Australian Tumbleweeds
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
We wish it was vale, Question Everything
Question Everything’s been on a journey. Remember when it was part news explainer, part fake news debunker, with vibes of Hungry Beast? Now it seems to be trying to cut The Cheap Seats’ lunch, right down to showing clips from the very sources The Cheap Seats has brought to national attention. Like 7 News’ Tasmanian bulletin, where the banter between newsreader Kim Millar and weatherman Peter “Murph” Murphy is something to behold.
As we’ve pointed out previously, using clips from the same shows as The Cheap Seats, or even the same actual clips, doesn’t matter given that the crossover between people who watch Question Everything and people who watch the Cheap Seats probably isn’t huge. But if you do watch both shows, it’s clear who does it better: Mel and Tim.
The Cheap Seats may not be original – everyone and their dog has based a comedy show around funny clips from the past week. But they win the laugh war by having a simple formula: they focus all their energies on getting the most laughs out of the clips. This includes not just selecting good, funny clips, but adding their own jokes too.
Imagine how The Cheap Seats would have handled the 7 News Tasmania clip shown on Question Everything last week, where Murph says he’s afraid to open his door in case it’s Halloween trick-or-treaters, and Kim replies that he’d definitely open it if it was a wine delivery.
On The Cheap Seats you’d expect a few follow-up gags from Mel and Tim, including, presumably, one of Tim’s running gags about his hard-drinking Mum – who, we’re guessing, always opens the door in case it’s a wine delivery. So, what did Question Everything do? They took Murph’s Halloween humbug as inspiration and asked panellist Nath Valvo to have a go at being a grumpy weatherman.
And while “be a grumpy weatherman for a few minutes” is a comedic challenge with plenty of potential, the result…wasn’t great. Which isn’t necessarily what you’d expect from a comedian of the experience of Nath Valvo. Similarly, what was going on in episode three, where everyone seemed so desperate to get laughs that they got panellist Brett Blake to hold his breath for as long as he could? It seemed like a bit which wasn’t planned, so maybe we should cut the team some slack, but on the other hand, a lot of Question Everything doesn’t seem very well planned.
If you told us that the panellists turned up a few hours before taping and were told to prepare a parody weather report or something about holding your breath for ages, we wouldn’t be surprised. The lack of preparation and honed gags would certainly explain why so many parts of the show fall flat. But if someone spent ages on those segments, it’s not just the writers who should be sacked, but the producers.
You could suggest it’s an ABC budget thing, where they can only pay people for a few hours of improvisation, rather than days of writing. But, more worryingly, what if someone on the team thinks that off-the-cuff improvising will lead to a better product?
Honestly, there’s a lot going on with Question Everything. Another problem is that after four series, and following endless tweaks to the format, it still doesn’t know what it’s trying to be. It seems to have largely dropped the news explainer/fake news debunker stuff – and this could again be down to budgets, meaning they now don’t have to spend money on those graphics-heavy, pre-recorded segments Jan Fran used to host. But whatever’s happening, it’s now a panel show where people react to wacky clips, with only occasional nods to being the sort of news-literate comedy that the ABC used to do a lot more of. So, what’s the point of it anymore?
Also, has no one down at the ABC considered that maybe, after four series of failure, it’s time to drop this show and replace it with something better? Is Wil Anderson really that much of a draw that the ABC must keep this show on air? Are there are really no other viable ideas for comedy shows out there?
Meanwhile, we simply note that while ABC comedy suffers from a lack of funding, a risk-averse culture, and an addiction to established talent, over at 10, which has its own financial woes, risk-averse culture and preference for big names, they can produce some very good comedy based on the news. It might not be the sort of comedy that tells you much about the world, apart from that there’s a lot of weird shit happening on commercial television, but at least it’s funny.
More Like Audrey Sickburn
Audrey is an Australian comedy film that strictly follows the first – and only – requirement of an Australian comedy film: it’s hanging shit on the losers who live in the suburbs. Those bastards have had it too good for too long, what with all their stunted narcissistic dreams and malformed personalities reflecting the dark side of the Lucky Country and so on and so forth can we have a Film Australia grant now?
Audrey is about a typical suburban family, in that we’re introduced to the father as he wanks into one of those hand held fake plastic vaginas, only he’s interrupted by his family who are all horrified and then the dog runs off with it. At least now we know he’s a wanker.
There’s also two daughters. One of which is good looking so she’s a bitch, while the other is in a wheelchair but she’s also kind of bitchy so fair enough. The real story is the mother. She used to be a soap actress largely remembered for not being on any of the popular soaps but still giving a “suck it losers, I’ve made it” speech at the Logies right before it all fell apart.
