Australian Tumbleweeds
The Role of a Lifetime (Just Not in Comedy)
We’ve complained about the way comedy is used as a marketing tool for a long time now. Your new drama is a bit of a dud? Your panel show is a chore? Your game show just plain sucks? Call it a comedy! People love comedy! And when they realise there’s no laughs to be found? Oh well, at least the first episode rated okay.
Seriously, if you’ve ever tried to wade through the various production documents and funding announcements that are the lifeblood of the Australian television industry – because it’s not like they’re making these shows for an audience – the phrase “comedy drama” comes up so often it’s a joke.
Which is handy, because none of these shows actually feature any jokes. They’re just duds that sound so boring the only way they can trick anyone into watching them is to claim that there’s some entertainment (that’d be the comedy) buried deep within.
What does all this ranting have to do with The Role of a Lifetime? You know, the new ABC show that promises to explore “how to parent in the rapidly changing world using scripted comedy sketches featuring a sitcom family to play out the most current and urgent parenting challenges facing Aussie mums, dads and caregivers” oh dear god no.
The good news is, going by the first episode, the “scripted comedy sketches” are kept to a bare minimum. Over a 45 minute show they’re maybe 7-8 minutes, tops. They’re also astoundingly unfunny. As in, the only identifiable “joke” is a repeated reference to that chocolate you eat when you have worms.
(is that a real thing?)
Sure, they’re not really trying to be funny. The point is to illustrate the parenting dilemmas that the rest of the episode is going to tackle in the trademark ABC factual fashion. So there’s a scene about how it sucks when you discover all your high school friends have set up a discord channel titled YOU SUCK AND WE HATE YOU, cut to some real-life expert explaining how they’re not your real friends anyway.
For what it is, it’s fine. It mostly left us wondering why the ABC doesn’t do any consumer affairs shows these days, because people used to love them and that’s an area of daily life where some expert help would actually be useful, but you know, blame Ita Buttrose for that.
What it isn’t, is any kind of comedy at all. So once again, time to wheel out this old classic:
If everyone knows that audiences love comedy – and everyone does know, that’s why 80% of everything put to air is sold as containing comedy – then why the fuck won’t the ABC (and everyone else, but mostly the ABC) actually make any comedy?
The Role of a Lifetime is a factual series based around parenting advice and tips. It’s not a comedy, it’s not a sitcom, it doesn’t feature comedy sketches. Stop insulting us, stop dicking around, and start commissioning some real comedy.
Oh look, The Weekly is back in a few weeks. Fuck this shit.
Growing Pangs
Press release time!
What’s That? A Tonight Show!
Sam Pang Tonight. Premieres Monday, 17 March At 8:40pm On 10 And 10 Play.
Sam Pang Tonight is a brand-new show defying convention by bringing viewers something refreshingly familiar: a tonight show. Hosted by, you guessed it, Sam Pang.
Sam’s no stranger to Aussie audiences, he’s buzzed in from the front-right position for more than a decade on the fast and funny Have You Been Paying Attention?, he’s hosted the 2023 and 2024 Logie Awards and he’s a co-host on Seven’s The Front Bar. And now he’s got his very own tonight show, filmed in front of a live studio audience.
Expect a monologue that both celebrates and roasts the week’s news, a mix of local and international guests, along with plenty of Sam’s friends from the comedy world joining in the fun across the eight-episode season.
Sam Pang said: “I’m thrilled to bring a tonight show to Australian screens in 2025. Especially since Channel 10 passed on my pitch to reboot The Golden Girls.”
That’s not giving us much to go on, but as it sounds very much like a traditional tonight show it shouldn’t be hard to fill in the gaps. Pretty brave move to let us know it’s an eight episode season too. Rove’s last attempt at a tonight show on Ten didn’t make it to week three, Micallef Tonight didn’t do a whole lot better, and while Mick Molloy’s The Nation managed eight weeks it was basically forgotten after week two.
Still, at a time when comedy on the commercial networks is once again in decline – RIP that segment Mark Humphries briefly did on Seven news, though possibly once the election’s called he’ll turn up somewhere doing the usual – having a network gamble on an old-fashioned tonight show is a big swing.
And if it does tank, Pang’s got so many other gigs on the go we’ll never hear the end of it.
A Bad Look
Optics is the ABC’s big sitcom for 2025. If you’re thinking “hang on, that can’t be right”, we agree. Now point out what else they have to offer this year. The return of Mother and Son? A bunch of imports? Nothing else? Sure, the usual unfunny dramedies are no doubt soon to surface, but as far as actual sitcoms go? This is it.
This is also not very good.
There’s a lot going on here, so to summarise: this is the story of two twenty-something women, Greta Goldman (Vic Zerbst) and Nicole Kidman (Jenna Owen), who find themselves unexpectedly put in charge of a PR firm. Oh hey, Gruen but it’s a sitcom, finally.
It is also the story of middle-aged media executive Ian Randell (Charles Firth) who suddenly discovers his slacking off days are over and now has to work for a living when he’s passed over for a long-expected promotion. Take that, Gen X!
The reason why we list them separately – obviously the women got the gig Randell wanted, thus tying the two together – is that usually one would be the lead and the other the antagonist, thus creating comedy. But here, they’re…all leads? They have different skills and world views (guess who’s good at social media and who’s good at buttering up newspaper journos!). But it repeatedly turns out that those skills are complimentary and by working together oh who gives a shit.
This is also one of those comedies where much of the plot comes from behind the scenes looks at how things really work in a particular industry. Remember The Thick of It? Frontline? A seemingly endless parade of other sitcoms that all for some strange reason were focused on politics and the media? You know, the kind of shows that always seem to get glowing reviews in the media? Because if there’s one thing the media is interested in, it’s coming home from a hard day working in the media and immediately watching a show set in the media.
Here’s an idea. If you made a six part sitcom set at a garage and every episode was an in-depth look at one of the ways mechanics screw over their customers, you would have the highest rating sitcom in 21st century Australian history. But why make something interesting to regular people when you can lift the lid on the way that the media heroically manipulates the public because nobody’s ever revealed that before. Stop the press oh wait economic forces already did that.
Anyway.
There’s also a mystery as to why the women were put in charge. Only it’s not a mystery as the show spells out that they were given the top job to take the fall when all the dirt hidden by the previous, now dead, CEO comes to light. And the nature of the dirt isn’t exactly a mystery either. He was a sleazy old man in a business built on cover-ups so *gestures at headlines* take your pick.
Still, there’s always the jokes, right? And again, this is (at least) two different shows smushed together. In one Charles Firth is playing a fairly trad comedy character who is loud, deluded, entitled and bungling – but who also is halfway decent at his job, so there’s that. It’s hardly cutting edge stuff, but he’s an old pro and he gets laughs.
