A race row has exploded in Australia, after staff on a variety show were forced to apologize for a blackface skit parodying the Jackson Five.

American performer Harry Connick Jr. was serving as guest judge for a reunion edition of the long-running show Hey Hey It's Saturday Night and voiced his disapproval over the musical skit, performed on Wednesday.

The "Jackson Jive" performance featured five men with black makeup smeared over their faces and wearing exaggerated black Afro wigs dancing and singing along with another man, who had stark white makeup smeared over his face and was dressed in a costume reminiscent of Michael Jackson.

The men, all doctors, first performed the skit on the show about 20 years ago while they were medical students.

New Orleans performer objects

Connick Jr., an actor and celebrated musician and bandleader from New Orleans, gave the performers a score of zero and noted that if he had known of it in advance, he wouldn't have agreed to appear on the show.

"If they turned up looking like that in the United States ... it'd be like 'Hey, hey there's no more show," the singer said after the skit.

A fellow judge, however, described the group as "very cute" and praised the performance for "great choreography and terrific singing."

At the end of the live program, host Daryl Somers apologized to Connick Jr.

"I know that to your countrymen, that's an insult to have a blackface routine like that on the show, so I do apologize to you," Somers said.

"I know it was done humorously, but we've spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons, that when we see something like that we take it really to heart," the American responded.

The Nine Network, which aired the program, apologized for causing offence, as did Anand Deva, the Sydney-based plastic surgeon who led the performers. However, Deva blanched at accusations of racism.

"I am an Indian, and five of the six of us are from multicultural backgrounds and to be called a racist…I don't think I have ever been called that ever in my life before," Deva told Australian press.

Storm of debate

The skit drew criticism from the public and from Australian politicians, as well as provoking a storm of debate online.

Some Australians blasted critics as being excessively politically correct and called Connick Jr. a hypocrite, citing (and a circulating a video of) a 1996 appearance on U.S. sketch comedy show MADtv in which he parodied a southern preacher and jokingly promoted one of his albums.

However, many others expressed embarrassment over the performance and noted that in the 1996 clip, Connick Jr. is not performing in blackface and that the skit is performed alongside African American comedians and musicians.

Blackface — in which Caucasian actors darkened their faces with shoe polish or a similar substance and offered demeaning, stereotyped portrayals of African Americans — was a regular feature of U.S. variety shows dating from the 19th century.

However, since the 1950s, such depictions have increasingly been deemed highly offensive and racist.

With files from The Associated Press