Crime Night! puts crime under the microscope this November
Hosted by the award-winning Julia Zemiro, ABC’s brand new entertainment show Crime Night! premieres on Wednesday 5 November at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
The six-part series dives beneath the surface of crime to explore the science and psychology behind it all.
Each week Julia is joined by expert criminologists Professor Danielle Reynald and Dr David Bartlett, alongside a rotating panel of Australia’s sharpest comedians to unpack a different area of crime and criminology. Special guests include Celia Pacquola, Mel Buttle, Claire Hooper, Rhys Nicholson, Susie Youssef, Nick Cody, Ryan Shelton, Lizzy Hoo, Alexei Toliopoulos and Steph Tisdell.
Each episode features a unique Experiment of the Week, where panellists or the studio audience become unwitting accomplices in testing long-held assumptions about criminal behaviour. Adding to the mix is comedy sensation, Lou Wall, who delivers their own analysis on a quirky criminal curiosity tied to the week’s theme.
While the criminologists share insightful analysis and the comedians ask the questions we’re all dying to know, Crime Night! blends real-life criminal cases, witty storytelling and entertaining social experiments to expose the frailties, illusions and delusions of our very human obsession with crime.
What does this have to do with comedy? Check out that line-up of guests! Ryan Shelton: there’s a name we haven’t seen in a while.
Also funny: the way this seems to have backed off a little from the original concept, which was
a comedy true-crime panel show where real-life cases are examined through the lens of criminology and comedy.
Sure, if you squint real hard they’re same show… kinda. But you don’t need to be an expert criminologist to realise that letting comedians anywhere near actual true crime cases is a really, really bad idea.
So now they’re just going to be making jokes about “a different area of crime and criminology” instead of specific grim cases of human suffering and loss. Can’t wait to see what “entertaining social experiments” they come up with. Good thing Cluedo is still under copyright.
Oh yeah, there’s a trailer: Guess they won’t be stabbing a random comedian to death each week after all
The other day, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article called Is the new Mother and Son already better than the original? Our reviewer says yes. It’s a legitimate question to ask about Matt Okine’s remake of the fondly remembered 80s/90s sitcom, although it’s notable that the SMH didn’t ask it when series one dropped two years ago.
We’re guessing the SMH didn’t ask it because the first series of Okine’s remake of Mother and Sonwasn’t that great. Amongst other problems, it spent way too much time trying to be a realistic dramedy, showing the emotional impact of the mental decline of mother Maggie (Denise Scott) on son Arthur (Okine) rather than being a funny show about two people stuck together. Quite a contrast to the original version, written by Geoffrey Atherden, which was 100% going for laughs, even when the jokes about Maggie’s dementia were a bit much for some members of the audience.
Having said that, the second series of Okine’s Mother and Son is funnier than the first. Episode one, in particular, felt like it was within touching distance of being a classic farce, with mother, son and the rest of the family ensnared in a series of escalating lies that almost tore them apart.
But the rest of Mother and Son series two hasn’t managed to maintain that level of quality. So, why is the SMH talking up it? Here are a few excerpts from the article; perhaps you can identify the theme…
Judging from the pained reactions of “is nothing sacred?” that met its announcement, the reboot was bound to face unfair comparisons with a classic that won its stars – Garry McDonald and Ruth Cracknell – three Gold Logies between them during its original run.
That it revealed itself to be a charming update with its own understated sensibility, fun performances from Okine as apathetic Arthur and Denise Scott as ditsy mum Maggie, and more than enough to say about the Millennial v Boomer culture wars, was probably lost on many who didn’t give it a chance.
…
The show again mines relatable laughs from the generational divide. Maggie doesn’t get Arthur’s “job” as a content creator; Arthur has to explain to Maggie how streaming works, and that cash is not a thing anyone uses any more, and to not trust 5G conspiracy theories she reads on Facebook, and to not give out her account information to random callers posing as “the bank”.
Is this a sitcom or a documentary of my life? Okine, the show’s main writer, understands that the central Millennial experience is worrying about your Boomer parents getting scammed online, in phone calls, in real life. They are such a vulnerable bunch.
As a depiction of the “intergenerational bastardry” that defines Australian life in the 2020s, this show couldn’t be more precise. Like every situation between home-owning Boomers and have-nothing Millennials, money is the show’s underlying obsession: every episode involves Arthur and his sister Robbie (Angela Nica Sullen) scheming to get their hands on their mum’s nest egg, or to stop others from getting to it.