Zerbst and Owen are an established double act specialising in millennial anxiety and entitlement. Which mostly means they talk very quickly and are often impressed with themselves. Unlike Randell, who looks and acts like a dipshit but is competent, the joke here seems to be that they seem competent, but… maybe aren’t?
For example, the first episode has them seemingly solving the PR crisis only for the moronic AFL player (who they told to do nothing) to go partying again. It’s presented as being his fault, but it kind of seems like something they should have predicted considering, you know, he was a moron.
Also, while there’s two of them, their dynamic is “supportive besties”, which is notoriously hilarious. Just kidding, having two out of three main characters on a comedy be bland nothings is death. This is a sitcom, everything here should either be funny or be making something else funny.
If Firth was playing some kind of high powered evil antagonist then sure, there being two of them would make sense. They need mutual support! And someone to bounce ideas off, and handle separate parts of their schemes, and so on.
But – in a move that we have a feeling was suggested in an ABC memo that said something like “Everyone who watches the ABC is over 50, we can’t make a sitcom where two twenty something women are the heroes and the bad guy is basically OUR AUDIENCE” – he is not really the bad guy and both sides usually end up needing each other to get the job done.
If only that job involved being funny.
Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2024
Welcome to the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards. People from around Australia have been voting for their best and worst of Australian comedies of last year. But before we get to the results, let’s remind ourselves of what went wrong (and right) with Australian comedy in 2024…
We can usually tell what kind of a year Australian comedy is having by the amount of personal abuse we get. Things going well, the future looks bright, funny people are getting big laughs? All quiet on the personal front. Shows getting axed, stagnant vibes, everyone half decent is heading overseas? Oh look, another nameless post letting us know we’re not qualified to make jokes about Wil Anderson because we’re losers (shit, they’re onto us – ed). Guess what was clogging up our inbox in 2024?
Let’s be honest: it was hard not to be frustrated by the state of comedy over the last year. What good shows we had remained the same good shows we had in previous years, while the few new comedies we had either featured people now entering their fourth decade on Australian television or formats that had been lifted from overseas networks (and before that, comedy festival shows). These weren’t automatically bad things, of course – but they weren’t exciting things either, and without excitement comedy is always going to struggle.
The decent shows felt a little tired; the rubbish shows just kept on coming. The ABC, under the leadership of new scripted boss Chris Oliver-Taylor, axed pretty much every comedy program in development (including a second series of Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe) for 2024; then they axed Oliver-Taylor himself for good measure. Meanwhile, garbage well past its use-by date like The Weekly and just about everything hosted by Wil Anderson kept on being smeared across our screens. Coming in with a new broom doesn’t work if you don’t scrape the shit off it first.
Unlike scripted drama, where various streaming services picked up the slack after the commercial networks gave up on it, free-to-air remains the only game in town for local comedy. And as games go, it’s increasingly feeling like the Hey Hey it’s Saturday board game only with half the pieces missing. The funny half too – all the female co-hosts and Trevor Marmalade are gone, but somehow there’s a half dozen extra Plucka Ducks mixed in.
For example, the Working Dog team are all nearing retirement age; what if they decide they’ve had enough of putting out three weekly shows every year? There goes the entirety of the commercial networks comedy output unless you count that Andy Lee panel show and let’s not. Is it healthy for an entire genre of entertainment to be dependent on a production team that are all pushing 60 and made Pacific Heat and Any Questions For Ben? Don’t bother rolling the dice, we’re about to find out anyway.
And they’re the good guys. As previously mentioned, the ABC have already doubled down on a policy of “fuck comedy”, even though their only real ratings success (both locally and internationally) this decade has been Fisk. Competent management would be trawling the comedy clubs with cash in both hands looking for experienced middle-aged comedians with a sitcom idea up their sleeve: instead, we’re getting a second season of the Mother & Son reboot.
So no wonder in 2024 we got a bunch of emails acting like a collection of out-of-date personal information dug up by an News Corp journalist in 2012 was going to get us to back down on our controversial stance that… *checks notes* Question Everything was pissweak. This was was not a year that got anyone excited about the the state of comedy, and the only good news was that things could only get worse.
Worst Sketch or Short Form Comedy
Runner-up
Taskmaster Australia
21% of the total votes
Taskmaster is not an aggressively bad show, which pretty much passes for high praise in 2024. But it is a show where a little goes a long way: like most series of its kind, you could edit it down to a tight 90 minute special and still keep all the good stuff. Instead, we had two seasons of it: who knew Australian television could get so much mileage out of that workplace prank where you send the new guy down to the hardware store for a bunch of left-handed screws.
Runner-up
The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
46% of the total votes
How is this still on the air? Not in the sense of “why is this still being made” because we all know the ABC sees Charlie Pickering as a vital asset filed under “emergency Wil Anderson”. But in 2024 The Weekly was looking so half-arsed, so clearly thrown together by one of Pickering’s mates scraping social media for jokes and thinking they were getting away with it because the jokes were all from 2023, that if you squinted you could literally see through the threadbare show to the repeats of Vera showing over on ABC Family.
Winner
The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers
62% of the total votes
Pranks! They grow up so fast and then refuse to leave home. The sole innovation in series one – that the team were tormenting each other, with the general public bystanders rather than victims – was already struggling after a few episodes; by this second season the fact the cast were interchangeable nobodies meant even that didn’t work. Possibly if the pranks themselves had been outrageously original and thought-provokingly insightful a second bite at the cherry would have been worth it. They weren’t, and it wasn’t.
What voters said about The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers
Despite the occasional snigger, Inspired Unemployed… basically comes across as four interchangeable smug guys that think they’re so hilarious. They may be surprised to know it does get old at some point.
Honestly pretty shitful. The original worked because it was 1. innovative, 2. of its time, and 3. by actual comedians rather than internet idiots. The Inspired Unemployed… changed the vibe from cringing with the cast to cringing at them, and yes I hate-watched the whole series. At least it was better than the UK version.
It’s not comedy when you humiliate others for a laugh with your mates.
Worst Sitcom or Narrative Comedy
Runner-up
Colin from Accounts
15% of the total votes
There have been plenty of bland but inexplicably popular TV shows over the years, but whatever appeal Colin from Accounts had in its first season seems to be disappearing after its second. Maybe it was because even the kind of viewer who puts a show on so it’s not silent in the background when they’re scrolling social media thought “Hang on, isn’t this like every other comedy-drama I’ve had on in the background over the past couple of years?”
