Indie Spotlight: In ‘Fighting ISIS,’ Animated Australian Stereotypes Tackle Terrorism

We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.

Thanks in part to generous support from its local government, Australia has emerged as a web series hotbed. One of the funniest shows to emerge from Down Under in 2017 has been Fighting ISIS, in which a group of stereotypical, loud-mouthed Australians hatch a plan to take down the world’s most vile terrorist organization.

Fighting ISIS, created by Seb Peart, Mark Nicholson, and Peter Corrigan, is the story of four friends — or “mates,” as the locals would say — who are convinced by their ringleader Gav to travel to Afghanistan (where all the terrorists are from, of course) in order to find and defeat ISIS. The plan they cook up is ill-conceived and lands them in jail by the second episode, but led mostly by sheer bluster, they do everything in their power to continue their quest. The show, it should be said, contains NSFW language. This is Australia, after all; I’m not sure what other type of language you’d expect.

Watch enough of Fighting ISIS, and you’ll be able to draw parallels to a number of American animations that may have influenced it. There’s a little King of the Hill in there, and a lot of South Park, which seems to have lent its rough attitude and satirical nationalism to Peart, Nicholson, and Corrigan’s show. The bottom line is that the situations here are zany enough, and the characters wild enough, to be suitably entertaining. The episodes of Fighting ISIS that have arrived so far can be found on the StepmatesTV YouTube channel.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT

• Adam and Eve. The biblical story of the first human couple is told as a romantic comedy in this show, which is available through Amazon.
• Doin’ It. Aspiring writers fight an uphill battle in the entertainment industry, occasionally breaking into song along the way.
• Beanie Magic Johnson. A man becomes obsessed with a bobblehead depicting the famed Lakers legend.

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