The first episode sees Maggie finding a paramour during a family resort holiday; Arthur and Robbie are instantly sceptical about what this guy is trying to steal from their mum. It’s sad this is what parent-child relationships have come to, but blame capitalism. Or the housing crisis. Or the cowardly political class who won’t do the obvious things to fix it.
For a show with death and ageing at its core (and there are more than a few clues that Maggie is succumbing to dementia), it still keeps things sitcom light. There’s a playful warmth between Okine and Scott’s endless bickering that’s just fun to sit with.
Yeah, we get it, the reviewer prefers Okine’s version because it’s relatable to them. They also fail to say much about Atherden’s original, which, we’re guessing, means they haven’t seen much of it, let alone engaged with the idea that it was resonant with audiences at the time.
One thing we do know about comedy about Boomers and Millennials, though, is that Matt Okine’s Mother and Son is hardly on its own for tackling the topic. Australian comedies that have covered Boomers and Millennials, the housing crisis and how capitalism is screwing younger generations over the past decade include, but are not limited to, Tonightly, At Home Alone Together, various episodes of Fresh Blood, a number of Mark Humphries’ sketches for 7.30, some of the better guest segments on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering and, to an extent, Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Gen. In fact, it’s hard to think of topics that have inspired more Australian comedy in the past decade. Apart from maybe that period when Sydney comedians were obsessed with bin chickens.
So, that article on the SMH is bunk, basically. There possibly is an argument to be made that Matt Okine’s Mother and Son is better than the original, but it isn’t “I’m a Millennial and I understand this”. Things might be funny because you can relate to them, but not everything that’s relatable is funny.
It’s no surprise that the new season of Mother and Son is an improvement over the first. Okay, yes, it is a bit of a surprise, because how often do Australian comedy series improve with time? We’re so used to duds that turn fully half-arsed in their second go-round that it’s easy to forget that with practice humans – usually – get better at things.
The most obvious reason that this second visit with the 21st Century version of Maggie and Arthur is a step up is Denise Scott. She was easily the best thing in the first season: she was also (it’s no secret) unwell at the time. Now on the mend, she’s back in full force and the series is a lot better for it.
The writers also seem to have realised that if you have someone of the caliber of Denise Scott on your show, it’s not a bad idea to write to her strengths. So Maggie is now a bit more of a freewheeling nutbag and slightly less of a sinister nutbag manipulating her son to keep him under her thumb. It makes her funnier to watch, and while technically it damages the central concept of the show a little, at this stage who cares?
Speaking of the central concept, the first season had no idea what to do with it. Scott could handle her side of things, sure. But “re-imaginer” and co-lead Matt Okine didn’t seem interested in playing a character who wasn’t yet another video-game playing man-child looking for a partner he could sponge off. That undercut the psychological underpinnings of the series in a big way. This Arthur wasn’t neurotic and under his mother’s thumb psychologically. He just wanted someone – anyone – to clean up after him.
So this season has, somewhat sensibly, decided that the mother / son relationship here is more akin to a couple of flatmates. He can’t afford to move out, she needs someone to set up her internet, his sister is not a great comedy foil but hey, bring on the gags. It’s a lot more disposable, but given the choice between failing at being great and succeeding at being just okay, this particular team have chosen… wisely.
Mother and Son is much more surface level this time around. Pretty much every episode sounds like there could be some solid characterisation going on – 2/3rds of them seem to involve some new character coming between Maggie and Arthur, while the rest involve some situation that dials up their co-dependent relationship up to 11.
And yet, each time the actual episode is really just another story about rich oldies hogging the houses, the cash and the remote. Which is fine (and accurate), but probably the stuff of a sitcom that, you know, has a well-thought out position on things. At least we get a bunch of okay jokes and a guest performer hamming it up to some (usually excessive) degree. Jean Kittson is back! Yeah, that’s a win.
Going more cartoony was definitely the right choice, even if it’s not going to save this pre-Christmas turkey. Maybe given another five seasons this could eventually lead to a half-dozen classic episodes: who knew that Matt Okine and Denise Scott were a halfway decent comedy team? Nobody who watched the first season that’s for sure, they hardly seemed to share a scene together.
This reboot remains pointless and vaguely annoying. Seeing Kitson and Scott together just makes you wish they’d been given their own sitcom; meanwhile, Okine’s manchild act is increasingly butting up against some hard limits as he goes from “comedy pathetic” to “just regular pathetic” and we go from “laughing at” to “did our phone just ding better look at it for twenty minutes just in case”.