Runner-up
Austin
22% of the total votes
There were a few more laughs to be enjoyed – and reasons to pay attention – in this series about a young guy with autism who finally gets to meet his real father. But not many. Despite some amusing minor characters and the occasional on-point joke, this was a show that at its heart wanted to be more than funny. It tried to make you go “Aaaawwww”. And that’s never a good way to do comedy.
Winner
The Office (Australia)
56% of the total votes
Given what we’ve just said, it might seem contradictory that one of the few sitcoms or narrative comedies released in 2024 that genuinely wanted to be funny has won this award. But The Office (Australia) really was terrible. No one needed to revive The Office in 2024, and an Australian take on the concept didn’t bring much to the party. As for the novelty of a female lead, isn’t it great to see that women can screw up a workplace just like men? It’s what every feminist has been fighting for.
What voters said about The Office (Australia)
Make an Australian version of The Office, written by Kiwis and copying the American version. Reminds me of the good old days, where “bottom of the harbour” schemes were all the rage.
A line was crossed this year. A declaration of “We do not have original ideas, we do not welcome original ideas. We will not copy fresh ideas, we do not want to succeed for we do not give a fuck about entertainment.” I’m sure many others have put it better but I’m still insulted by this.
Stop flogging an already dead horse.
Worst Panel, Game or Stand-up Show
Runner-up
Question Everything
28% of the total votes
Question Everything spent fair a bit of time in 2024 justifying itself as a training ground for new comedy talent. The implication being that if you don’t enjoy Question Everything it’s because the new talent sucks. Not that we ever saw that new talent on screen, of course. We just see people we’ve been seeing in various ABC shows for years. Not having the new talent on screen, and kind of blaming of them how terrible this show is one way to justify the fact that the only people who get to front shows on the ABC are people who’ve already fronted shows on the ABC, we guess. And a decent satirist could get some comedy out of all this PR spin and corporate machinations. Sadly, they won’t get the chance. Because the ABC has already spent all its money on more episodes of Question Everything.
Runner-up
The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers
35% of the total votes
Given that most of the rest of Australian comedy in 2024 felt like some kind of prank on the audience, this was at least honest that it was a pranks show. It was a shit pranks show, and pranks make for bad comedy. But if you’re voluntarily watching a pranks show on TV, you get what you get.
Winner
The Australian Roast of John Cleese
46% of the total votes
No one tuning in to see John Cleese doing new comedy in 2024 is expecting a comedian in their prime. But it was reasonable to expect that the people roasting him – many of whom were young enough to be his grandchildren – might have something funny to say. And they did, occasionally. But they mainly said the exact same funny things as the previous person who’d got up to roast Cleese: he’s had a lot of wives; he’s been in a lot of bad films…you get the idea. A lot of money was spent on getting Cleese to come to Australia to appear in this. Was there really no money left to pay someone to give every speaker a different joke about one of his ex-wives or bad movies? We don’t know about his ex-wives, but we’ve seen some of his bad movies and there’s some golden comedy opportunities in them hills.
What voters said about The Australian Roast of John Cleese
John Cleese is a grumpy old man who no longer deserves a platform to be a dickhead.
If you’re going to do roasts, swear! For fucks sake! Even John Cleese overplayed covering his head with his blazer towards the end, looking bored and embarrassed, not knowing 99% of the roasters. Then again, Joel Creasey and John Cleese may be Creasey And Cleesey Besties.
The Australian Roast of John Cleese, almost had comedians who’ve actually seen him before, and some of them even bothered to read their script beforehand! What a pleasure it was to pay the arrogant grumpy conservative bastard and his daughter to come out here for something that was forgotten as soon as it was released.
Worst Topical or Satirical Show
Runner-up
Question Everything
28% of the total votes
You know when people talk about failsons? People who don’t have any real ability or talent but keep on being pushed upwards because of connections or who they’re related to until they turn up in some highly coveted position that in a fair society would have gone to someone who knew what they were doing and then they just sit there doing bugger all but soaking up resources they’ve neither earned nor deserved? Imagine how shit a television show like that would be. Imagine how frustrating it’d be to see it turn up on prime time week in week out while the hosts kept changing their story, going from how the point was to lift the lid on how the media worked to no, wait, it was really about training a next generation of comedians to wait, no, remember newspapers, lets hold newspapers like anyone under 50 knows what they are and stare blankly into the camera, that should be good enough for another eight episodes.
Runner-up
Gruen
35% of the total votes
At least there was a point to Gruen once. It’s long gone now of course, but once upon a time Gruen – which was basically “let’s combine one of those World’s Funniest Commercials specials with a panel show” – was kind of relevant to some people’s lives. Those people weren’t actually watching the ABC of course, because ABC viewers don’t watch commercial television so an ABC series about advertising is like a Channel Seven show about books, but you could hear the premise of Gruen and think “yeah, the ABC probably should make a show like that”. And then next thing you know it’s 2024 and it’s like they’re still broadcasting Pot Black.
Winner
The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
47% of the total votes
Here’s a serious question: are all the shows in this category really just the same show under different titles? We watched all of them throughout 2024 and honestly we’re not sure. The ABC seems to have found its default tone for topical comedy – whether mandated from upstairs or just what you get when you hire the same kind of person to do everything – and unless your philosophy of humour is “when the guy in the suit stops talking, laugh”, it all sucks. Creative people are rightly worried that AI is coming for their jobs; if these shows are any guide, AI’s been running ABC comedy for years.
What voters said about The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
To paraphrase Paul Keating: The satire of The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering is like being flogged with warm lettuce.
Charlie Pickering is the government literally trying to subsidise the dead horse flogging industry.
A decade now of pretending to be John Oliver. Maybe in another 10 years it’ll start being funny.
Worst Comedy Film
Runner-up
Audrey
13% of the total votes
While lots of Australian TV shows get away with being called comedies if they have occasional comedic elements, Australian films get away with being called comedies if they merely have a quirky premise and a character with a niche sexual kink. In this film, the titular character ends up in a coma after an accident and suddenly her Mum, Dad and sister start having great luck in everything they do. There was presumably the intention that this film would make some kind of deeper point with this premise, but how it played out was that the Dad gets involved in Christian porn, the Mum impersonates Audrey in the hope of rekindling her acting career, and the sister tries to steal Audrey’s boyfriend. So, the point being made was that people are selfish dickheads?
Runner-up
The Emu War
29% of the total votes
The thing about The Emu War is that while yes, it’s not very good, it’s trying to do so many different things that even if it’s not good at one of them… or the next one… or the one after that… then at least when the end credits roll you can say… hang on, none of that was any good. Oh all right, there was the occasional decent joke sprinkled in. The part where the crack special forces team were given suicide pills hidden in their teeth and they all accidentally bit down on them was dumb enough to get a laugh. Which is more than any of the other films in this category managed.
