He made his name playing outrageous, politically incorrect and often offensive characters in blockbuster projects, but Chris Lilley has taken things more lo-fi and back to basics with his latest work.

With no TV or streaming projects appearing to be in the pipeline, the reclusive comedian has spent the past few months searching the country for animals – and documenting his travels on YouTube.

Lilley has posted several videos featuring everything from swimming with stingrays to petting wild echidnas, often with quiet voiceovers featuring a toned-down version of his signature brand of humour.

“Bottlebrush, the old cave man’s toilet paper,” he says in one video.

“[This echidna’s] got nothing to fear. I’m not gonna put him on a spit and use his thorns as a toothpick.

“The wombat pervert’s trying to get a touch of the bottom.”

The videos are quiet, almost meditative, and a far cry from Lilley’s usual productions – which may be intentional.

Is he trying to become his own version of a comedic David Attenborough? Is he done with slick, worldwide program releases?

So far, there are 10 nature or animal-focused videos on Lilley’s YouTube channel, the most recent posted on Monday and the earliest six months ago.

They see the comedian in locations including Kosciuszko National Park, the Ningaloo Coast in Western Australia and Tasmania.

The production values are much more toned-down and basic compared to his usual output, seemingly all filmed by Lilley.

Once a bonafide Australian TV star, even winning the Logie for Most Popular Actor twice, the characters that paved his road to fame have proven to be his downfall over recent years.

As awareness and conversations grow around racism in film and TV, so has backlash against Lilley’s portrayal of a wide range of characters, most notably Tongan schoolboy Jonah Takalua, African-American rapper named S.mouse, and Japanese mother Jen Okazaki.

Viewers have mostly taken issue with Lilley’s emphasis on racist stereotypes, as well as his use of brownface and blackface, with the overall effect appearing to be laughing at other ethnicities and cultures rather than with them.

In 2020, Netflix quietly purged its library of any content featuring blackface, including four of Lilley’s mockumentaries: Summer Heights High, Angry Boys, We Can Be Heroes, and Jonah from Tonga.

Ja’mie Private School Girl and Netflix original Lunatics were left on the platform, although Ja’mie Private School Girl is no longer available on Netflix.

But Lilley appears to hold no hard feelings, telling Unilad in 2023 that Netflix was “great to work with”, and the public drama was “more of a fake take”.

“I feel like whatever was talked about was more of a media take on the situation rather than reality,” he said.

“All of my shows have been and always are available. They never disappeared – skim through some headlines, you might think otherwise.

“But they’re still popular, and Netflix and I still have a great relationship. They really back Lunatics and it still does really well on that network.”

Lilley said would not change a thing about his previous work despite recent backlash, and that he almost wished he could “push the boundaries further”.

Although Netflix has not reinstated Lilley’s content on its platform, Foxtel-owned streaming platform Binge started streaming the shows in 2023.

“Binge aims to provide entertainment for all tastes, and as an on-demand streaming service, viewers have the choice to watch the content they want,” a spokesperson told the Sydney Morning Herald at the time.

It is unclear if Lilley’s recent YouTube nature exploits are a career move or simply a hobby. His management agency did not respond to a request for comment.

Apart from his podcast, in which he performs as one of his most popular characters, Ja’mie King, Lilley has hinted he is not done with producing series yet.

“I’m writing all the time,” he told Unilad.

“As long as I can remember, I’ve written scripts and had ideas. And things just kind of bubbled to the surface and found their way eventually.

“I really would love to and am looking forward to doing new characters or bringing old ones back – there’s definitely lots of scripts and ideas floating around.”