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 »
So, episode 1 of the much-hyped Angry Boys has finally made it to air. For a show so keen to get laughs through realism it's sure done a great job of proving that the exact opposite technique might have been the way to go. The more absurd moments in the show are the closest it gets to funny, and with so few of them on offer Angry Boys is just scene after boring, unfunny... Read More »
When it comes to being first with the news, it’s hard to top News Limited. Especially when they’re reporting on controversies that haven’t even happened yet: CHRIS Lilley is set to spark controversy in his new comedy show Angry Boys, with characters defecating on cars and racist slurs rife. But the star makes no apologies... Read More »
When we haven’t been having a chuckle at Hey Hey it’s Saturday being nominated for a “Most Popular Light Entertainment Program” Logie (what, they’re handing out Logies just for turning up now?), we’ve been having a semi-serious discussion here at Tumbleweed Central: why doesn’t Australian television make more comedy for teenagers? Put another way, when... Read More »
Laid would probably work if it was a movie. You wouldn’t pay to go see it, of course, but when it works it works in roughly the same way as a reasonably competent Australian independent film does – think The Rage in Placid Lake or The Illustrated Family Doctor (not that anyone paid to see... Read More »
One of the more impressive contortion acts on offer at the moment is watching various Australian television columnists and reviewers trying to talk up Laid without using the word “funny”. That’s because, despite its good points – and it does have some – actually being funny is not one of them. By a long, long... 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 »
Look what turned up in our inbox at the end of business Friday – okay, you probably already know all this, but it’s always fun to see the original press release so you can see just how little work in involved in journalism... Read More »
On JJJ a few weeks back, while talking up his upcoming ABC television series, John Safran described it as being full of pranks and making fun of people – basically, “everything people don’t want in comedy anymore”. And he has a... Read More »