Winner
Nugget is Dead? A Christmas Story
36% of the total votes
No one who’s watched more than one of these annual Christmas films from Stan expects to see perfection, but this wasn’t even the sort of half-arsed movie you could enjoy after you’d had a few. This was unfocused and weird, lurching from simplistic visual comedy to dissections of peoples’ mental health to a will-they-won’t-they romance plot. And then a dog died. It was also amongst the funniest films made in Australia this year. Which either says something terrifying about the state of our film industry or makes us a bunch of dog death-wishing sickos. It’s probably a bit of both, to be honest.
What voters said about Nugget is Dead? A Christmas Story
Of course an Australian spin on a family Christmas comedy is to a) make it not funny and b) make it very depressing and KILL THE DOG.
Look, I haven’t seen any of them but there is no way in HELL that I want to watch a movie about a dog dying, let alone on Christmas Day.
Based on premise alone as none seen. A dog is questionably dead wins.
Best New Comedy
Runner-up
Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey
13% of the total votes
Shaun Micallef, quality interviewer: who saw that coming? This might not have been a constant stream of hilarity, but as a mix of travel show and personal reflection Micallef managed to get the most out of both well-worn formats. We saw the sights and we saw a side of a bunch of local comedians that we hadn’t seen before: Aaron Chen getting emotional about his father’s struggles and treating Micallef like, well, a surrogate uncle at the very least made for surprisingly warm and effecting viewing. And that was just the first episode, though it’s not like Wippa cracked open like a over-emotional walnut or anything.
Runner-up
Shaun Micallef’s Eve of Destruction
20% of the total votes
Shaun Micallef, quality interviewer: who saw that… hang on a second. Despite seemingly being made for pocket change using items fished out of a dumpster and featuring guests who more often than not seemed slightly puzzled to be there, as interview shows go this was a joy to behold. Turns out having a host who’s actually interested in his guests and having guests who aren’t there to plug their latest project leaves a lot of space for a conversation to go in weird and funny directions. Maybe it wasn’t prime Micallef, but it was still a lot better than no Micallef.
Winner
Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee
65% of the total votes
It’s not fair to say this won best new comedy of 2024 in large part because it was the only new comedy of 2024. On the other hand, it’s not like the runners-up in this category were going for big laughs. This was about as funny as a spelling bee can get, which might be damning with faint praise but being a comedy built around an extremely unfunny subject was kind of the point. So while there were a few rough edges (which again, were part of what made it work) and a couple episodes that could have been a little shorter, this is still a worthy winner. Guy Montgomery is a real talent as both a host and a comedy character, every appearance from Aaron Chen was gold, and even when the contestants weren’t great the show never let them stink up the joint. It’s honestly a surprise that something this offbeat got renewed by the ABC: guess their love of game shows really does know no bounds.
What voters said about Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee…
Guy Montgomery has been a favourite of mine for years and the original spelling bee format got me through lockdown after lockdown. Aaron Chen was my pick for the Taskmaster’s Assistant, and his role here proves how good he is at being a quirky foil to a slightly grumpy leader. The riddles are predictable and yet they get me every time. This show is also how I discovered Dan Rath, who has been my favourite comedy find of the year.
Guy Mont Spelling Bee is subversive, unpredictable and full of surprises, unlike pretty much everything else on the ABC. Well done to Aunty for renewing it, despite the format’s lack of appeal for the rapidly ageing ABC audience.
Best new TV show is an NZ format with a full season under its belt at home. Love Guy and his show to bits, but does make me wonder what could be achieved with a similar no-frills budget if the ABC were willing to trust new people and ideas, instead of being content to re-create proven success.
Best Comedy
Runner-up
Tony Martin’s Sizzletown
29% of the total votes
It’s hard to think of an Australian writer/performer who’s got as good an ear for characters as Tony Martin. And almost seven years on from the first episode it’s clear that he and Matt Dower (whose production skills are key to the show’s success) are showing no signs of running out of steam. In 2024, Sizzletown not only brought us the usual roster of reliably funny characters but also a fantastic sketch in which the famously sport-averse Martin took on the role of an AFL footballer commentator and unleashed a surprising new player onto the field. It’s the kind of weird inventiveness we rarely see in Australian comedy – in any medium – and the huge number of subscribers and supporters of Sizzletown prove that there’s a real, big, under-served audience for this type of humour.
Runner-up
Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee
32% of the total votes
Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee is the kind of show we’d like to see more of. The sort of show which takes an anything-can-happen comedic approach to a format that’s reliable but a bit dull. It wasn’t all brilliant: this started as a live show and needs some more work to turn into something that really works for TV – and it was in a timeslot that was way too long – but at least it wasn’t another serious quiz show aimed squarely at people aged 65+.
Winner
Fisk
51% of the total votes
If Australian comedy in 2024 has taught us anything it’s that those in charge of ABC comedy don’t have a clue. We don’t want more comedy dramas or panel shows, we want more Fisks. Fisk is funny. Fisk picks up on and makes us laugh at the stupid stuff we see around us. Fisk has characters we look forward to seeing again. And people like Fisk. They watch it in huge numbers and want to see more of it. So, more episodes of Fisk would be great, for as long as the team can maintain the quality. But also we want more shows like Fisk. Shows that are just funny. Not shows about something, not shows trying to make us feel all fuzzy, but shows that make us laugh hard and loud.
What voters said about Fisk
Fisk continues to be top notch. Zero notes. More please.
Thank god for Fisk, a sitcom that just wants to be funny.
Number 1 is definitely Fisk. Every season has been outstanding.
We asked our readers… What did you think of comedy in 2024?
So much of it is people showing off on panels, and the rest is quirky drama. I couldn’t in good conscience vote for anything as ‘best’. It was all very disheartening
Not getting any better.
Marginally better than last year. At least a few new shows.
The good stuff was good, the bad stuff was horrendous and tired.
It was okay. Fresh Blood is always a highlight, and I wish more shows would get picked up from their pilots. I watched more Grouse House and Aunty Donna productions than I did terrestrial comedy television, and they are doing an insane amount to platform some incredible new comedians. Also, I want to marry everyone at Working Dog.
Is TV comedy just dying alongside broadcast TV?
Sizzletown was a rare highlight, Audrey was as bad as it got. Most everything else I stumbled across felt somewhere on the continuum of mediocre, forgettable and yet another effort by the same circle jerk of local ‘stars’.
Bleak. Grim. Sending me into a depression spiral.
