Few Australian tonight shows of recent decades have made it through their entire run. Even fewer have been renewed just a few episodes in. That alone makes Sam Pang Tonight pretty special.
But you don’t stay on air unless there’s a sizeable audience who likes what you’re doing, and in news that may come as a surprise to the people on social media who think great tonight shows are big budget affairs, dripping with Hollywood stars, Sam Pang Tonight seems to have found a sizeable audience without them.
Maybe it’s because Australians are sick of the 95% of locally made comedies that are either dramedies, panel shows or pseudo quizzes? Or maybe we’re just suckers for daggy gags and Christmas tree-related slapstick? Either way, it worked. And what’s kind of interesting is that the show didn’t change a lot throughout its run.
Sure, the length of the main guest interview got shorter each episode (a good thing) but otherwise Sam Pang Tonight had a plan and a set of segments right from the start, which it largely stuck to. And which we grew to like. Although they’ve probably wrung all they can out of that Christmas tree.
What did change the show each week, mostly for the better, was the guest announcer, who brought a different energy to each episode. Whether it was Tom Cashman’s dorky asides, Becky Lucas never shutting up, or some well-timed barbs from Kitty Flanagan, it was either really funny or we could just enjoy the panicked look in Sam Pang’s eyes as he realised he couldn’t predict what was coming.
And by the way, unpredictable comedy is also pretty rare these days. If you tune into Gruen or The Weekly, it’s heavily edited and you kinda know what’ll happen. But why Sam Pang Tonight feels exciting to watch is that it’s shot as live and feels like it could go off the rails any second.
Sure, Sam Pang Tonight could make improvements. “Yesterday’s News Tonight” wasn’t the greatest segment ever and could really do with some better clip research and some snappier Cheap Seats-esque lines in between. And a higher budget would enable the team to do a few other types of things, although if they can get laughs out of whether that’s a spoon or a fork plunged into a lasagne, maybe they don’t need more money?
Either way, we’ll be tuning in later this year to see what else the team can come up with. One thing we know for sure is, we won’t be able to predict it!
Meet Your Team Captains. Dave Hughes, Tommy Little And Anisa Nandaula Are Ready For Generational Mayhem.
Whether you were raised on VHS tapes or TikTok trends, Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Gen is back, bringing a wildly entertaining clash of cultures, callbacks, and comebacks, and it’s taking family fun to a whole new level!
Joining Anne Edmonds as host of Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Gen, are the show’s captains who will bring their own unique flair to each generation.
Gen X, the “slacker” generation too busy rolling their eyes to get involved in the drama, will be led by the sharp-witted, irreverent Dave Hughes.
Gen Y, masters of avocado toast and skinny black jeans, will be represented by the hilariously charming Tommy Little.
Finally, Gen Z, the most informed yet easily distracted generation, who are ready to document everything on TikTok, will be Captained by the vibrant and fearless Anisa Nandaula.
Expect nostalgic throwbacks, modern mayhem, and challenges that’ll have the whole family shouting answers at the screen. It’s smart, silly, and guaranteed to spark some excellent intergenerational debates!
Who knew we’d long for the days when Hughsie had his own show? At least then he was confined to one location. Now he’s turning up on every single comedy show stinking up the place. And just in time to confirm our gripe, we’ve been handed another press release!
Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee returns for more outlandish fun in June
Thrills! Suspense! Sesquipedalian! These are just some of the words that could be spelled correctly or absolutely fumbled when Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee returns for season two on Wednesday 4 June at 8.35pm on ABC TV, with all episodes available to stream on ABC iview.
Host Guy Montgomery and his loyal assistant, Aaron Chen, return to test whether Australia’s best and brightest comedians are actually all that bright when it comes to spelling. Across the extended 10-episode season, get ready for more hilarious misspellings, witty banter, and unforgettable moments as four comedians take to the podiums every week.
Vying for the most prestigious prize on TV – a one-way ticket to defend their title on the next episode – is an all-star lineup including Hannah Gadsby, Hamish Blake, Julia Morris, Rove McManus, Denise Scott, Becky Lucas, Kirsty Webeck, Josh Thomas, Dave Hughes, Dilruk Jayasinha, Susie Youssef, Lizzy Hoo and more.
