Australian comedy in 2014 did pretty much what it was expected to do: not all that much. The days of any local comedy connecting with a mass audience seem to have ended with the mass audience realising Chris Lilley only ever had one idea, while the ABC’s other crowd-pleasing mainstays either tossed off a half-arsed... Read More »
In Helen Razer’s recent examination of the history of the laugh track for The Saturday Paper – – which is something of a must-read, if only for the part where she says: It is not so much that the laughter is immediately infectious – psychological studies indicate that a laugh track or an enhanced “live”... Read More »
How could we have gotten it so very, very wrong? JOSH THOMAS’ PLEASE LIKE ME SERIES ONE NOMINATED FOR INTERNATIONAL EMMY ABC is thrilled to announce Please Like Me (Series One) has been nominated for an International Emmy for Best Comedy Series – the only Australian show nominated at this year’s awards in any category.... Read More »
How to explain this? Currently halfway through its ten-episode second season, Please Like Me steadily gaining the attention of local audiences. Perhaps it was ‘Josh Thomas baggage’ – as cultural critic Dion Kagan dubs it in his wonderful Metro Magazine article – that kept local audiences away. “Josh Thomas Baggage”. There’s the name of our... Read More »
Submitted without comment from TVTonight: It’s no laughing matter when a network picks the wrong timeslot for your show, and it’s a fate that appears to have befallen Please Like Me for Josh Thomas. Last year it launched to 176,000 viewers on Thursday nights on ABC2 and was the channel’s highest-rating scripted show. This year... Read More »
You may not have noticed what with the all-out media blitz for Josh Thomas’ Please Like Me, but the ABC launched a few other comedy programs in the last few weeks. Press release time! Reality TV is TV right now. Everything else is just making up the numbers. And yet, for all its cultural force,... Read More »
Okay, so despite Please Like Me tanking in the ratings- yes, despite wall-to-wall media attention in this country it rates less than, oh, every other show you’ve ever heard of – local critics continue to go nuts over it. Here’s a quick cross-section that’s been brought to our attention: There’s this: American and Australian critics... Read More »
We’ve been pretty hard on Fairfax’s television reviewers these last few years, what with their blatant nepotism and incessant championing of complete shit. But of late we’ve been wondering: have we gotten them all wrong? Back when Marieke Hardy’s Laid was more than just a punchline to a joke about wasting taxpayer funds, Fairfax’s writers... Read More »
“I’m not the problem today mum, you’re the problem” Well, no Josh, you’re always the problem in Please Like Me. But for a brief shining moment early on in episode two of series two, it looked like maybe that problem had been solved. Josh was the put-upon son, his crazy mum was crazy, and as... Read More »
Normally we see television shows the same way you do: by illegally downloading them from torrents a few weeks after they first aired because we totally forgot they were on. Sometimes, when it’s a particularly dodgy local effort we know no-one else is going to record, we’ll watch them as they happen. But today’s post... Read More »