Please Like Me’s future in doubt as fourth season starts on ABC

THE future of Please Like Me — the fourth season starts this week — is in doubt as Josh Thomas admits he might have to find something else to do.

IT’S almost unheard of for a low budget Aussie comedy to be embraced by an American cable channel and feted by Entertainment Weekly as one of the best shows on television.

But in a tragically ironic twist America’s affection for Please Like Me could spell its doom after US cable channel Pivot, which has co-produced the show since season two, shut down this week (November 1).

That means the show has lost a substantial component of its funding which won’t be easy to replace.

“I have to think about doing something else because I might not have another season,” Thomas explains. “Obviously we’re talking to everybody, but contracts aren’t built to have networks close down so it’s very tricky.”

The show streams on Hulu in America and Amazon in the UK, meaning neither of those two services nor Netflix are likely to co-fund it because they’re unable to secure the rights for the other English speaking territories.

“People have been interested in it, but it’s just a difficult situation,” Thomas says.

Neither Pivot or Hulu release ratings figures, but Please Like Me has proven popular with the US press. It’s drawn praise from praise from the New York Times, Vanity Fair and Time — and Entertainment Weekly named it one of the best shows of the year two years running.

“I think 40 per cent of our (US) audience is TV critics,” he says. “It’s a cultishly popular show. I’m only there once a year, but every year there are a few more people at a gay club who’ll come up (to talk about it).”

The show’s success has also opened doors in Hollywood. Thomas has done a “whole slab” of meetings with network and studio executives who he says complimented him a lot but didn’t actually offer him any work.

“I’m not good at that chit chat and I kept f!@#ing everything up,” he says. “I think it’d be more helpful if I hadn’t tried to build a rapport with these people.”

The ABC describes the fourth season as being about “growing up, bursting your bubble, and doing everything within your power to keep having fun”. Thomas says what’s what the ABC says every year. “Nothing ever really happens (on the show). Every season they’ve been like ‘And then they grow up some more’…”

The season sees his mum teetering between depression and elation, his dad worried his partner Mae is bullying him, best friend Tom’s looking to move out with his girlfriend and Josh’s boyfriend Arnold seems to be losing interest.

The show’s drawn praise for its honest depiction of depression which was based on Josh’s own mum’s real life mental health struggles. She tried to take her own life when he was 19 which affected him deeply.

“That was the initial idea for the show. There are so many big things in life that you sort of practice by watching television but someone attempting suicide, I’ve just never seen it done in a way that’s very realistic.

“I pitched that to my mum thinking that was a good intentioned thing to do and she said yes to it, but then I was very nervous that I wouldn’t have the skill set to pull it off in a way that’s not disgusting and offensive. I’m relieved people don’t think that.”

That storyline isn’t based wholly on his real mum, but also on research about other people with bipolar or mental illness. “It does get a bit complicated with my mum because she doesn’t know what is what I think of her, and what is what I think of these people we researched.”

Josh Thomas in a scene from the first episode of the forth season of Please Like Me. Picture: ABC

For that matter, Thomas says he’s increasingly finding the lines blurring between reality and fiction in his own life. There was a joke in the show about how he’d had sex with a watermelon as a teenager.

“I just don’t know if I did it,” he muses. “I was thinking the other day, well maybe it was an orange? And then I thought: was it? Or is that just what I used to say in my stand up routine?”

Sex incidentally, features a lot more prominently this season (it begins with a threesome gone wrong). Thomas, says that can get a little weird now he’s started directing episodes.

“Now I’m in the room telling the boy I’m doing a sex scene with where to put his hands or where ever, it has started to feel a bit creepy,” he laughs. “Just a bit.”

If you or someone you love is in crisis or needs support right now, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.

Young people aged 5 to 25 years can call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800

You can also visit communitiesmatter.com.au for information and resources on how to get help and give help.

PLEASE LIKE ME SEASON FOUR PREMIERE, ABC, WEDNESDAY, 9.30pm

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