The Games starred satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe along with Australian comedian Gina Riley and actor Nicholas Bell.

An unusual feature of the show was that the characters shared the same name as the actors who played them, to enhance the illusion of a documentary on the Sydney Games.

In one moment, the actor John Howard appeared on a video message intended for overseas release and read an apology to Aboriginal people for crimes committed against them by the Australian government.

[1][2] In the episode, a group of overseas countries threatened to boycott the Games unless the prime minister, also named John Howard, gave a public apology to Aboriginal people.

[3] John Clarke and Ross Stevenson won Best Screenplay in a Television Drama at the 43rd Australian Film Institute Awards for the episode Solar.

Clarke and Riley were due to reprise their roles in a spin-off series The Games: London Calling, in which the characters became consultants to the 2012 Summer Olympics.

[9] In 2011, the BBC TV mockumentary Twenty Twelve was criticised by The Games' makers as bearing a strong resemblance to the earlier Australian series,[10] with Clarke saying, "We worked very hard on that project and we had long conversations with these people who've now done a show like that in Britain".