Shocked (Fam Time release?!) dismayed (Shaun Micallef’s Eve of Destruction) and unsurprised (The Weekly still extant). Fisk and Guy Mont-Spelling Bee: solid and enjoyable in an otherwise demoralising year. With the public broadcaster our main source of local comedy production besides (and with) Working Dog, without serious internal shake-up there will simply be no more local TV. Fresh Blood being so meagre makes it clear that anyone who wants to produce episodic comedy in Australia should move overseas, because even the people supposedly here to help obviously hate it, and you.
2024 was the best year for comedy in living memory, which is not so much a compliment as it is an indictment of living memory. For all the chaff, there were the taut Working Dog shows, Guy Mont’s Spelling Bee, Fisk, VHS Revue, and probably a few others. Actually having multiple options felt like a cornucopia of riches, and if you can successfully ignore the other rubbish that fills the airwaves, you end up with a not-terrible, you can paint a pretty neat picture of Australian comedy. There are a lot of fresh faces populating these particular shows that give me some small hope for the future.
On the other hand, Shaun Micallef is doing interview shows and travelogues, and even if he does them better than anyone else, there’s something a bit depressing about seeing the commissioners unwilling to greenlight anything for our finest comedic mind but the most trad of formats. We can’t expect him to keep Milo Kerriganning forever, but there’s something a little canary in the coal mine about this particular evolution.
I didn’t watch much – but did see a lot of standup.
Behind Mitch McTaggart, the funniest person on Australian TV is Manu from MKR, which pretty much says everything about Australian comedy on TV in 2024.
As a person who is in favour of narrative comedy as a concept, thank god for Fisk – the sole bright spot in that particular area.
Hard to tell considering that it feels like it barely had a presence. Australian TV seems more focused on drama or reality TV and it’s been like that for a while.
The fact that Channel 7 decided to air a two-part special on The Best of The Russell Gilbert Show (a show that only had seven episodes!) as filler when they couldn’t be arsed to make Talking Footy during the Olympics probably tells you everything you need to know about how comedy is seen by the industry right now.
A mixed bag. A smattering of solid offerings, but mostly dross. Darn shame too; we used to be really good at making funny things but somewhere along the way, we forgot how. It’s nice to be nostalgic (TGYH), but the problem is – no TV network, no film studio, and no commercial radio business is going to take a chance on something new, something interesting, or something fucking subversive. We have become far too risk-averse in the media and it’s a sad state of affairs.
Best bet: find the funny elsewhere. Podcasts, stand-up comedy, improv shows, online humour publications, community radio or your weird mate in the cubicle next to you because unfortunately, traditional media doesn’t give a gold-plated shit about comedy in this country in 2024 and 2025 doesn’t look any brighter.
Almost entirely industrialised.
The best example of the Australian comedy industry in 2024 is the revamped Thank God You’re Here: Sure, Tom Gleisner and Shane Bourne have moved aside from their permanent on-camera roles to keep things fresh, but their replacements are all familiar faces with long careers, behind the scenes it’s still Tommy G making sure the show chugs along, and any genuinely newish faces can be relied upon to stick to the prompts and not step too far out of line. A good example of some other dying institutions too, really…
I want to be surprised one year in a good way. There were rumours of an Australian Office for a few years now but people laughed it off as stupid because who would believe that? Well fuck you, they did it. They held us down and spat in our mouths then told us we like it. And people did. That’s what we’ve come to. I’m expecting an Australian version of Family Guy this year because why not? Why the fuck not? It’ll be Andrew O’Keefe’s comeback project and we’ll gobble it up like silly little shits because we no longer know what comedy is.
As ordinary as ever. The loss of Mad as Hell is still felt.
Was I supposed to laugh?
Not bad. Fisk and Colin showed we can do narrative while the panels delivered. Some of the new stuff tried too desperately to be young though.
ABC seems more bland than usual these days. And why why why is The Weekly still on? It’s literally been on for a decade and it’s been bad the entire time. Surely it’s time for something new?
Too much “I’m shit, laugh at me” where there’s no actual joke. As in, no setup or follow through, no actual comedic device, no observation or twist… it’s just someone being shit at something. So anyway I’m just an old man yelling at a form in the cloud, if it’s making someone else happy good for them.
Meh. Aside from a few hits like Fisk and Day Job, I’ve been to funerals that are funnier than most stuff put out this year.
Perhaps the praise for Australian comedy isn’t that it is good, but that it’s being kept alive by a team of mad scientists attempting to mimic Frankenstein’s monster with an entire concept.
A roller-coaster ride of thrills and cringe.
I laughed at a few of these shows, so I’m pretty satisfied.
Pale and stale. A severe lack of originality, talent and creativity. With people like Shaun Micallef, Glenn Robins, and Working Dog, doing all the heavy lifting, it’s an indication that the contemporary class of today are nowhere near the high standard of the old warriors of comedy. How many times have we said this?
Apart from Fisk and The Cheap Seats, not a lot to get too invested in. If you are looking for fresh Aussie comedy, look to social media. It’s DOA on any screen bigger than your phone.
It was nice to see newer comedians platformed a bit more, but there could always be improvement.
Yet another year with little truly new comedy – even Guy Montgomery’s Spelling Bee has been done live and in NZ on channel 3 before.
Worse – it’s a lot of the old sad faces filling screens (I’m looking at you here Wil Anderson) where there should be the next generation come.
Weak and the ABC continues to make baffling choices. Felt pitiful looking at the list that the most interesting ones were from the shorts they released and no proper half hours.
There is no comedy in Australia and it is what we deserve.
Thank goodness for Kitty Flanagan. She and her team delivered where most others didn’t.
Tired, formulaic. Here’s to a brighter, funnier 2025.
The above is a selection of the many comments we received. Thank you for voting and commenting, and we’ll be back soon with reviews of comedies released in 2025…
Get voting now in the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2024!
Do you have views on Australian comedy in 2024? Of course you do or why are you here? Well, now’s the time to express them as you vote in this year’s Australian Tumbleweeds Awards.
As always, the categories are:
- Worst Sketch or Short Form Comedy
- Worst Sitcom or Narrative Comedy
- Worst Panel, Game or Stand-up Show
- Worst Topical or Satirical Show
- Worst Comedy Film
- Best New Comedy
- Best Comedy
Plus, you get the opportunity to rant about how awful/great each show/film was, with the best comments being featured in the awards announcement.
If you have time to spare over the Christmas/New Year period – or are just sick of spending time with your family – vote in the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards. Voting closes on Friday, 10th January 2025, with the winner announced on or around Australia Day 2025.
Vale Question Everything 2024
There are a lot of questions around Question Everything. Fortunately, most of them have pretty obvious answers. Well, except for the big one, but we’ll get to that.