Each episode features five high stakes spelling rounds, each more outlandish and frustrating than the last. Brand new spelling rounds this season include “The Love Spell” where comedians must date potential matches in the hopes of gaining a ‘partner’ to help them spell. In “Speance”, a spelling-séance, the comedians connect with a spirit to help them spell out their next words. And in “Show and Spell” the comedians have been asked for the first time to bring in something from home that they can spell, but all is not as it seems.
No big surprises there, aside from Hannah Gadsby dipping her toe back into the local comedy scene. Hard to believe that only a few years ago she’d have been a regular on this kind of show (if not hosting her own).
Otherwise, Hughsie’s back! Seems he’s legally required to be part of every single Australian comedy program not made by Working Dog. Good news is, about 70% of Hughsie’s act is that he’s clueless and out-of-touch, making him the perfect quiz show contestant in opposite land. Which is handy because that’s also the place where he’s considered funny.
The fact that Australian television comedy is now almost entirely quiz shows is a big part of why Australian television comedy constantly feels like it’s got one foot in the grave. You can make jokes when you appear on a quiz show, but you can’t build a career on those jokes.
Even if you’re extremely funny and able to craft a distinctive comedy persona that comes across in the tiny window a game show gives you – ie, Aaron Chen – it’s not enough. You’re not going to get your own sitcom or comedy series. The best you can hope for is a gig hosting another game show.
Game shows have a place in the comedy ecosystem. Some of the funniest Australian shows this century have technically been game shows. Though usually the good ones push the format so far the “game” part is largely buried. But when the only kind of show that makes it to air is the same kind of show, that ain’t good.
Australian television is a slow moving boat. But there are trends, and formats do go out of style. When Gruen became a hit on the ABC, they gave the go-ahead to every “comedy” panel show format they could. And then when every last one was trash, they gave up on the format.
Hard to believe in the era of Hard Quiz, but there was a decade or so where the ABC turned their backs on quiz shows featuring ordinary people. Remember sitcoms? Local drama? The commercial networks don’t.
Australian television currently has all their laugh-producing eggs in one overcrowded basket. Fingers crossed bird flu doesn’t spread to comedy.
C’mon: the return of The Cheap Seats (yay!), Gruen (boo!), Anne Edmonds announced as the new host of the returning Talkin’ ’bout Your Gen(eration), Sam Pang Tonight continuing to air long after any other Australian talk show would have been axed, Taskmaster Australia… is also on… Yep, it’s a big week in comedy!
It’s just not a new week, which is the problem.
It’s been quiet around here of late. Which seems a bit unusual in that it’s actually been a pretty good period for local comedy. The ABC is fucked of course, but 10 seems committed to Australian comedy in a way we haven’t seen from a commercial network in over a decade. Yes, they’re keeping good shows on the air. They’re also putting on other comedy to replace those shows when they finish. They have actual comedy timeslots where different shows rotate in and out, which is exactly what comedy needs.
The problem is that none of those shows are new shows. Even Sam Pang Tonight is a tonight show, which is a format older than many African nations. Who’s getting excited about the return of Gruen, a show that has remained unchanged since 2012? Nobody under 60! At least Wil Anderson made a joke about how the ABC has no young viewers. Gee, wonder why that is?
And look, The Cheap Seats is probably pound for pound the funniest show on Australian television. It is exactly the kind of show we should have back on our screens regular as clockwork. We need something to show audiences that hey, not all local productions are made for overseas audiences or as a form of brand maintenance.
But increasingly it’s hard to shake the idea that the reason why The Cheap Seats keeps on coming back has less to do with the fact that it’s really funny and more to do with it being an offshoot from Have You Been Paying Attention? Which is what, twelve years old now? And back in little over a week!
HYBPA? is a classic of Australian comedy. Okay, it’s from a team that once upon a time would ditch a series the second it threatened to become stale, but that’s how it goes in comedy. The older you get, the more you like to stick with things.
The problem isn’t that Working Dog are milking their current projects for all they’re worth. They’ve more than earned that right. It’s that everyone coming up is also locked into the wider cycle of keeping old formats alive for the sake of name recognition.
