Review: Shaun Micallef's on the sauce

Comedian and presenter Shaun Micallef has a new show on the ABC titled Shaun Micallef’s On the Sauce, which takes a first hand look at Australia’s drinking culture.

I watched the premier earlier this week on iView, and found it very entertaining, informative and even moving. Micallef himself doesn’t drink alcohol, having noticed within himself as a young man a tendency to over-indulge, or a struggle to recognise his own limits when it came to responsible consumption. He outlines his motivation for investigating the topic as stemming from his realisation that, with his own children approaching the legal drinking age, he is in a poor position to give them advice or guidance when it comes to drinking, and so he wanted to find out more about our society’s relationship to alcohol in order to present a better informed picture.

The result is a very human, authentic picture of Australian drinking culture. Hailing from rural SA as I do, and having attended a university residential college famed for its drinking culture, I recognised the centrality of alcohol to the various forms of social life that are depicted in episode 1. The show does a terrific job of highlighting the very real benefits that alcohol consumption provides to many communities – as a facilitator of social outings and as a ‘social lubricant’ of sorts. Yet, importantly it does not shy away from highlighting the inherent problems that stem from centring alcohol so markedly: problems ranging all the way from mild social exclusion or awkward questioning for non-drinkers to full blown liver failure and societal disgrace for those that cannot manage their drinking.

The show reaches its nadir in the last few minutes, as Micallef attempts, through tears, to outline a deeper motivation for exploring alcohol consumption in Australia: that he lost his sister-in law from complications related to her alcoholism only weeks before filming. It's an emotional and necessary reminder that there is a dark side to a very Australian habit of brushing off the problems of alcohol.