Question one: did they deliberately set out to make a show this shit?
Well, no: originally Question Everything was clearly an attempt at something akin to Gruen News, a look behind the curtain explaining why fake news and lazy coverage is the order of the day.
Question two: hang on, doesn’t the ABC already have Media Watch?
Sure does – that’s why this has stand up comedians! Thus defeating the entire purpose of the show and rapidly turning it into yet another panel show making jokes about news clips.
Question three: but a panel show about news clips doesn’t have to suck, right?
Sure doesn’t – and we’re lucky enough to have The Cheap Seats and Have You Been Paying Attention? to remind us of that on a regular basis.
Question four: so why does Question Everything suck? Wil Anderson has been funny in other shows and a lot of the panelists seem decent enough?
This is where it gets tricky. Traditionally the big problem with ABC comedy panel shows is that they don’t have enough comedy. They’re quiz shows, or they think they’re serious discussion programs, or they’re staffed entirely by smug ABC lifers nobody likes. But Question Everything is news comedy with decent guest comedians. Bullets dodged.
Instead, Question Everything seems designed to stifle anything close to decent banter. We get a news clip, then Anderson poses a question to one of the panelists – often a question barely related to what was funny in the news clip – and they cough up a slab of pre-fabricated material that would probably be okay in a completely different setting.
The problem is that, throughout the show’s development from semi-serious news quiz to whatever it is now, nobody has yet figured out a decent way for the comedians to interact with the clips. HYBPA? is a quiz show, no problem there. The Cheap Seats is just the hosts or the guest reporters presenting clips and then making jokes about them, also pretty easy to grasp.
But Question Everything has two hosts plus a panel. Anderson makes the usual jokes about the clip we’ve just seen, and then he… randomly throws to a panel member to… do something slightly related to the clip that’s just had all the comedy wrung out of it? They’re not news experts, they’re not experts on whatever the clip was about, and Anderson’s just done a bunch of jokes about the clip. What are we hanging around for?
Question five: aren’t I the one asking the questions?
Yeah, sorry about that.
Question six: aren’t you guys always going on about how Australian comedy just needs more shows, no matter whether they’re good, bad or average? If you’re constantly saying that we need a lot more forgettable shows if we’re going to build a sustainable industry that can deliver the occasional memorable comedy, then why isn’t Question Everything just another average show where people can learn about television and hone their skills?
Short answer: because it’s not good enough even for that.
Slightly less dismissive answer: a lot of the publicity for this year’s Question Everything was based on the idea that the show was really a training ground for up-and-coming television comedians. You could quibble with aspects of it (and we did) – the people being trained weren’t actually working on the real show, for one thing – but sure, why not.
Question Everything provides the TV training, Fresh Blood gives people a chance to make their own shows, there’s your production line right there. Only the production line leads directly to an ABC that is much more interested in training new comedians than putting to air shows that feature new comedians.
Bottom line is, the ABC doesn’t need any more comedy training grounds. What it needs to do is make more comedy.
When reviewing a series, “training ground” is code for “cheaply made with low standards”. But so what if these shows are sloppily crafted and hosted by tired faces? The real benefit for audiences comes down the line when a new generation of highly trained comedians are… well, they’re not on the ABC because the ABC only makes a handful of dramedies a year now and all the “entertainment” programs are hosted by middle-aged men who’ve already been hosting on the ABC for a decade.
When the ABC wants to train the next generation of journalists, they don’t invite them to pitch news stories or work on a fake news show out the back of 730. They hire them as cadets, pay them a proper wage, and send them out to cover the news (in some low stakes area under professional supervision). If the ABC was serious about comedy, they would hire fresh faces to work on their established comedy shows. Oh wait, they don’t have any left.
Question seven: So if all their comedy programs are now training schemes, why isn’t the ABC a registered training organisation on the Centrelink myskills website?
Fucked if we know.
A dog of a Christmas
What could be more Christmas-y than a dysfunctional family, mental illness and a dying dog? That seems to be the thinking behind Nugget is Dead?: A Christmas Story, Stan’s Australian-made Christmas movie for 2024, anyway.
Written by and starring Vic Zerbst and Jenna Owen (The Feed and the upcoming sitcom Optics), this sees Zerbst as Steph, a small-town girl, who after a year of therapy triggered by her overwhelming and difficult family, resolves to spend Christmas with her rich inner city boyfriend Seb (Alec Snow). But when Steph’s mum Jodie (Gia Carides) calls to tell her that the family dog Nugget is unwell and that her dad John (Damien Garvey) is on his way to collect her, Steph has no choice but to go home. And as Steph is reluctantly dragged back into family life, and Nugget undergoes various treatments from vet Dr Lander (Priscilla Doueihy), it becomes increasingly clear that what Steph thought was right for her isn’t.
With an ensemble cast of all-Aussie characters – Tara Morice as Seb’s snobby mum, Jenna Owen as Steph’s eyelash entrepreneur cousin Shayla, Mandy McElhinney as bubbly but annoying Aunty Ros, Kerry Armstrong as dimwit local dog owner Tammy, Tiriel Mora as Steph’s exasperated therapist Dr Jay – there should be plenty of comedy to be had, here. But there isn’t. And sadly, there are few genuine laugh-out-loud moments in Nugget Is Dead? A Christmas Tale, even with Nan (Diana McLean) roaming around forgetting everyone’s name, and the barbeque being left to Steph’s brother’s friend Leon (Lelong Hu), who clearly has no idea what to do.
Sometimes it feels like the film wants to lean into visual comedy, for example, there are heaps of shots of Leon trying to stop the flames on the barbeque from becoming bigger. Except, even though the flames build up, presumably leading to Leon setting the house on fire…he manages to put them out. So why bother with that bit? Seriously, why bother?
And that’s the basic problem with Nugget Is Dead?: A Christmas Story, all the ingredients are there for a family Christmas comedy where everything goes wrong but they end up having a brilliant Christmas anyway, yet the makers don’t really go for it. Instead, they’re trying to make this into a comedy-drama, featuring scenes where everyone dissects each other’s mental health, using terminology they probably got off Instagram, except not in a funny way.
Nugget Is Dead? feels rushed and unfocused, and not sure what it wants to be. It seems to be trying to appeal to everyone by including elements from classic Christmas films and also poking fun at contemporary Australia, yet it doesn’t work as a cohesive whole and will please no one. Like the centrepiece on the Christmas table, it’s a turkey.
Vale The Cheap Seats 2024
Whenever the conversation turns to discussing what kinds of comedy programs we need in 2024, the same classics are pushed forward. “We need another Late Show,” we hear. “Bring back The Big Gig,” is another one. “It’s time to revive Good News Week,” says someone we didn’t invite. “What about The Glasshouse?” and yeah, we’re going to have to stop you there.