For example, Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation, a format that is only 16 years old, is back as Talkin’ ’bout Your Gen, and… uh… Yeah, we like Anne Edmonds, and we’re keen to see how she goes as host. Decent team captains (currently still under wraps) are going to be a vital, but there’s enough talent out there to make this work. The original did pretty well, even with Charlie Pickering and Josh Thomas.
TAYG is a show that only ever worked when it was very clearly tailored to the unique comedy stylings of Shaun Micallef. You can see why Edmonds got the gig. She has a similar range as Micallef as far as mixing stern and silly. But this is a show that was built on pushing things way too far in a fairly specific direction. Even Micallef couldn’t make the reboot on Nine all that memorable.
Anne Edmonds hosting a comedy game show? Great! Anne Edmonds hosting the third try at a format that first aired in 2009? That’s par for the course on Australian television, where old news is good news and new ideas can try again in a decade or two.
Sure, everyone knows that the last decent Australian television formats were invented when Kevin Rudd was PM. And by “everyone” we mean “everyone involved in program development on Australian television”. But just because 2009’s hit debuts The Project and Masterchef are still going strong doesn’t mean that 10 has to stay stuck in the past, right?
Oh who are we kidding they’ll be bringing back Magda Szubanski and The Spearman Experiment next.
The Weekly did a special post-election debate episode and you know what? Tom Gleeson was the funniest thing on it. Yeah, we know you can read that two ways, this isn’t our first rodeo.
Exactly why they bothered is a bit of a mystery. No doubt being bumped back to 9.30pm by the election debate had something to do with it. The Weekly isn’t exactly known for it’s searing topical satire. This was no exception. The few debate jokes they served up were very much reheated goods, pulled out of a sack of generic gags they could deploy if Dutton talked about, say, nuclear power. Or even if he didn’t.
And then it was back to the usual pointless news recap. Blah blah blah, same old same old, at least Rhys Nicholson was funny God the ABC needs to give him his own show.
Thankfully Margaret Pomeranz was nowhere to be seen. Don’t worry, the bottomless pit of hilarity that is little old ladies was still plumbed for a segment about stories supposedly sent in by Pickering’s mum. Was there also a mention of Albo’s dog? You know it! They’d be taken off air for stalking if that dog were human.
Back to Gleeson. He was given the brief chance to remind us all that he was a comedian before he became a snarky host and he grabbed it with both hands. The idea of him taking on a new career as a Dutton impersonator if the LNP wins wasn’t exactly original. Every aggressively bald man in the country has been pitching for that gig. Too bad that Australia hasn’t put an actual political impression* to air since the Rudd era.
But we’re always going to laugh at a deliberately shit impression, and Gleeson delivered a good (by which we mean bad) one. We’re not going to jump on the Gleeson bandwagon any time soon. Or ever, if he keeps on with the “hey, I’m a dick, deal with it” persona and honestly, why would he give it up now? But it was still nice to actually get a laugh out of one of the handful of presenters who seemingly have a stranglehold on comedy in this country.
Oh look, Gruen is back in a fortnight for three straight months of Wil Anderson. Yay.
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*all those characters on Mad as Hell went way beyond what you used to get on The Gillies Report
Last week, Sam Pang Tonight’s mid-series renewal had a few people scratching their heads. After several decades of networks cancelling new shows of this type after just a couple of episodes (especially shows which annoyed people online and had been dipping in the ratings) it got renewed. Huh?! What’s with the programmers not shitting the bed?
The people at 10, it seems, have cool heads. Good. New comedies need a chance to find their feet, and despite Pang’s on-air gags about falling ratings, his show is not only still well within the Monday night Top 30 but worth persisting with.
There are various things you could do to improve the show, of course, but that would require a bigger budget to, amongst other things, write and film sketches that aren’t pushing someone into a Christmas tree. And the money to do that clearly isn’t on the table. Which means the team have to be as inventive and funny as possible within their budget. But this is nothing new to the people who make comedy shows for 10.
10 basically has a house style for its comedies, and it’s this: make it for cheap, don’t be too political and keep the gags coming. Have You Been Paying Attention?, The Cheap Seats and now Sam Pang Tonight, all fit this bill, and all attract a regular audience.
