We all knew this day was coming, and it seems “this day” is this Wednesday: Did you notice? No, not that ABC2 is repeating Mad as Hell – too much Micallef is never enough in our book – but that the Wednesday night ABC1 comedy night is no more. Yes, there’s a repeat of QI... Read More »
Hey, where’d everybody go? Two weeks ago we could pad these reviews out with loads of quotes from various articles denouncing Jonah as racist tripe or praising it as cutting edge comedy from Australia’s favourite satirist, and now… nothing. What gives? Oh, that’s right: Chris Lilley’s career is over. Actually, it was over a couple... Read More »
Remember when Chris Lilley would finish a series, drop the mic, and vanish in a cloud of “I’m not sure what I’ll do next, enjoy the next couple of years desperately waiting to hear back from me suckaaaaaaz”? Not no more he don’t: Ja’mie: Private School Girl hadn’t even finished before the ABC was hurriedly... Read More »
Chris Lilley’s been doing a lot of press for the US launch of Angry Boys lately, and when he hasn’t been talking about hanging out with teenagers at parties or painting Australia as a racist land that just doesn’t get him* he’s been talking up his global achievements in a manner that’s more than a... Read More »
Angry Boys probably isn’t the biggest comedy flop of 2011 – Live From Planet Earth still retains that crown – but the term “massive debacle” isn’t exactly overstating the case. Let’s be blunt: in television it’s ratings that count, and the ratings for Angry Boys have been utterly shithouse. Worse, there’s no way to spin... Read More »
It's been a grim few days for comedy in Australia. Okay, it's been a grim few years. But this last week has been especially bad for those who think that comedy is an area best left up to... Read More »
We don’t normally get much mail here at Tumbleweeds Central, but our recent post on Lawrence Leung’s new show Unbelievable drove someone to write in with a John Safran / Leung connection we’d missed*. It seems that, for once, our comparison of Unbelievable with Safran’s earlier shows had some basis in real-world events: There is... Read More »
Okay, so over at The Age this just happened: throughout Angry Boys the language is appalling, family interaction is wholly dysfunctional and there are repeated references to all manner of sexual deviations – dog-wanking and grandma-groping chief among them. If this is comedic genius, Rodney Rude and Kevin ”Bloody” Wilson deserve lifetime achievement awards. The... Read More »
Despite generally avoiding Australian literature like it was a pub trivia night hosted by Peter Costello, recently I started reading Christos Tsiolkas’s novel The... Read More »
Don’t you hate the way those Book Warehouse places always have two supposedly separate but in reality impossible to divide sections – one where all the books are $5 or less, and one (with all the interesting books) where the prices vary and aren’t really that cheap? Anyway, while lured inside one of their stores... Read More »