By Travis Johnson
Steven “Bajo” O’Donnell is a familiar name and handle to Australian geeks and gamers, thanks to his co-hosting of Good Game for nine years (he still appears on the spin-off Good Game: Spawn Point). Now he’s reaching out to a younger breed of geek with the children’s sci-fi series, Trip for Biscuits. The series sees O’Donnell in his usual “Bajo” onscreen persona, searching for his parents in a hidden world of aliens and super-science, aided (and frequently hindered) by a team of enthusiastic adventurers (Reef Ireland, Kate Mylius, Charlotte Nicdao, and Mansoor Noor). It’s packed full of geeky references, slapstick pratfalls, and off-the-wall plot twists – just the thing for nascent nerds (and, indeed, their older counterparts).
The show’s genesis came out of a backstage conversation when O’Donnell was working on ABC3’s Smackdown, and went through several iterations before finding its current form. “I randomly said, ‘I’d really like to make a show about space in a documentary style’ because I really like space,” O’Donnell recalls. “That just sort of evolved into a sketch show as we were working on it together, with people playing multiple characters, and then we thought that we should do something that none of us had tried before, which was narrative comedy.”
From there, working with director and writer Dave Cartel, the production went through the usual process of development, pitching, and refinement, until finally, a teaser, a pilot, and a number of tweaks later, Screen Australia and the ABC came to the party, and a debut season of 18 ten-minute episodes was commissioned. “It was a long, long road that took many different turns, but it happened. Even as we were shooting it I couldn’t believe we were actually doing it – it was the best time of my life.”
As for the show itself? “I would say it’s kind of like Archer meets Buffy meets Doctor Who meets Red Dwarf, for kids. That’s how I pitch it! But if you don’t know those shows, I’d say it’s kind of like a disaster comedy where a whole bunch of people who have a unique set of skills work to solve cases involving aliens and the more they work together, the worse they do. They just kind of pull at each other and have their own agendas and ideas, and it often ends in disaster – and hopefully it’s a lot of fun along the way.”
It’s also very science, tech, and geek-positive, which comes naturally to O’Donnell. “I’m pretty much playing an extrapolated version of myself. I’m quite a geek and I really love self-effacing humour; I really like the episodes where everyone just kind of piles on me and is teasing me and making fun of me for the nerdy stuff I like. But I think there’s a charm to people having their nerdy interests, and there’s a charm to celebrating when someone is really passionate about something.
“We really wanted to keep all the science fiction elements in,” he continues. “We really wanted to have lasers and just crazy stuff going on like that to keep it really interesting, visually. I remember originally we had a whole bunch of episodes on other planets and that sort of thing, but we don’t really have the budget for that. Everyone connected to the project was just really excited to be doing this kind of genre with the tech, the geek, and the sci-fi stuff all thrown in.”
That enthusiasm is common to both versions of Bajo – the one we see in the series and the one we’re talking to right now. Indeed, the difference between the onscreen Bajo and the Earth Prime Bajo is one of degrees. Even though Cartel ended up writing what O’Donnell calls “…by far the lion’s share of everything,” the show has “…the essence of Bajo sprinkled over it. We have a similar sense of humour, I quite like slapstick comedy and I like very fast-spaced dialogue, just in my own life and world, and I think that translates into the show a bit.”
In fact, you might even say that Trip for Biscuits is somewhat autobiographical. “All those elements from my past, from bad dates to owning a bidet to really enjoying talking about science without other people getting onboard and actually trying to get away from the conversation – it all comes from truth! It is kind of an extrapolation of the character we had on The Smackdown. It’s a character that I’ve been building for the last decade, and then I just turned into him – I guess that’s the best way to explain it!”
Trip for Biscuits is available to buy on iTunes and Google Play.