And if you’re looking for an inexpensive way to get laughs, making sure the guest announcer gets lots of chances to butt in is a good one. Those with long memories might remember Hannah Gadsby performing a similar function on the Adam Hills-hosted In Gordon Street Tonight, and how her quips from the other side of the studio boosted an otherwise so-so program.
So, after a lacklustre start with Dave Thornton in the first show, who didn’t seem to have much to say, subsequent guest announcers (Kitty Flanagan, Guy Montgomery, Anne Edmonds and Becky Lucas) have clearly been given the brief to jump in with zingers at every opportunity. And not only is it funny to see Pang squirm, or spar with them, or in the case of Becky Lucas, find it all a bit confusing, but it’s a welcome contrast to Pang’s more laid-back, Dad joke-adjacent style.
Not that Pang’s laid-back style is necessarily a bad thing. Only a true Dad joke connoisseur would stand in front of an increasingly sceptical public and subject them to four weeks of that Christmas tree segment.
Perhaps a little more original is the “Questions I’ve Always Wanted to Ask and Now I’ve Got My Own Show I Finally Can” segment. So far, we’ve had a doctor, a cop and chef Matt Moran, who’ve all had to sit through bizarre scenes from films showing people doing their jobs. It turns out, films aren’t always depicting professions accurately, and it’s funny seeing how.
SIDEBAR: Imagine for a second how a low-budget ABC comedy show, like Gruen or Question Everything would handle the same topic. Not by showing clips of Rambo burning his wound and then having a doctor comment, “Well, it’s not the treatment I’d recommend”, that’s for sure. More like several minutes of Wil Anderson or someone giving a dull and largely laugh-free explanation of the correct way to deal with injuries whilst sheltering in a cave in Afghanistan.
But even with Sam Pang Tonight’s ability to make a decent show with no budget, there are still going to be people wishing this was The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon or The Graham Norton Show or INSERT TALK SHOW HERE. Because what these people perceive as great tonight show entertainment is celebrity guests.
Like we’ve said before, the kind of big-name guests who’ll show up for Fallon aren’t likely to be anywhere near 10’s Melbourne studios on a Monday. Or any other day. So, the key here is booking the most interesting, hopefully funny, locally-based chatters, getting as much out them as you can, and then doing other stuff. Like playing weird old news footage and segments where people guess what cutlery has been shoved into a tub of dip. It may be a bit lame, but it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining than someone famous plugging whatever thing they’re on to plug.
So, while Sam Pang Tonight hasn’t been perfect, it has quickly learnt what works for it, and what doesn’t, and the network has backed that. Which might not sound like a win, but in 2025 Australian comedy definitely is.
In their wisdom, the ABC are now showing this year’s Fresh Blood winners on the free-to-air channel as well as iView. Well, two of them at least. While we’re getting Urvi Went to an All Girls School and Westeners, the third of the pilots – Going Under – is nowhere to be seen. The press release said it was a comedy-drama “about personal growth and the connection between individuals and their communities”. Yeah, we’ll wait.
We’ve expressed our views (basically, “meh“) on both these pilots before. These finished versions don’t change things up all that much. And why would they? They won the competition. But the extended run time does give them more room to breathe. Does that make them worthy additions to the ABC line-up? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Urvi isn’t quite a YA series. But its focus on teenagers at high school (plus some family drama) does give it that vibe. It’s also more of a dramedy than an outright comedy. The jokes are often funny and there’s some silly stuff mixed in, but “I want to do drama at high school” isn’t much of a hook. It’s a funny and well observed look at high school from the students point of view. It just doesn’t go beyond that to become anything universal.
(this definitely feels like something 10 or a streaming service might pick up. Just add a few more diverse characters and make it more of an ensemble show)
Likewise, this version of Westeners has a lot more (and better) jokes, but if you’re not into the arts / media scene in Australia we don’t know what to tell you. A lot of the humor and observations here are very much insider stuff. They’re strong jokes; it’s still a show where the main storyline is that an artist gets lured away from her calling with the promise of making lots of money speaking on panels.
