C*A*U*G*H*T, review: tiring hostage comedy tries to hit too many targets

Shall we start with the title? C*A*U*G*H*T (ITVX) begs for attention through the medium of capitals and asterisks. Imagine if everyone made their show look like a finicky password. S/T\R/I!C\T/L\Y. ?QUESTION? ?TIME?. B@K£ ŒUF. It would get irritating in a heartbeat. C*A*U*G*H*T doesn't require typography to achieve that outcome.
Originally scheduled to air in October 2023, but postponed in the wake of the October 7 attack, this is that trickiest of balancing acts: a no-holds-barred comedy about soldiers being taken hostage by the terrorist rebels of a small unrecognised nation. There are d--k pics and SMGs, cold-blooded slaughter and a man sucking out a bullet amusingly lodged in his wounded pal's anus. On the drawing board, the script no doubt throbbed and swaggered with hilarity.
Most of the action is set on a tropical island of Behati-Prinsloo where four Aussie soldiers have been dropped on a black ops mission to wipe the phone of the island's princess. They are soon captured by indeterminately Asian freedom fighters and pleading for their lives. 'Killing Australian could be a public relations disaster for us,' reasons a rebel. 'Everybody loves Australians. Nobody knows why.'
A geopolitical incident is soon the talk of the international airwaves. The joke is that the soldiers, seemingly in danger, really collaborate with their captors by making a fake hostage video. Then the US gets involved, rendering this a most strange Australian-American hybrid.
Almost every male Aussie here – soldier, politician, broadcaster – is some form of idiot. The female characters are all feistier and, of necessity in this patriarchy of plonkers, cannier. The US is mainly represented by Sean Penn playing Sean Penn as a narcissistic bully who gets caught up in the hostages' story. It's an arms race of self-parody. In all this random oddness, there's even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo for Susan Sarandon.
Penn does deliver one extremely funny punchline about Madonna, to whom, once upon a time, he was married. But you have to slog through to the end of the fifth episode for this reward. And it jostles for attention in a dense thicket of chuck-in-anything, broad-brushstroke satire on masculinity, ethnicity, diplomacy, celebrity, news media, action movies, plus a whole anthology of Aussie in-jokes about a murderous dingo and a murdered koala, 'The Shark', 'The Thorpedo' and the defensible merits of early Mel Gibson.
As for the plot, it hops along in six half-hour increments. Interest in the four hostages, as they once again barter to save their skins, wanes long before their fate is revealed. As the scriptwriters might put it, it's all ****.

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