‘Ello, Espionagers! You know, being a spy isn’t all fun stuff, like jumping out of planes whilst being chased by huge guys with metal teeth, getting shagadelic with a bevy of supermodels, emerging from the ocean in tiny swimsuits or sleeping with an amnesiac Matt Damon (unless you’re Ben Affleck, then it’s always fun). Sometimes you actually have to worry less about the hot Clive Owen look-alike in the seedy bar schtupping you with a radium-poisoned glow in the dark condom, and more about what to get your executive assistant for World Secretary’s Day. And who has time to photograph stolen nuclear warhead blueprints with a micro-camera hidden up your left nostril when you have to take a crash-course in PowerPoint presentations for your next board meeting presentation? And good luck wanting a martini, shaken-but-not-stirred. It’s 9:30am- here’s your latte, and no, it’s dairy milk, not soy- well you’ll just have to *be* lactose intolerant then, won’t you? So put on your largest ankle-length trench coat and dark glasses (whilst wearing them, keep away from porno theatres and playgrounds at all times), swap your handgun-concealed-as-a-stapler for an actual stapler (though it can come fitted with a hole punch as well, if you like) and keep away from the windows (not due to snipers, it’s just that there’s a colony of pigeons nesting above them and we’re all out of Windex) as we surreptitiously make a file on ARCHER (Foxtel FX on Thursdays at 10pm).
ARCHER is an adult animated series (not as crude as SOUTH PARK and DRAWN TOGETHER, or as wise as DR KATZ- PROFESSIONAL THERAPIST, but still not for kids- they wouldn’t be traumatised, they just wouldn’t get it- like a kangaroo trying to work out what a placenta does) from the same folks who brought us FRISKY DINGO. Like FRISKY DINGO, ARCHER takes an existing genre (FRISKY DINGO tackled costumed superheroes ARCHER takes on spy thrillers) and also like the former show, ARCHER’s sense of humour comes primarily from the characters playing the most ludicrously over-the-top situations (super-intelligent, radioactive ants, bionic aliens) completely deadpan and completely blasé- like the team faces a half-man/half-lobster with a penchant for both home-cooked meals and Viagra every day of the week (I hear that’s quite a common assignment for the good men and women of ASIO, actually).
ARCHER tells the story of Stirling Archer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, DR KATZ), a top agent for the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS). Archer is suave, sophisticated, a fearless assassin and a great lover- albeit extremely bitter and with a penchant for using the ISIS expense account for $10,000 a night hookers. Although he’s a terrific secret agent, Stirling is loathed by not only the bureau’s Accounts Department but everyone else in the ISIS office- kind of like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, if everyone on the screen hated Tom Cruise as much as everyone in the cinema audience. Possibly the only person who doesn’t loathe Archer is his boss, the ‘sensuous, salacious sixty-something super spy’ Mallory (voice of Jessica Walter PLAY MISTY FOR ME), who views him as a piece of pleasingly shaped man meat (‘Stirling, come check me for lumps!’). The problem with this is that Mallory is not only Stirling’s boss, she’s also his mother (not that fancying her son is her most worrying characteristic- she also has a huge picture in her office of herself in a Yoko Ono/John Lennon nude embrace… with her favourite dog, Dutchess! (Dutchess also happens to be the macho Stirling’s much-loathed code name). Also in the main branch of the ISIS office can be found Stirling’s ex-girlfriend and fellow agent Llana Turner (Aisha Tyler- CSI), Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) Llana’s current boyfriend- and Stirling’s partner (aaawkward!), and a former sex-droid turned crime-solving super-computer named “Fister Roboto†that keeps slipping back into its default setting (‘PLEASURE-BEFORE-BUSINESS’).
Another character also brings a huge amount of Gay to proceedings. To improve the company’s ‘diversity awareness’, ISIS performs a Minority Group hire and brings in Agent Conway Stern, an African-American, Jewish-American gay man (Archer: ‘See, what you should have gone for was “Sammy Gay-vis Jr‒) who is, of course, handed all the assignments deemed even remotely life-threatening.
The Gay subplots don’t just end there, either. Witness the hilarious episode ‘Honeypot’, in which Archer’s Boss/Mom, after losing some sexually explicit photographs, super-8 film and microfiche, is being blackmailed for ISIS secrets by a roguishly rogue gay Cuban double-agent (a hilarious cameo from HELLBOY’s Ron Perlman), recruits her son to turn the tables on the ‘duplicitous Ricky Martin in not-quite-as-tight pants’ and videotape their resultant gay sexual encounter!
Hilarious, deadpan one liners, several gay characters and gay centric episodes, a cute (though animated) guy who is often just a (literal) pencil stroke away from full-frontal cartoonudity, and the only spy-spoof currently on television that doesn’t involve people talking into a shoe!
Get under the covers with your favourite snitch (no, I said *snitch*) and watch it!
Gavin Pitts
