Bluey Goes To Washington: How 'Fisk' Used Music To Bring The Laughs

Meg Washington is one busy musician. Amongst many exciting projects, including starting a residency at Stranded Bar in Brisbane this Thursday, running every Thursday of November with Bud Rokesky this week. She has also created the score for the second series of the ABC TV comedy Fisk. 

After being approached by the show creator, Kitty Flanagan, to provide new sounds for the series, she teamed up with her good friend Joff Bush, who is the composer for the wildly successful and beloved children's series Bluey - which also features Washington voicing the character Calypso - and Daniel O'Brien. 

Jazz musicians Aaron Jansz and Samuel Pankhurst riffed off the themes the collaborators composed together. Opening as the credits theme tune is Holy Moses, from Washington's 2011 Insomnia album. 

Catching up with The Music, Meg Washington explored why working on Fisk was an immediate "yes."

"Having never scored a comedy and already being a Fisk fan, it was an easy yes to work on the project," she says. "I immediately thought of treating the music like a big scribble because that's how Helen Tudor-Fisk's character feels to me… slightly chaotic, loopy. That's what I pitched to Kitty when we first spoke about it, and she liked it, so we went from there."

She aimed to keep the musical palette as light as possible "because so much of what I like about the show is the unique tenor of the writing," she reveals before delving into the delights of working on the soundtrack. "I wanted the music to be as invisible as possible whilst still being in on the joke. I love how The Office uses music as lightly as possible so the rhythm of the comedy can shine. We initially came up with a theme and then used that as the basis for a lot of variation to frame the scenes with."

Washington immensely enjoyed working with Jansz, Pankhurst, and O'Brien, sharing, "Aaron and Sam did a lot of improvisations that we used as a library to chop, tweak, twist, and reassemble to get what we needed. Daniel and I worked together to build each cue from that language of percussion and bass, with the exception of some other songs that appear in the series. We had a lot of fun with the credits in each episode, including a song made entirely of cats." What a fun time!

On Holy Moses opening Fisk's credits, Washington finds it very cool and shares, "Finally, my kazoo moment has come."

You can watch Fisk on Wednesdays at 9 pm on ABC TV or stream it on iView.