These views are all wrong and here’s why: when those shows were being made, they were all tapping into a pre-existing group of highly skilled and often very funny performers. That’s why they worked! Seriously, just look at the cast lists. There might be a few duds, and there’s definitely a few people we don’t find all that funny, but all of those shows featured, by Australian standards, A-grade talent.
But the temptation is to think that it’s the format that made the show great. “If only we had a regular show that was a collection of wacky segments fronted by various people, some of them would have to be great, right?” No, they wouldn’t.
Those shows worked because they were made by extremely talented people who had been honing their skills off camera for ages, and – this bit is often overlooked – were almost always getting their big break. They had a lot to lose so they threw everything into it: if the show had failed, they’d have gone to the back of a fairly lengthy queue.
(for an example of what happens when this kind of show doesn’t work out, where’s everyone from Tonightly these days? Sure, they’re still getting work, but they’re not getting regular TV hosting work. Tom Ballard is not the next Charlie Pickering, which is probably a good thing for all concerned)
The trouble with trying to revive the old Big Gig format today is that you end up with a bunch of people who all have their own solo careers and who all see the show as just another gig because in 2024 even if the show is a massive success you’re just one cast member out of half a dozen strangers brought together by a producer. You’re keeping your stand up career going in the background, you’re planning a move overseas, you can’t afford to burn through all your best material in a few weeks. Everyone is hoping someone else is the one who’s going to bring 110% and make the show a hit; everyone is sitting on the coattails but nobody’s wearing the coat.
The end result is something very much like Question Everything, a show that nobody would confuse with The Big Gig or The Late Show but which is very much the 2024 version of the format: five or six comedians showing off how funny they are on a low budget. Because today’s comedians are all stand-ups rather than sketch performers or hardcore buskers, you get stand-up rather than sketches or performances; because “low budget” now means “one studio, no rehearsal time, we bring in a different batch of stand ups each week because then they’re guests rather than cast”, you get Question Everything.
It’s certainly possible to imagine many of the panellists on Question Everything being part of a much funnier show. But that show would have to be one where they had the time and space to work up some really funny material. There’d have to be a clear benefit for them, whether it be decent pay or an obvious path to fame and fortune. Thirty years ago, if you were a comedian Australian television could occasionally provide those things. Today? Don’t make us laugh.
For a comedy format that does work in 2024, we take you now to The Cheap Seats, which is basically the opposite of The Big Gig format. Rather than a show where anything can happen, it’s a show where a very small amount of things can happen: jokes about television clips. It has a very small cast (it’d be slightly bigger if they could find a regular sports reporter) who do the same thing every week. It also happens to be one of the funniest shows on Australian television, which is not something you can say about Question Everything.
Rather than trying to do a whole bunch of things that might be funny, it does one thing that is funny over and over again. Rather than bringing in a whole bunch of people who might be funny, it has two hosts (and one arts & entertainment reporter) who are funny, and then lets them be funny for the entirety of the show. Rather than just slapping together a crazy funhouse where people are expected to tune in because anything can happen, it says “this is what we’re doing and we’re good at it”.
If only we had a half dozen more shows like it.
The ABC’s structural change has been bad for scripted comedy
The ABC’s 2025 upfronts announcement last week says a lot about why the ABC makes the scripted comedies it does. And it’s all about where comedy programming sits within the ABC’s corporate structure.
A couple of years ago the ABC restructured and split its operations into two areas: Content and News. Content oversees comedy, drama, documentary, chat, kids, lifestyle and radio shows, while News covers, well, news and current affairs programmes. This was a response to ABC audiences increasingly consuming ABC content through streaming and on-demand rather than broadcast. Chief content officer, Chris Oliver-Taylor, said at the time that this was about “adapting for the digital world and maintaining value for our audiences so that we are here for all Australians – trusted, valued and relevant into the future”.
There’s plenty we could unpack there – and we say this as members of the ABC audience who mostly consume new screen and audio content via streaming or on-demand – but we’re a comedy blog, so let’s look specifically at how this has affected scripted comedy.
Within the Content area are various divisions covering different types of programmes, like Scripted and Entertainment, but there is no department specifically focused on comedy. This means that anyone pitching a scripted comedy has to go to the Scripted team and compete against a bunch of shows which aren’t comedies. The best-known outputs from the Scripted team are shows like The Newsreader and Mystery Road: Origin. Imagine going to pitch your sitcom idea to a bunch of people who’ve been successful with prestige dramas.
We’re not casting shade on either The Newsreader or the various iterations of Mystery Road – they’ve been good shows* – we simply note that there’s been an awful lot of sitcoms green-lit recently which give off distinctly drama vibes.
Amongst the shows that will return in 2025 are the dramedy Austin, a second series of the terrible dramedy reboot of Mother and Son, and three Fresh Blood pilots. Two of the latter were described as a “comedy-drama” in the original press release, with the other described as a show that “combines humour with a surrealist style, depicting the characters’ struggles and comedic escapades in a culturally diverse environment – exploring themes of identity, community and the quest for meaning.” So, a comedy-drama then.
The one scripted comedy that might buck the trend is Optics, with Jenna Owen, Vic Zerbst, and Charles Firth as “the masters of spin” in a show about a crisis management PR firm. It’s described as a “fast-paced, laugh-out-loud workplace comedy”—and we will hold them to that in our review.
But while putting a team who really wants to make dramas in charge of sitcoms is pretty much a rock-solid guarantee that almost nothing really funny will ever get up, that team can simply cite the still currently popular belief that audiences “don’t want traditional sitcoms anymore”. This belief is wrong, of course. Audiences do want traditional, going-for-laughs sitcoms, and when they can actually find one, they’re all over. See Fisk.
The same applies to overseas sales, often cited as another of the reasons for focusing on drama (and, if they must, dramedies and comedy dramas). Except, again, Fisk proves them wrong. It’s sold internationally – to Netflix, no less – despite Fisk being the most traditional sitcom the ABC has done in years. It’s mostly shot in a studio, the characters aren’t drama characters, infusing every line of dialogue with their emotional trauma, and it’s not about anything profound or cutting edge.
What it is, is relatable – everyone’s familiar with weird/annoying people and has to go to a kind of mad workplace. It’s also funny. Very funny. And it’s the kind of show the ABC should be making more of. But, oh no, let’s take a popular sitcom from the 80s and turn it into a shit drama.
But beyond having a corporate structure which fails scripted comedy utterly, there’s also a corporate ethos at the ABC that seems a bit embarrassed to be making comedy at all. Remember the treatment Kath & Kim got? A show that went on to be an international hit that people still talk about, but at the time, ABC tried to ditch?
