Australian Tumbleweeds

Just a quick reminder that there’s only a week or so to go until nominations close for this year’s Aussie Tumblies.  So what, you might be thinking. After all, there’s only so much crap comedy to go around – surely the shows you know and loathe will turn up somewhere on the ballot for you to vent your spleen. And maybe you’re right. But consider this: Triple J’s Robbie, Marieke and The Doctor breakfast show is winding up at the end of this year. Which means this is your last chance to give it a good solid kicking.  But what if it doesn’t make it onto the ballot – because, as always, the radio category isn’t exactly short of deserving winners – and you’re left seething with bile and no-one to splash it over? What if the radio ballot is full of people – Kyle Sandilands, Hamish & Andy, Dave Hughes – who are going to be there until the friggin’ end of time itself, but because you couldn’t be arsed nominating Marieke Hardy and her Innocent Bystanders your last chance to hate on her radio career goes begging?

Okay, perhaps that’s wishful thinking. And it’s just one example out of many. But the point remains: unless you let us know who you want nominated for a Tumblie, your most loathed Aussie comedy figures might just get away scot free. Especially with the usual Xmas media shuffle pushing at least a few despised figures off into the abyss already…

The Tumblie awards are ticking along nicely at the moment (which big name star from the world of community television has already been in touch to complain? We’ll never tell. No seriously, we won’t – it kinda defeats the purpose if we start name dropping. So insiders and fellow diners, your secrets are safe with us), but we figured we should take time out from putting the nominations together to salute the departure from our television screens of one of the funniest men currently working in Australian television: Ryan Shelton.

Yeah, okay, so he only had a tiny and occasional segment on Rove. What else were you watching that show for (well, maybe Judith Lucy)? Not PeteSpace, unless you don’t own a radio and so need to get your breakfast-radio quips from elsewhere.  And even then Helliar’s track record on actual radio might have been a clue that you weren’t getting A-grade material there. As for Hughsie Loses It… well, they’re not making enough shoes to throw at the television for that segment, long may it rot.

Rove‘s been getting a bit of praise at the moment (even here a few weeks back) for being a great showcase for Australian comedy. Which is true. Unfortunately, the up-down ratings hinted that neither the viewers at home nor the programmers at Ten (that wildly swinging timeslot sure didn’t help any) wanted to see a great showcase for Australian comedy that featured regular segements from Peter Helliar, the inane Kevin Rudd PM and a bunch of news desk gags that must have been there solely to make Ten’s regular news look good.

Beyond the regular stinkers, most of the Australian comedy Rove was showcasing was bog-standard stand-up material (even if the performer was sitting down at the time). Again, if you’re Judith Lucy this is a good thing, and thumbs up to Rove for giving her a regular slot. But otherwise… well, if you want dull chat and laboured gags you can get that five times a week with The 7pm Project. A view clearly at least someone at Ten also shared if one rumour is true.

[sidebar: for those hoping that Rove's demise opens the door for Shaun Micallef to return with a tonight show, the odds don't look good. Rove was kept on air to some extent to provide a one-stop shop for publicists to place their touring musicians and movie stars. Now that Ten has The 7pm Project - a show they seem to be insanely committed to, what with it going to an hour over summer - they have just such a venue in a much more important timeslot. That's not to say Micallef won't get a tonight show - you'd have to think Ten would give him anything he wanted at the moment - but they don't have to give him one. And television networks rarely do anything they don't have to.]

So pretty much the only thing on Rove you couldn’t get from bad commercial radio was Shelton’s segment. That’s because Shelton realised he was actually on television and played around with the medium a little instead of just reeling off news gags. The quality and frequency of his segments might have dipped a little in 2009, no doubt due to his radio gig (Shelton’s partner Jess Harris stepped into the breach on Rove, with some solid Shelton-esque segments of her own), but his monthly appearances on Rove remained both the highlight of whichever episode he was on and great comedy in general. Something that can’t be said for ABC2′s various well-meaning but barely competent efforts in this area (Beached Az? The Urban Monkey? Please).

And that’s why Rove - the show, not the man ’cause he’ll be back sooner than we’d like - will be missed.  Because whatever replaces it on Australian television – two words: DARYL FUCKING SOMERS – will almost certainly not give airtime to an (initially) unknown so her or she can mess around with a camera crew for four minutes every week or two. And that’s the kind of thing a real “showcase for Australian comedy” has to do if we’re ever going to get anything more than yet another joke about Britney Spears.

WORST NEWCOMER

WORST NEW COMEDY

WORST ACTOR

WORST ACTRESS

WORST ENTERTAINMENT PERSONALITY

WORST ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMME

WORST SITCOM

WORST STAND-UP

WORST GAME OR PANEL SHOW

WORST FILM

WORST SKETCH SHOW

WORST OVERALL COMEDY

WORST OVERALL CHANNEL / NETWORK FOR COMEDY

WORST RADIO COMEDY

WORST RADIO PERSONALITY

WORST PODCAST OR CD

WORST BOOK OR ITEM OF SPIN-OFF MERCHANDISE

WORST DVD

MOST USELESS PANEL / TALKSHOW GUEST

THE ROBERT FIDGEON MEMORIAL AWARD FOR WORST CRITIC

MOST OVER-RATED COMEDY

MOST UNNECESSARILY OVER-EXPOSED COMEDIAN(S)

