American television critics savage Chris Lilley's Jamie: Private School Girl as "almost unbearable" Chris Lilley's comedy series Ja'mie: Private School Girl has been mauled by US TV critics. US television critics have savaged Chris Lilley's latest series Ja'mie: Private School Girl, calling it "almost unbearable" and labelling the character "one note" and repetitive. The series premiered on cable TV network HBO on Sunday night. USA Today's Robert Bianco wrote "even boredom is preferable to the pain inflicted by Ja'mie: Private School Girl" and suggested the series was "a sterling example of what can happen when a writer becomes too enamoured of his own creation." TV Guide's Matt Roush called the humour "painfully obvious shtick, so camp and arch it's impossible to enjoy the joke" while The Hollywood Reporter's Tim Goodman said the concept was flawed from the beginning. "Centering one of Lilley's most annoying characters in a series to ramble on incessantly robs the character of its past effectiveness and makes her - and the series - almost unbearable to watch," he wrote. One of the most damning reviews came from The AV Club's Phil Dyess-Nugent who labelled the 39 year old Melbourne actor's portrayal of a teenage girl "sloppy, transphobic drag" and suggested the plot "might sustain a 10 minute sketch on Saturday Night Live." There is an overwhelming sense of disappointment, with reviewers saying they expected more from the gifted comedian. Ja'mie King talks about her goal of achieving an ATAR of 99 to get into a PR course at university. Lilley did have some supporters however, with Slate's J. Bryan Lowder writing the series "features the best parts of Summer Heights High, distilled" and The Washington Post's Hank Stuever calling the series "an enjoyably sick wallow in the evil that lurks in adolescence, as well as a formidable exercise in extreme portraiture." The unfavourable US reception for Ja'mie: Private School Girl comes ahead of the expected announcement at Tuesday's night ABC 2014 programming launch of a new Chris Lilley comedy series focused on his troubled Tongan schoolboy character Jonah Takalua from Summer Heights High. Here in Australia Ja'mie: Private School Girl has struggled in the ratings, shedding a third of its viewers across its run, with just 644,000 tuning in last week, well down on the 925,000 viewers that watched the series' debut. The final episode screens on Wednesday night.