The good-looking daughter is Audrey so you might think this is her story. But no. No sooner have we got to know her deal – hates her family, wants to run away with her sleazy musician boyfriend, is being forced into an acting career by her stage mum – than she falls off the roof and ends up in a coma. The big comedic twist is that this instantly improves everyone else’s lives.
Suddenly the wheelchair daughter is popular and famous and waving a fencing rapier around. The dad is off having gay sex with a porn producer while now also boning his wife (seems they’re in an open marriage, which maybe someone could have mentioned earlier). And the mum? Her acting career is back in business now that she’s pretending to be her daughter at some dodgy acting school.
Surprisingly, this is probably the best stretch of the movie. It turns out that seeing people be happy and successful is more entertaining than having them sling shit at each other and everyone around them.
Anyway, Audrey’s coma can’t last, we all know that. Nobody likes spoilers so lets just say you will in no way be surprised by anything that happens in the final third of the movie, unless you were actually paying attention to the first two thirds of the movie in which case there are a number of scenes that feel like the kind of thing that should happen but don’t actually flow on logically from anyone’s behaviour.
But who cares about story or character or anything like that. Is it funny? Yeah, nah. There are some semi-decent jokes scattered around the place. But a lot of the comedy is the kind of thing that you can imagine people saying “yeah, that’ll be funny” rather than actually laughing at.
For example, there’s a high school benefit concert for Audrey that’s the kind of thing Chris Lilley was doing 20 years ago and it wasn’t much chop then. Come to think of it, a pushy suburban stage mum is also pretty Chris Lilley. And while the Christian Porn the dad gets mixed up in is more explicit than anything Lilley ever got up to, the basic concept is very much in his wheelhouse. Remember “cringe comedy”? Sorry for reminding you.
So the comedy feels like an afterthought. It’s a collection of old gags from a previous generation thrown into the mix because they pitched a “dark suburban comedy” and now they have to follow through. Fortunately, a vibrating dildo is always funny, right?
There’s probably a case to be made that the real comedy here is the parody of Australian suburbia. But yeah, piss off with that. At (the very) best this is a parody of other, older Australian films. It’s a bunch of sub-Kath & Kim level cliches only with the heart replaced by a sneering dismissiveness and some jokes about acting school classes where you have to pretend to be a tree.
It’s weird to remember there was a period there where The Castle was seen by some as being patronising towards its working class suburban subjects. Presumably this was because people actually saw The Castle, unlike the dozens of other Australian “comedies” that treated anyone living more than 20 minutes from the center of a capital city as a tasteless dimwit driven by animal urges one step removed from the gutter. Australian film has a long and largely forgettable history of sneering trips to the suburbs and beyond to depict just about everyone who dwells there as some kind of freak, and calling your half-arsed Wake in Fright-meets-Strictly Ballroom remake a black comedy exploring the dark recesses of suburban narcissism or some shit doesn’t make it any funnier.
Mind you, considering the extremely slim pickings this year Audrey is still probably the best Australian comedy movie of 2024.
Vale Have You Been Paying Attention? 2024: The Kavalee Conundrum
So that’s it for Have You Been Paying Attention? for the year. As usual there’s not a whole lot to say. It’s the well-oiled machine that other well-oiled machines look up to, a finely honed gag-fest that’s been at its peak for so long it’s fair enough to wonder if it’ll ever drop off or simply not return after everyone involved gets run over by a rogue four-wheeled sponsor.
Week in week out it’s an hour of top-notch rapid-fire comedy. It even finds space for the occasional newcomer or overseas guest (who are promptly never seen again, but its the thought that counts). Maybe things’ll change next year when Sam Pang gets his own show. Maybe the show will air during the HYBPA?-free start of the year and he’ll just be on three prime-time shows (don’t forget The Front Bar) a year.
There is one question though that hangs over the show like a tall, freakishly muscled radio personality and commercial spokesperson firmly entrenched in the very back row: what’s going on with Ed Kavalee?
Up until this year, Ed’s comedy persona on the show has basically been “I’ll appear in your commercial if the price is right, and the price is always right”. Various other elements drifted in and out. He’s a fit guy (blame his wife). He’s a motormouth nerd. He’s been in commercials oh we covered that one. His work on commercial radio used to get a bit of a run, but being on commercial radio is the CV of around 60% of all HYBPA? guests. Anyway, he’s currently between jobs.
But in 2024 he’s been making a lot of jokes based on pretending* to be a fully on-board Sky-news watching member of the conspiracy-loving alt-right. Which is… a thing you can do now?