LEAST HOPED-FOR RETURN

MOST DISAPPOINTING COMEDY

MOST DISAPPOINTING COMEDIAN

THE ‘PISSING ON THEIR LEGACY’ AWARD

MOST IRRITATING OR POINTLESS CAMEO

MOST HYSTERICAL TABLOID HATE CAMPAIGN

THE ‘MMM RE-ALLOCATING RESOURCES’ MEMORIAL AWARD FOR BIGGEST MANAGERIAL COCK-UP

MOST BLATANT PLAGIARISM

THE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR CRAP COMEDY

BEST NEW COMEDY

BEST COMEDY

Not sure you can remember all the awful comedy (and the occasional decent one) released in 2009?  Don’t worry, we’ve done the remembering for you (though if you think of anything we missed, please let us know):

Television:

*Laurence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure

*The Chaser’s War on Everything series 3

*Thank God You’re Here series 4

*Beached Az

*The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote

*The Librarians series 2

*Dave in the Life

*Spicks & Specks

*AD/bc

*The Squiz

*Good News Week

*TV Burp

*Double Take

*Hamish & Andy Specials

*Rove

*The 7pm Project

*John Safran’s Race Relations

*The Gruen Transfer

*:30 Seconds

*The Jesters

*Whatever Happened To That Guy?

*The Merrick & Rosso Show series 2

*Hey Hey it’s Saturday Reunion Specials

*Takin’ ‘bout Your Generation

*Raw comedy final

*Ten’s Comedy Festival gala

*jTV

*The Pam Ann Show

*Chandon Pictures series 2

*Thank God You’re Here series 4

*Clarke & Dawe

Radio:

*The Hot Breakfast (Eddie McGuire, Tony Moclair, etc) (MMM)

*Pete and Myf (MMM)

*Hamish & Andy (Fox/Austereo)

*Ryan, Monty & Whippa (Nova)

*Hughsie & Kate (Nova)

*Tom Gleeson & Bridget Dulcos (Mix 101.1)

*Kyle & Jackie O (2Day FM)

*Sam Simmons (JJJ)

*Scott “dools” Dooley (JJJ drive)

*Robbie, Marieke & The Doctor (JJJ breakfast)

*The Matt & Jo Show (Fox)

*The Life with Roy & HG (MMM)

*Lime Champions (RRR)

*Two Tones (RRR/ABC Melbourne)

*Thank God It’s Friday (ABC Sydney)

*Dylan & Cal (Nova)

*Dicko, Dave & Chrissie (Vega Melbourne)

*Rabbit, Amber & Cosi (SA-FM)

Movies:

*Stone Bros.

*Charlie & Boots

*Guru Wayne

*Going Down Under (AKA Meat Pie)

Books:

*A Nest Of Occasionals by Tony Martin

*Friendly Fire by Wil Anderson

*Handling Edna by Barry Humphries

*Warwick Todd: Up in the Block Hole by Tom Gleisner

*Free to a Good Home by Catherine Deveny (not out until 01/12/09)

*Marieke Hardy’s m-book.

*Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour edited by Fran De Groen and Peter Fitzpatrick

*Don’t You Know Who I Used To Be by Julia Morris

*Kochie’s Bumper Joke Book

*The Night My Bum Dropped by Gretel Kileen

*The Chaser 2009 Annual: The Email Eunuch

CDs:

*My Generation (Shaun Micallef)

*Justin Hazelwood’s latest one

*Matt Tilley’s Gotcha Calls: The Final Call

*Rabbit’s Fluffy Tales – The Gotcha Calls

DVDs

(covering stand-up, releases of pre-2009 material, and – in The Chaser’s case – DVDs with a massive surplus of deleted material)

*Chopper – Make Deadshits History (Heath Franklin)

*Wilosophy (Wil Anderson)

*Dave Hughes Is Handy

*Tim Minchin: Ready For This?

*The Chaser’s War on Everything – Series 3

*Clarke & Dawe – The Full Catastrophe

*Graham Kennedy’s Coast to Coast

*The Games – series 2

All angried up and want to nominate your least liked shows and personalities? Glad to hear it – we’ll be taking your nominations for the next week or two (we’ll let you know when the end is near), and then we’ll announce the final nominations for you to vote on.

Things have slowed down a little around here of late, as we work behind the scenes to push the lumbering cart that is The Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2009 into position. Sadly, that means no in-depth analysis on why roughly a tenth of Hungry Beast‘s running time is taken up with fancy promos for a show we already seem to be watching. But, you know, that three disc collection of Clarke & Dawe’s interviews on The 7.30 Report is out from tomorrow (in ABC shops only, at least for a while), and Shaun Micallef’s comedy CD My Generation hits the stores next week, so you can assume we’d be saying good things about both of those projects if we had the time.

And if you’re more a fan of the snark, series three of The Chaser’s War on Everything is out on DVD around now as well, and is also worth a look – mostly because it has a massive amount of deleted scenes (but not the “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch – supposedly the ABC won’t let them show it ever again, and interested viewers are directed to YouTube by The Chaser) due to two episodes being dumped to punish them for annoying Herald-Sun readers and talkback radio listeners who think everything they see on TV actually happened. Presumably the other eight episodes went to air to punish the dwindling number of viewers with fond memories of how fast-paced and funny CNNNN was.

There hasn’t been time for a serious wade through the extras just yet – putting the Tumblies together, remember? – but on a quick glance there’s never been a better time to deploy the phrase “running out of puff”. And if you’re a fan of comedy commentaries that sound like they were put together by a team of young businessmen, this is the must-purchase DVD of, well, however long it is until Wil Anderson’s Wilosophy comes out.