Australians get a bad rap overseas, and our stocks seem especially low in India. In fact, a sizeable chunk of India’s 1.2 billion people think Aussies are dumb, drunk and racist. But doesn’t every country have its negative stereotypes?

In this six-part factual series, journalist Joe Hildebrand takes four Indians on a road-trip around Australia to examine our worst stereotypes – are we really beer-swilling, racist bogans, or are we simply misunderstood?

After three weeks of seeing the good, the bad and the ugly up close, will our intrepid Indian travellers still think that Australians are dumb, drunk and racist? And what will we think of ourselves, after seeing Australia through their eyes?

In the first episode, Joe travels to India and meets the four locals who will join him on the trip – newsreader and journalist Gurmeet Chaudhary, call centre worker Mahima Bhardwaj, law student Amer Singh and student advisor Radhika Budhwar. All agree to risk life and limb to visit our reviled and dangerous country.

Joe kicks off the Australian tour by mixing the glitz and glamour of Sydney Harbour with Australia’s most renowned beach, Bondi. The travellers quickly become seduced by the beauty down under. But before his guests relax too much, Joe stops them in their tracks with a provocative mural plastered on an inner-city wall. The mural – which reads ‘Ban the Burqa’ – sparks off the first heated debate… and the Indians aren’t the only ones upset by the message the mural carries.

9:30pm Wednesday on ABC2.

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