Josh Thomas' comedy drama Please Like Me may have struggled with Australian audiences, but overseas it is an entirely different story.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Up against three other nominees from Brazil, Belgium and South Africa Please Like Me has received a nod in the comedy category for an International Emmy.
For a show that failed to beat Dr Phil on the ratings scale for its season two premiere, the nomination is a huge nod, and a reminder that Australian audiences are not everything.
"It's good, isn't it? I mean that's the best award were eligible for, so it's great," says Thomas, who found out about the nomination via a text message which simply read "Emmy!"
Of the Australian ratings figures Thomas says he is "used to it", but is sick of the constant expectation that he speculate on why the show hasn't shone.
"It's like someone asking you why someone broke up with you, you don't know ... I don't really know why it happened," he says.
In a Fairfax Media review of the show Debi Enker questioned why Australians were not watching "one of the best comedies on TV".
"As it charts the halting progress of Josh (played by Thomas) and his family and friends, it cultivates a tone that resists neat definition," Enker wrote. "It's sweet, sharp, sad, funny and astute in its observations of modern life, social mores and family interactions."
Time lauded the show earlier this year in an article titled How an American Network Saved One of TV's Best Twentysomethings in which it referred to the help American cable channel Pivot provided when it picked up the show and ordered a second season.
Thomas said the most exciting thing about the positive international response was the way foreign audiences were relating to the show.
"It's on in a few countries now; France, Sweden, Israel, and whenever I do interviews with those countries they always take the same things away from the show," he says.
"I thought my life was pretty eccentric, pretty weird. But so many people have watched the show and said, 'No, it's pretty standard', which is quite a nice thing for me to learn, that I'm, like, not a freak."
The ratings, Thomas says, are not as bad as they look. And that the consolidated figures from television, iView and illegal downloads are actually very high.
"We were the third highest watched show on iView last week and we know we are getting pirated a lot," he said.
Illegal downloads are a double-edged sword for the 27-year-old comic, where on the one-hand he does not want people to download the show, but on the other "it is pretty cool that someone in Korea is downloading and subtitling my show".
A last minute decision by the ABC to move the show, when it first launched,to its secondary digital channel ABC2 caused heated discussion, which some have accounted for the Please Like Me's slow uptake in Australia.
But Thomas says it is the ABC who have made the venture possible. "It's frustrating that ABC2 has become such a big part of the narrative. They've paid for the show and backed it."
He said if anything, the fact that co-star and friend Tom Ward is getting "flirty messages on the internet" is a clear sign the show is doing well.
As for Thomas?
"People stopped sending me flirty messages when I was 21. People don't fall in love with me in the same way they do other people on television."
The winner of the International Emmy will be announced at the awards ceremony in New York on November 24.