(Westerners has the comedy advantage out of the two shows, but the subject matter is firmly “niche ABC project”)
Both these pilots do a great job of bringing their settings and relationships to life. The personal and cultural elements in both are especially strong. In both cases we would have happily watched a few more scenes focused on that. And to be fair, it’s a fine line between “who cares about this stuff?” and “by being so specific, they’ve managed to make it universal”. Maybe given a six episode run both shows could cross that line. Both these pilots – again, can’t stress this enough, they’re well made and often pretty funny – just aren’t there yet.
A problem is that they’re both about people who want to be in the arts. Urvi wants to star in a drama production; the two leads in Westeners are an artist and a fashion designer. Sure, write what you know and all that. But if Fresh Blood just keeps on serving up pilots that are thinly veiled autobiographies from twenty-somethings working in the arts, it’s going to look even more pointless. The ABC in its current state is never going to give a show like that a series*.
If the ABC still ran local comedy on ABC2 / ABC Comedy / whatever it used to be called? Both of these pilots would definitely have a proper home. It’s a sad state of affairs when we’re shaking our heads at two pretty funny shows and saying “that’s not enough”. But in 2025? When the ABC is maybe only doing three local sitcoms for the year and one is the UK co-production Austin? It’s not enough.
A big part of the problem is that, as we saw earlier this year with Optics, an ABC sitcom really does have to go as broad as possible to try and grab as many viewers as possible. Did the way Optics took a young up-and-coming comedy duo and then paired them with the middle-aged Charles Firth and then stuck them in yet another generic sitcom explaining how the media “really works” make for a funny show? Of course not. But that’s the path that ABC sitcoms, even a winner like Fisk, have to travel.
If the ABC made more than a handful of scripted comedies a year, sure. Then there’d be room for some actual variety. They could seriously develop new talent instead of running yet another program that creates a bunch of one-offs that are never going anywhere. They could run series where being funny was the whole point.
And maybe pigs might fly. They’d probably be funnier than another series of Austin.
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*was the possibly relevant White Fever really a comedy? We still don’t know – and we’ll probably never find out, as a second series seems off the table
Sam Pang Tonight Confirmed For Second 2025 Season.
It’s been a long time between drinks for Australian tonight shows, but this year, Network 10 is giving audiences a double shot: that’s right, Sam Pang Tonight is coming back for season two.
Sam Pang Tonight will bookend the year with a fresh eight-episode run in late 2025. Expect more laughs as Sam takes on the week’s news and welcomes a bunch more guests, including local legends, engaging experts, and comedy mates playing the part of Special Guest Announcer. Will the crowd-favourite Wheel of Segments return? Hard to say, but turns out there’s no shortage of people willing to be pushed into a Christmas tree.
Sam Pang said: “I’m thrilled to be coming back for Season 2. I’m very grateful to Channel 10 for their support and commitment to the show and giving me the opportunity to continue doing something I love.”
Daniel Monaghan, Senior Vice President Content & Programming said: “It’s always a thrill to share a fresh new format with viewers, and we’re absolutely delighted with the success of Sam Pang Tonight. Aussies are loving Sam’s signature comedy style so it’s no surprise Sam Pang Tonight was 10’s biggest new show launch since 2022. We’re excited to keep the laughs rolling with a second season confirmed for the back end of 2025.”
Good news for fans of somewhat ramshackle comedy! Bad news for a lot of people who seem to have spent the last few weeks complaining Sam Pang Tonight isn’t the perfect tonight show they’ve had playing in their heads for the last decade or so.
This somewhat unexpected return – yeah, even we were wondering if it was going to see out the original eight episode order – does raise one question. If it’s coming back later in the year, what’s it going to replace?
Usually HYBPA? and The Cheap Seats see out the year and then some, and that’s the Monday and Tuesday evening slots taken. Will one of them be ending their season early this year? Will Sam Pang Tonight make the move to another (to)night? Was Sam Pang Tonight really Ten’s “biggest new show launch since 2022”? Has Ten actually had any new shows since 2022? And will they still be pushing people into Christmas trees when it’s Christmas?
Taskmaster is back for season… four? Five? Three? Let’s say four. And you know what that means: proof positive that the format doesn’t require comedians at all wait what?
