"The opportunity to showcase a lot of freaks"

Talking comedy with Vidya Rajan and Elyce Phillips and their new Fresh Blood series

If there are two people on this horrible spinning earth whose comedy I will always seek out, it’s Vidya Rajan and Elyce Phillips, the creative team behind the new ABC Fresh Blood series Ruby Rai P.I.

I’ve been a fan of both their work for a long time, so it was no surprise that these bite-sized episodes are absolutely made for me. The jokes are very good - I think my favourite might be from the opening of the second episode: “And that was The Pussycat Dolls featuring MLK Jr with their comeback single ‘don’t you wish your girlfriend had a dream like me’”.

The three-part sketch-esque show gives me Spaced and Los Espookys vibes, a deep commitment to elevated silliness, absolutely full of jokes. It’s also a show that confidently engages with the ideas of how to tell stories from outside the centre - how to tell stories of queerness and race and other marginalised groups, without sacrificing comedy. In fact, to accelerate the comedy. It’s comedy first, but just not from the same couple of people making the same middle of the line “accessible” comedy.

Ruby Rai, played by Vidya, is a down-and-out private investigator... or at least that’s how she sees herself. She’s just obsessed with solving mysteries, but slams up against just a bunch of weirdos who don’t play along.

I asked them what made them choose a private investigator as a comedic character in Australia.

VIDYA: a few years ago a friend and I were just like talking about a noir set in Melbourne with a South Asian detective. And then that kind of didn't quite take off but the idea was playing around in my mind. That version was a bit more serious and pulpy. And I guess I was like, I just find that idea silly - there's a broader comedy in it. I wanted the lens on Melbourne and this outsider figure that could go into all these weird subcultures. The opportunity to showcase a lot of freaks.

I think was just like an interesting way of commenting on the moment as well. Even the breakfast radio episode, which is such a like a uniquely Australian thing, just to approach that from off centre, and not from like, the middle of it, feels like pretty rare. And like the figure of a PI is like, necessarily off centre.

Elyce: I'm a big fan of like Raymond Chandler novels and then, hardboiled detective trope. And there's something that's like really interesting about taking a character type that is usually like a straight white dude being presented as an outsider when they're absolutely not the outsider in our society. So it's like fun to put someone who actually is on the outs into that position and seeing how that plays out. Yeah. And there's something really fun about taking a character that wants to be very serious minded and very wary, and putting them in Melbourne, and all situations where that just doesn't play because people do want to talk about their emotions. 

In the first episode, Ruby comes up against the terrifying force of an inner-Melbourne polycule, who use all the language and tropes of polyamory to frustrate her attempt to solve a mystery. This struck me as bold - while polyamory is inherently funny, it’s also a risk, because if you offend one polyamorous person, you’re potentially making enemies of a whole polycule. Why did they decide to depict polyamory in this way?

VIDYA: It was about comedy writing, Patrick - please make sure to keep that arrogance in my response. I was thinking like, if you’re a character who wants a straight answer, who are the hardest people to get a straight answer from? In traditional noir, it's usually real criminal types. But in our world, a fun comedy, the hardest people would be a polycule… because everything has to be negotiated.

In focusing on the language of the polycule, on the exaggerated comedy of manners that is both recognisable and also hyperbolic, they’re skipping the immediate, easy jokes. This is because both Ruby Rai and the writers are always interested in finding the interesting jokes, the next level up. It’s easy to make fun of polyamorous people for being slightly different. What’s more interesting is to find jokes that are about people in general, using this hyper-specific example.

Elyce: What was interesting about that sketch was like, I think there’s so many easy jokes with polyamory which have already been done so well. So maybe we don't have to do that.

VIDYA: it was important that we were like, we got the you get those jokes out of the bad draft. I think polyamory is a wonderful thing. And it is fine. And if people want to do it, they can, and I think there's beautiful ways to do it. I was just like, what I find interesting in comedy is the point where people get hypocritical and narcissistic. And I think everyone is prone to that.

You can watch Ruby Rai P.I. on Youtube, I’ve literally linked them here, what more do you want from me?