Beyond “it’s a laugh, innit?”, exactly why he’s doing it is a bit of a mystery. HYBPA? has always been relatively politically neutral – stupid behaviour is what gets the laughs, not calling politicans stupid. It’s not a show inviting Andrew Bolt or Gerard Henderson on to fire off some quips. The comedy from Kavalee’s performance is presumably coming from the fact we know he doesn’t mean what he says**. We hope.
It’s not like HYBPA? isn’t a showcase for people putting on an act either. One of the not-so-secret secrets to being asked back is to have a bit more going on than just an ability to press a buzzer and get off a zinger. Old drunks, old grouches, confused youngsters, deadpan weirdos, people who seem really nice until they get off a brutal one-liner aimed directly at a fellow panelist. They’re all part of what keeps viewers coming back each week.
Thing is, these are all basic comedy types that you can get across in a line or two. What Kavalee’s going for here seems a lot closer to an actual comedy character – Russell Coight rather than Glenn Robbins. And those characters need more room to develop than you get trying to add in an extra line or two after you’ve answered the question correctly and everyone else is moving on.
It’s not as simple as he’s doing a bit and the bit’s not working. Sometimes it does work – he’s definitely putting a lot of energy into it at least. And it’s possible that if he hammers away at it for a while, people will come to see him as a send-up of online right-wing guys and his bonus gags will just slip on in there.
But everyone else on HYBPA?, even when they’re doing a bit, are doing a bit that we either already know them for or is a natural extension of who they seem to be. Mick Molloy is a comedy drunk! Aaron Chen is off-the-wall! Kitty Flanagan doesn’t get modern life! They all naturally lead to comedy, while not leading you to want to run away from them.
Ed Kavalee as a online conspiracy nut eagerly awaiting the violent overthrow of the state? Eh, maybe not so much.
.
*hopefully
**though considering he’s currently between radio gigs, who knows – maybe he’s pivoting towards hosting a talkback show?
No Risk with Fisk
Okay, we’re a week late with our Fisk review. But c’mon: if you need us to tell you to watch what is easily the best Australian sitcom this decade, you might as well send us your bank details and be done with it.
There are a lot of things Fisk isn’t. For one, it isn’t shit. But the fact that it’s not trying to be cool or edgy or dramatic or shrilly on-message when it comes to topical issues – or much of anything beyond being funny – is a reminder of just how far down the list of priorities “funny” often is when it comes to local comedies.
To be fair, even when local comedies are trying to be funny, the results are often… Well, let’s look at the most recent and most obvious point of comparison, the local version of The Office. Remember that series? Released at the end of last week, completely forgotten five minutes after the end of last week?
Like the local version of The Office, Fisk is largely set in an office. Unlike the local version of The Office, Fisk is smart, features jokes based on observations of how people actually behave, and feels like it was made by and for actual human beings. The cast of Fisk are playing characters written to their strengths as performers. The cast of The Office are barely playing characters at all. You get the idea.
Slightly less snarkily, Fisk treats its core characters as people we’d like to (possibly briefly) spend time with. They’re all annoying; They’re all also annoyed by the annoying behaviour of their co-workers. Nobody here is a two dimensional bad guy or cartoon foil. They just want things that sometimes clash with what everyone else wants – peace & quiet, a smoothly operating workplace, a jar full of biscuits, and so on.
Season three has opened up the ensemble a little: Ray (Marty Sheargold) has found love. Roz (Julia Zemiro) has her own clients with her dispute resolution business (plus a sideline making music). Webmaster George (Aaron Chen) has his side hustles and a hacker grandmother. Fisk (Kitty Flanagan) abides, though she does now have her own place.
Sitcoms often wear down their cast’s rough edges over time. Fisk herself now seems a lot more reasonable (at times she’s almost chirpy), but that may just be due to society’s overall decline. What seemed like a prickly personality in 2021 is now a delight to spent time with compares to the violent nutters that roam the streets in 2024.
Even if she has mellowed a little, having much of each episode’s friction provided by a steady stream of cranky clients and dodgy local business people (hey, Tom Ballard really does have a baby face) helps a lot. Who would have thought Carl Barron as Fisk’s surly neighbour would be the comedy find of 2024?
Thankfully, Fisk‘s core crew are too different to ever fully get along. Fisk herself might have finally gained couch privileges in Ray’s office, but it’s not like there’s going to be any kind of non-awkward group hugs any time soon.
We could go on, but you get the idea. Fisk is an instant classic that just keeps on getting better. You don’t have to consider the alternatives to know we’re lucky to have it.