The Librarians: articles


Robyn Butler

Robyn Butler in the stacks: success is overdue.

Having a lend

Libraries, with their array of community services and occasional lending of books as well, provide a rich source for Robyn Butler's new ABC comedy, writes Michelle Griffin.

There's something intrinsically comic about a library. It's a place of order and quiet, but anyone can come in, and they frequently do. The line between control and chaos is crossed every day. So the new ABC comedy series The Librarians is the subject of considerable speculation within the book-lending profession.

The librarian who gave the series' writer, producer and star Robyn Butler a tour of the State Library expressed the fears of many when she took the comedian aside and asked: "You're not going to be mean to librarians, are you? You're not going to wear cardigans and say shush?"

150* Psychology

No, it's worse than that. Butler's character, Frances O'Brien, head librarian, may not glare at chatterboxes, but she is a recognisable monster: the public service manager with a black belt in passive aggression. "I don't make the rules," she says, as she selectively enforces them.

"She's a nice little nod to middle Australia," says Butler, "with her intolerance and her being unhappy so she has a sense of fear and insecurity about other people."

391 Fashion

"We were walking past a particular shop in Chadstone, and I said 'Oh my God, it's Frances!' The shop was a little bit Sussan with a kick to Community Aid Abroad...a bit of beading, a bit of embroidery. Our costume designer couldn't get enough of the place."

020 Library and information sciences

Her domain, Middleton Library, is struggling with its new role as an "interactive learning centre", offering English classes for Muslim migrants, life drawing sessions for the arty, story time for the pram set, back-to-work programs for the newly paroled, and occasionally lending books to the general public. It's staffed by a recognisable melange of government employee types - dreamers, doers, meddlers, drinkers - and not a cardigan among them.

305.8 Racism

There is a hijab, worn by the smilingly competent Australian Lebanese librarian Nada al Farhouk, played by Nicole Nabout. For the staunchly Catholic Frances, Nada and her Muslim friends are a threat to be controlled. In one scene, Frances locks a group of migrants learning English in their room, out of sight, so she can impress a government official. Elsewhere, she insists a Muslim boy leave his backpack at the counter. "I think we all know why, don't we," she says smoothly.

"It's satire, it's our job to hold up the mirror. I was delighted for the sake of our show to see Pauline Hanson pop up her head again and say 'I'm sick of these Muslims!' If it's happening out there so virulently then we must do it in comedy."

363.47 Pornography

"The library is the last free space," says Butler. "You can get stuff for free, and the internet for free, and be warm. You can even get porn. I actually thought that was a bit far-fetched when we were writing - as if you could get porn at the library! But you can because there's no censorship. And there's a three warnings system. I didn't know that when I wrote it into the series."

791.4 Television

Perhaps best known as Mick Molloy's sidekick on Triple M radio show Tough Love, 41-year-old Butler has been working in TV comedy since 1993, when she was plucked out of Sydney's Theatresports scene to work on the ill-fated Seven skit show The Comedy Sale. One of the few women to make a good living writing jokes for others (Micallef Tonight, Skithouse) as well as performing, she's grimly humorous about the many short-lived shows she's worked on, from Eric Bana's skit show Eric to sitcom Welcher and Welcher (she played the wife), to the Murray Whelan teledramas (she played the ex-wife).

"I think it's me," she says. "I am the common link between all these short-lived things." That's why the production company she founded with her husband Wayne Hope, who co-wrote and directed The Librarians, is called Gristmill. "We'd always say grist to the mill, grist to the mill. Get these feelings, harness these feelings."

808.936 Picture books

Our interview takes place at Butler's local, the St Kilda library, an impossibly hip building designed by postmodern architects Ashton Raggatt McDougall to resemble the pages of an open book. Our chat is drowned out at regular intervals by lusty singalongs of Old McDonald and Incy Wincy Spider from the children's area.

Butler has been coming here since her oldest daughter Molly, now 12, was a baby, (her other daughter Emily is five) and she borrowed some of the scenes from her new series straight from life.

597 Fish

Butler talks about the time she was sitting at the library's newspaper table with her husband. "This woman came in and sat down beside us and spread out the newspapers, as you do. And then she took a fish out of her bag and wrapped it up. We nearly expired we were laughing so much."

  • * Dewey decimal system

By Michelle Griffin
October 21, 2007
The Age