We’re currently living through an Australian topical comedy glut. There’s not just one topical comedy on TV, there are two: Tonightly with Tom Ballard and the newly-returned Mad As Hell. That’s two different shows giving their two different takes on Australia/Invasion Day, dual citizens in parliament, Malcolm Turnbull, and various other current affairs – actual consumer choice!... Read More »
Look, we really appreciate Ten doing their level best to bring light entertainment (without sport) back to the commercial networks. And who can blame them: with Have You Been Paying Attention? now a ratings hit and a cross-promotional gold mine, no wonder they’re going back to the well over and over again. Personally we would... Read More »
We’ve waited a while before passing judgement on Tonightly, ABC Comedy’s new tonight show, because unlike pretty much every Australian comedy of the last decade or so its a show that’s able to do its growing up in public. A four-episodes-a-week talk show doesn’t have to be perfect fresh out of the gate – which... Read More »
Rosehaven‘s an unusual one in today’s TV landscape. If you imagine a scale with drama at one end, comedy at the other, and dramedy in the middle, Rosehaven‘s somewhere between dramedy and comedy; never quite funny enough to satisfy the likes of us, but not quite mirthless enough to be the sort of thing that people... Read More »
Recently, there was an exciting announcement. The ABC said it was creating a new channel dedicated entirely to comedy, called ABC Comedy, on which they’d be airing a brand-new comedy tonight show, Tonightly with Tom Ballard. And, they’d be releasing heaps of new short-form comedy shows from new talent on iView under the Fresh Blood... Read More »
So, Aaron Chen Tonight ended last week. Tucked away on late night ABC2, it was a show that was easily missed, which is a shame as it’s been one of the most interesting new comedies for years. Filmed in a real-life comedy room in Sydney, this started out as a shonky local take on US-style tonight shows... Read More »
Aside from how to hate life in all its forms, what did we learn from the latest season of Gruen? Because if you ask around, that’s generally seen as Gruen‘s big appeal: it’s a show that educates people about how the media, and advertising in particular, works. As education is obviously a good thing, Gruen... Read More »
That’ll teach us to be optimistic. When we watched the first episode of The Letdown we saw some potential in the series. Now, four episodes in, we’re just waiting for it to end. If we were the mother of a small child and we were thinking about The Letdown, our face would look like this. But more on... Read More »
“Welcome to Cram!, the only quiz show in the entire world where the players get the answers before they’re asked the question” – well, apart from every other quiz show ever made, because if quiz shows only asked people questions they didn’t already have the answers to then the contestants would never get any answers... Read More »
For a man so consistently hilarious, it’s a little surprising that Shaun Micallef has never quite cracked the secret of sitcom success. Welcher & Welcher has its defenders – ironically, they don’t include Micallef himself – but it’s generally seen as more miss than hit, while the first season of The Ex-PM never really scaled... Read More »