The school of mock

Creating characters is just what comic actors do, and no one who has seen the television work of Tracey Ullman or Matt Lucas and David Walliams -- or, for that matter, Red Skelton or Jackie Gleason -- should be too amazed to find Australian writer-actor Chris Lilley(comedian) playing the three lead roles in his new mockumentary series, "Summer Heights High," premiering Sunday on HBO.

Lilley was last seen (and first seen) here, on the Sundance Channel, with last year's "The Nominees," in which he played five finalists for the (real-life) Australian of the Year Award, two of them female, one Chinese. When I first saw "The Nominees," it took me a while to realize it was him in all those parts. Once you see it, there's a distinct pleasure in watching him sink into such distinctly different characters -- the bravura performance is part of the package -- but there is a greater pleasure in the way he integrates them into their respective, realistically drawn crowds, making a plausible story out of what might otherwise look like a stunt.

The premise here is that cameras have followed three individuals through the course of a school term: the drama teacher Mr. G; Ja'mie a rich, private-school girl -- she first appeared in "Nominees" -- who is spending an exchange term in public school; and Jonah, a 13-year-old Tongan disciplinary problem.

Both Mr. G and Ja'mie are grotesque, self-involved, self-dramatizing, self-aggrandizing characters who see themselves as basically, even immoderately, good. "I come from one of the most expensive private girls' schools in the state," Ja'mie tells a school assembly by way of introducing herself, "but I'm actually really cool. Please don't be intimidated by me. People always quote, 'Private schools create better citizens.' But I would say they create better quality citizens."

Mr. G (whom Lilley first developed on the series "Big Bite") uses his drama classes as a stage for himself. He dreams of building a towering campus performing-arts complex, bearing his name, and when a student dies of a drug overdose, he hijacks the tragedy as a subject for his next school project. "She's been sent by an angel to give me an idea for a musical," he says holding up the dead girl's picture with a smile. "So I'm just over the moon."