Taskmaster has traditionally featured comedians and Julia Morris because parts of the format – mostly the part where they sit around in a studio while Tom Gleeson insults them – work better with everyone cracking jokes. That doesn’t mean it works well, as anyone who soaked in all the dead air in the first episode of this seasons knows. But still, jokes: maybe we’ll get lucky.
This season tho, we have joining the cast one Lisa McCune, AKA “Australia’s sweetheart”. McCune is an actor who has been in some funny-ish shows over the years, like… Um*… That one where she was sisters with Alison Whyte from Frontline and they were lawyers or something**? And everything else we can think of it was really Lavinia Nixon on Micallef Tonight.
So far McCune has done fine. Maybe even better than fine. A big part of what makes Taskmaster work is seeing different characters deal with the tasks. Again, this is why you get in comedians: they usually come with an outsized persona that audiences are hopefully familiar with, and so people will tune in to see how they react to a whole bunch of frustrating shit.
But when you’re talking Australian comedy circa 2025, there just aren’t that many comedians people have heard of. For example, a lot of this season seems to be pushing the idea that Tommy Little is a lowbrow comedian obsessed with arse jokes. Which may very well be the case, but unless you’re following comedy a lot closer than the Taskmaster audience Tommy Little is just some guy who presumably turns up on The Project a bit.
In contrast, we have Hughesy – one of the best known comedians in the country. And yet, his act still doesn’t really work here. Dave Hughes the human being is a smart guy driven to succeed. He’s not an offbeat suburban surrealist coming up with wacky angles. Hughesy the comedian is “entertainingly” opinionated and lowbrow, the Dave Hughes competing here is not.
Presumably that contrast is entertaining for those five or so people who are peeking behind the curtain for the first time. Considering Hughes has already been on I’m a Celebrity and Australian Story this year as himself, everyone else is pretty much up to speed with the news that Hughesy isn’t much like Hughesy away from controlled comedy environments.
But McCune, being a professional actor who gets gigs in large part because she brings “Lisa McCune” energy to a role, doesn’t have these problems. We know who she is (well, the kind of roles she plays). She’s nice, she’s kind, she’s plucky, and occasionally she’s slightly befuddled. On Taskmaster, the fun comes from seeing the Lisa McCune we (think we) know tackling all kinds of wacky situations.
So when Tom Cashman asks her for the keys in a task where her job is to hide the keys from him, she’s too nice to actually keep the keys hidden and just… hands them over. It wasn’t a winning move by any stretch, but it was probably the best move in terms of pure comedy.
Which must suck a little for the comedians on the show.
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*We said “funny-ish”, which rules out How to Stay Married
There is no possible way to make a successful tonight show in Australia in 2025. It just can’t be done. Tonight shows rely on items we just don’t have in mass quantities here. Interesting celebrities, comedy writers, that kind of thing. Throw in the fact that time is no longer on your side – tonight shows are meant to be cheap and cheerful television that airs late at night, but even the cheapest and most cheerful Australian program has to air before 9pm or there’s no way to get enough viewers to justify the cost – and Sam Pang Tonight was always going to be dead on arrival.
Well, at least to a certain kind of viewer. A lot of Australians say they want variety and live entertainment back on our screens – just not the kind that anyone is going to make in the 21st century. Nothing’s ever big enough or flashy enough or American enough, and where are the big name guests anyway?
Far be it for us to point out that Australia hasn’t generated a home-grown movie star in decades. It’s not like music or television are serving up a lot of name-brand chatty newcomers either. And forget sport (unless it’s a talk show about sport) because the big names in half the country will cause the other half to instantly turn off.
So once you realise Sam Pang Tonight was always on a hiding to nothing, what was the actual show like? Honestly, pretty much what we expected: good, not great. A few first night jitters but nothing catastrophic. Enough of the host’s charm came through to make plenty of the jokes land.
Pang himself is a bit of an old-fashioned comedian – old school laughs, bit retro, decent night out. And that’s the show he delivered. Having your first guest be the 84 year-old Jack Thompson was a pretty solid statement of intent. This is a tonight show for people who remember tonight shows.
