Master of disguise: Chris Lilley. Image: ABC

In an international co-production coup for the ABC, character comedian Chris Lilley has announced an entirely new series, Angry Boys, that’s being co-produced with HBO and in association with the BBC.

At 12 episodes, it’s longer than anything Lilley has done before, and refreshingly, it won’t include any characters from his previous series We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High.

However, viewers who loved Jonah Takalua’s adolescent bravado may well be pleased with the new series. It continues Lilley’s favoured mockumentary style and, according to the ABC, “explores what it means to be a 21st century boy by putting the male of the species under the microscope.”

The Herald Sun has further intriguing details about the casting. Thanks to a casting call that went out in the United States, we know characters will include an African-American model called LaFonda, an older African-American man called Carter, and a Japanese-American teenager called Corey, who is a pro skateboarder.

Pre-production begins today, and filming is scheduled in Australia – probably in Melbourne – from February to April 2010. Other scenes will be shot in the United States.

In We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High, Lilley created two of Australia’s most popular TV series. The latter became a cultural phenomenon that spilled over into real classrooms and won Lilley a swag of awards. He bagged both peer-voted and popularly-voted Logies (for Most Outstanding Comedy Series and Most Popular Actor), plus AFI Awards for Best Comedy Series and Best Actor in a Comedy Series. Summer Heights High is still Australia’s best-selling comedy TV series DVD.

When Summer Heights High was syndicated overseas (notably to BBC3, HBO and TV1 in New Zealand), the phenomenon started up again. Despite the specific Australianness of the series, it was intriguing to watch new audiences fall in love with the characters and pick up a new vocabulary of “dick-tation”, “rangas”, “no offence, but it’s true”, “It’s G time, not free time” and “puck you”.

Accordingly, great excitement has generally greeted news of Angry Boys. “It’s pretty much a lock that this will be one of the funnier entries in HBO’s 2010 lineup,” wrote Henning Fog at Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch. “Even as an abstract, it’s already better than Entourage!”

However, others had reservations. “I’m also curious to see if this show is going to provide any new direction for Lilley, if only in the slightest bit,” wrote Annie Wu at TV Squad. “When I think of Angry Boys, I can’t help but visualize this show as a bunch of guys exactly like his Jonah character running around. It would be disappointing to see someone as talented as Lilley doing the same sort of thing over and over again.”

On Twitter, a generally rapturous reaction was leavened by a few naysayers. Tim Mortimer tweeted, “I find Chris Lilley’s humour patronising, insulting, and banal.”

“I loved We Can Be Heroes, but Summer Heights High left me cold,” said Sally SetsForth. “My expectations won’t be as high for new Chris Lilley series – good thing?”

“I do not find Chris Lilley or his work the least bit funny,” added __God_. “There, I said it. I’ll leave the country now, head hung in shame.”

At this early stage, The Enthusiast is wondering if the international co-production will dilute Lilley’s brand of comedy, which is so richly Australian. After all, Lilley has come to occupy an almost canonical place in Australian pop culture as a jester who shows us our own pretensions and hypocrisies. However, the way international audiences embraced Summer Heights High does show that these can also be universal qualities.

Lilley has said that he rejected lucrative offers for an American remake of the series. “They wanted me to do it again in an American accent – all these terrible ideas,” Lilley said. “I wouldn’t let it happen. I spent so long working on the characters, I hate the thought of someone else playing them.”

We’ll be watching with interest to see how well Lilley rolls with the changes to his very top-down approach that this co-production will necessitate.