Infused somewhere amongst those at the ABC is the idea that sitcoms and other scripted comedies are rather grubby and low rent, whereas what they should be making is quality drama. Like they’re their turn-of-the-21st-Century HBO or something.
And yet even despite the ABC’s constant claims in the media about wanting to provide best-value, popular programming for its taxpayer funders, they always seem to forget that many of Australia’s most loved scripted comedies were made by them. This means there are sitcoms that people remember with affection from decades ago, like Mother and Son, which the public is happy for them to reboot (until they actually watch the reboot, of course), but no one’s clamouring for, say, a remake of The Damnation of Harvey McHugh.
So, you might say, ABC has both a structural and an attitude problem when it comes to scripted comedy. And that the one or two decent recent shows that are genuinely valued by audiences seem to have made it onto the slate due to some sort of accident.
But we’re just touching the surface of this problem. Imagine what’s going on in the Entertainment division of Content. What hellscape of poor commissioning decisions and snobbery led to making four series of Question Everything and the green lighting of an 11th series of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering? We may look at that some other time…
* Although we do find the local version of Death in Paradise a bit questionable.
Think About the Future: Yawn ABC
Remember those magical days when we all thought a federal Labor government might actually do some good? What blind, ignorant fools we were… Oh right, sorry: the ABC just announced their line-up for 2025, and flush with support and cash from the socialist media-loving government they’ve finally boosted their – oh wait, we’re just being asked to re-read our opening sentence again.
First, the good news: things aren’t going to be a whole lot worse in 2025. They’re just not going to be any better than 2024. And 2024 was shit.
ABC 2025 Upfronts announce highlights include:
SCREEN – SCRIPTED
The ABC’s scripted slate continues to be broad, diverse and world class in 2025.
Based on bestselling Australian author Sally Hepworth’s novel of the same name, The Family Next Door tells the story of enigmatic Isabelle (Teresa Palmer), who moves into a small seaside cul-de-sac where her obsessive drive to solve a mystery casts suspicion on four neighbouring families.
Jenna Owen, Vic Zerbst and Charles Firth are the masters of spin in new six-part comedy series Optics which premieres Wednesday 29 January on ABC TV and ABC iview.
The critically acclaimed and multi-award-winning Mystery Road: Origin returns for a second season continuing to delve into the early years of Detective Jay Swan (Mark Coles Smith).
Unmissable favourites Bay of Fires, Austin and Mother and Son all return for second seasons in 2025, with Return to Paradise also in development and planned to return in 2025. The multi award winning The Newsreader will return for season three on Sunday 2 February on ABC TV and ABC iview.
That’s right, “comedy” is part of the thrillingly titled department, “scripted”. Now every sitcom that gets up is taking the place of some boring shithouse prestige drama or mystery-themed spinoff from Getaway, and you know the ABC isn’t going to let that happen without a fight.
But hey, “unmissable favourite” Austin is coming back, to the delight of the fourteen people in the UK who actually watched it.
Also more Mother & Son, so looks like they couldn’t get out of that contract after all.
SCREEN – ENTERTAINMENT
From satire to panel shows and stand-up comedy, a plethora of ABC favourites return for 2025.
Hands on buzzers for the return of crowd-drawing hits Spicks & Specks, Guy Montgomery’s Spelling Bee and Hard Quiz. The laughs and good times keep coming with more Gruen, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering and Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
2025 will see Costa and the team unearth more tips in Gardening Australia while Offsiders unpacks the sporting news of the week. New favourites Shaun Micallef’s Eve of Destruction and A Bite To Eat with Alice are in development to return.
ABC is proud to support emerging voices through the Fresh Blood initiative with Screen Australia which will see three debut projects hit screens in 2025 – Going Under, Urvi Went to an All Girls School and Westerners. Our joint initiative with Screen Australia continues to be the ABC’s launchpad for the careers of some of Australia’s best comedy writers, directors, and performers. People like Aunty Donna, Greta Lee, Adele Vuko, Nina Oyama and Angus Thompson to name a few.
How drunk to you have to be to write the line “The laughs and good times keep coming with more Gruen“? On second thoughts, we don’t want to know.
But at least there’s the three Fresh Blood series to bring some comedy to our oh wait, we’re just being informed that all three are “comedy-dramas” so forget we said anything.
Also, and if we were the kind of people to get worked up about things we might possibly be somewhat steamed about this, how the fuck does the ABC get away with claiming that Fresh Blood was “the launchpad” for Aunty Donna when the ABC wanted bugger all to do with them for a decade while they became global hits due to their own hard work on social media – up to and including getting their own Netflix series – and then when the ABC did finally get around to following up on their hard work “launching” the trio with Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe, they axed it after one season?
Then there’s this but really, who gives a shit:
Groundbreaking series The Role of a Lifetime sees Amanda Keller and an ensemble of comedians explore parenting dilemmas alongside sketches featuring Kate Ritchie and Nazeem Hussain.
This would usually be the point where we put a positive spin on things by pointing out that the ABC often announces its more interesting programs closer to their air dates*, and that these upfronts are usually front loaded with “all your favourites are coming back!” news. But not this year.
It’s time to (stop complaining? – ed) face facts. The current ABC management seems to have next to zero interest in scripted comedy, happy to wave through the occasional dramedy and then point to a collection of games shows as proof they’re wild and crazy guys. But even the good game shows are still game shows; the sketch shows don’t exist any more.
More depressing is the “good enough” vibe that comes through with the endless renewing of the same old turds. We have no axe to grind with steady reliable programming – good job, Gardening Australia – but Gruen and The Weekly haven’t been fit for purpose for years now.
And yet it seems increasingly likely that the ABC itself will vanish from free-to-air television before either of those programs do. Increasingly disconnected from reality – Gruen is a show about ads on commercial television, when in 2024 commercial television programming is advertising – hosted by the fresh young faces of two decades ago who are still in the exact same jobs they were then, you’d learn more about today’s world from a copy of The Bulletin you found under the floorboards of a demolished funeral home.
Then again, that seems to be where the ABC is looking for viewers.
.
*according to this article, the guy at the ABC who in 2023 axed Aunt Donna’s Coffee Cafe and all their in-development scripted comedies says “we constantly ask internally, ‘How do you find the next Wil Anderson, Kitty Flanagan and Micallef?… To that end, we have reserved two slots for next year, including a Wednesday night slot, for two new entertainment shows, but we couldn’t fit them into this year’s line-up.” As “entertainment” is code for “unscripted”, pencil in the return yet again of Question Everything and… oh, lets say the even less comedic You Can’t Ask That