With The Weekly and The Cheap Seats now on the air, is Australia big enough to have two news summary shows? Fortunately for viewers, the two are aimed at two very different audiences. On the one hand, The Weekly has Charlie Pickering behind a desk shouting lines like “For a second there I thought I... Read More »
Two returning shows in the same week? We’re having an attack of the vapors over here. Over in the “if it ain’t broke” corner, The Cheap Seats managed to do pretty much what it was doing for most of last year’s run: decent news-adjacent comedy based on silly visual gags and banter. Yes, the banter... Read More »
One week into the official election campaign and… yeah. Remember when political satire was a central part of Australian culture? You do? Have fun down at Services Australia trying to claim the old age pension. Slightly less snarkily, these days any election campaign really drives home the shrinking opportunities for political comedy on Australian television.... Read More »
2021 was a year when Australians desperately needed a good laugh. Fortunately, we had Australian comedy to laugh at.... Read More »
Yesterday saw the ABC’s upfronts for 2022, their big opportunity to wow us with all the exciting new series and much-loved old favourites we can look forward to in the coming year. There were at least five deliberate mistakes in that previous sentence – can you guess them all? The big caveat here is that... Read More »
This year all the blame fell on Charlie Pickering’s shoulders. Who else was left? Even the regular guests only turned up for a handful of episodes across the season; otherwise it was, as the title had always said from the start, the Charlie Pickering show. And what a show it was. Wait, we mean what,... Read More »
The Weekly‘s been at least half a dozen shows over the years, each less successful than the last. So it shouldn’t really be a surprise the spinning contest wheel finally stopped on “year-in-review-but-it’s-a-week”. Not because it’s a good idea: a year-in-review works because 75% of the show is powered by “oh yeah, I remember that”,... Read More »
One of the good things about watching The Weekly is… ahh, nearly had you there, didn’t we? That’s right: there are no good things about watching The Weekly, just a slowly building puzzlement as your brain – a thing that exists in 2021 – struggles to figure out exactly why you are watching a news... Read More »
The Weekly… started 2021 as The Weekly… intends to go on: being basically the same as it’s always... Read More »
You wouldn’t want to say Australian comedy is dead, but the iron lung it’s getting around in is starting to look a little worse for wear. Oh sure, individual comedy series are still being made; people are even having careers in comedy, so long as you put quote marks around “careers” and “comedy”. But the... Read More »