So while it wouldn’t have been out of place 30 years ago, it also would have been on at 10.30pm thirty years ago. Which would have been a much more natural timeslot for it, but we’ve already been over the financials. It’s a show almost entirely driven by how much you like Pang himself. If you’re not a fan or were expecting him to break out a new style, sorry for your loss. There’s only seven more episodes anyway.
It was also a reminder of how dated the tonight show format is. The opening monologue was largely jokes about news clips, which is a form of comedy that is pretty much the only comedy we currently have on Australian television because everything else costs money.
The best segment (the one with the doctor) was largely Pang showing her clips from movies and television and asking “how bullshit is this?”. When most of the comedy is clip-based, the only reason left to do a tonight show in 2025 is for the guests. And yeah, we’ve already pointed out the problem there.
(next week features Kitty Flanagan and that kid from Boy Swallows Universe, which suggests they’re making the right move and going to go hard on the comedy guests moving forward)
Asking people to lower their expectations is always a big ask. But this was a perfectly decent example of the kind of show that usually gets crushed because everyone watching has their sights set too high. We’ll say it again: Australia just doesn’t have enough famous faces to make an interview show work on commercial television*. It also doesn’t have enough writers, viewers, interesting guests or money to get a tonight show over the line.
But it does have Sam Pang, and he’s pretty good at what he does.
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*unless it’s doing a dozen other things at once (see: The Project)
The Weekly is back and who gives a fuck. Maybe someone somewhere outside the upper levels of ABC management is excited about the return – for an eleventh season – of “Bitchy News”. We seriously doubt it. Have you ever heard anyone discuss anything they’ve seen on The Weekly? We haven’t, and we know people who’ve worked on it.
Time for a contractually mandated moment of balance. A big part of what makes The Weekly such a piece of shit comes from factors outside the show itself. If it aired at, say, 10.30pm on a Sunday night, the lowered expectations that come from a graveyard timeslot might possibly make the format seem more entertaining. If it was hosted by, say, a pile of old laundry, then at least it wouldn’t be hosted by Charlie Pickering. If civilisation collapsed and it was the only form of entertainment left, at least the survivors would have an enemy to unify against. And so on.
The ABC’s topical comedy – we can’t even lump this one under the extremely broad term “satire” – has always been a bit hit-and-miss. But as it currently stands, The Weekly is barely worthy of the term “work experience project”. Having a host make fun of news clips only requires a decent host and decent jokes; The Weekly has neither.
As a host, Pickering is a smug smartarse when reading the news, and an easily confused low-status dimwit when doing anything else. It’s not that we don’t enjoy on some level the way Rhys Nicholson treats him dismissively. There’s just no clear comedy reason for the shift. We’re meant to cheer Pickering on when he sticks it to the man, and then side with his guests when they treat him like shit?
You know what? Who cares. Pickering is a crap host, but it’s not like Daryl Somers wasn’t worse and his career spanned decades. But occasionally Daryl had decent material. Pickering gets gear like having Nicholson ask him what his favourite race is and he says “either The Jews or the Tour de France”. Which okay, let’s break this one down:
Maybe the joke is meant to be that Pickering has misunderstood the question in a hilariously inappropriate fashion. So why does he give two answers? Maybe the joke is meant to be that Pickering has understood the question and has given a hilariously inappropriate answer. So why does he give two answers? The set up for the joke is clearly pointing to the comedy answer being “the Tour de France”. So why does he even mention that his favourite race is the Jews*?
Also, and this is one of the things that has consistently given us the shits about The Weekly pretty much since it’s inception, why would anyone with the slightest awareness of what’s going on in Australia and the world today think that now is a good time to make a confused throwaway joke about race?
Not that you can’t make jokes about race, or any other sensitive topic if that’s what floats your boat. But when people are doing it tough, a decent comedian’s job is to make fun of the people making life hard for others. Or at least, stop and have a think about what kind of jokes you want to make on the subject.
The Weekly is stuffed gullet to gills with lazy jokes about how all politicans are basically the same and rich people are a bit silly and reality television is trashy and breakfast television is a great place to find enough material to fill out the rest of the show. The result is beneath you, us, and probably even Charlie Pickering.
The only difference is, he gets a six figure salary out of it.