But compared to the first season’s urine-soaked trainwreck, this is passable viewing if you stumble across it by mistake. Not that the ABC has had a new viewer since 2012, but fingers crossed all those people watching Fisk on Netflix will one day figure out what that weird sideways twisted figure 8 in the end credits stands for
Australian Comedy Royalty Unites for New ABC Series Bad Company
The ABC, Screen Australia and VicScreen are thrilled to announce two of Australia’s most beloved comedians, Anne Edmonds and Kitty Flanagan will join forces for the new 6-part comedy series, Bad Company.
Created by, written and starring AACTA award-winning comedian Anne Edmonds (Have You Been Paying Attention?, Get Krack!n, Edge of the Bush) and produced by Guesswork Television, Bad Company will see Edmonds bring her signature bite to a bold new creation as she stars alongside comedy powerhouse, Kitty Flanagan (Fisk, Utopia, Have You Been Paying Attention?). Both known for their razor-sharp wits and sell-out national tours, these award-winning stars and friends will play fierce rivals who test each other to the limit.
Set within the crumbling walls of The Argyle, a venerable iconic theatre company on the brink of bankruptcy, Bad Company follows Margie (Edmonds), the Argyle’s volatile artistic director, whose unchecked whims have sent the company spiralling, and Julia (Flanagan) a high-flying corporate executive brought in to clean up Margie’s mess.
Creator/writer/star Edmonds says “I’m thrilled to be making an ABC comedy about something so close to my heart – the drama behind the scenes. And getting to make it with Kitty Flanagan? A dream come true.”
ABC Head of Scripted Rachel Okine said “Anne Edmonds and Kitty Flanagan – what a match made in heaven. ABC audiences are going to be delighted to see these two comedic powerhouses going head-to-head in the most unusual of workplace settings.”
Director of Narrative Content at Screen Australia Louise Gough said: “Anne Edmonds and Kitty Flanagan are two of Australia’s iconic comedic talents and I’ve no doubt they are going to raise the curtain, wipe off the greasepaint and cue the spotlight on this biting satire set in the theatre world. Edmonds’ and Flanagan’s hilarious new characters will delight audiences here and around the world.”
VicScreen CEO, Caroline Pitcher said, “We’re delighted to be in ‘good company’ with Anne Edmonds and Kitty Flanagan, two of Australia’s favourite comedians, to make Bad Company in Victoria. The wild global success of Fisk has proven that our distinctive Australian humour can tickle the funny bone of audiences here and overseas. I can’t wait to see the shenanigans when Anne and Kitty do battle backstage in this clever new series.”
Guesswork Managing Director, Kevin Whyte said, “In a surprise to no one who follows Australian comedy, Anne Edmonds has created an hilarious world with a new signature character – Margie Argyle. It has been a long time coming and to have Anne joined by Kitty makes it an even bigger thrill.”
The series will be directed by Tom Peterson (Fisk) and produced by Andrew Walker (Deadloch, Rosehaven) with filming commencing next week in Melbourne.
Bad Company will air on the ABC in 2026.
Good news, it’s a new ABC sitcom that might not suck! Low praise indeed, but hey, we’ve been burnt before.
What this might mean for more Fisk, who knows? More Flanagan is always welcome, and Edmonds is funny in pretty much everything she appears in. File this one under “a safe pair of hands”.
It’s interesting to read the VicScreen CEO specifically mention the global success of Fisk. That’s a rare good news story out of Australian comedy – one of Team Tumbleweeds has seen two separate overseas-based creative types talking it up on social media in the last fortnight alone.
And having the head honcho at Screen Australia talk about amusing audiences “here and around the world”? Yeah, seems that quirky low-key Australian comedy is, once again, bankable to those with their noses firmly stuck in the air – so they can see what’s going on overseas, of course.
Will the industry side of things find a way to screw it up by throwing every spare cent at, say, a Kate Langbroek sitcom? Probably. But if there’s even a little bit more motivation to invest in local comedy by somebody holding the purse strings, we’ll gladly take a string of Fisk knock-offs.
Time to start pitching that sitcom about a socially awkward cop titled Frisk.
Game show Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation was always a bit of a marginal case when it comes to comedy. Being hosted by Shaun Micallef at his most unhinged made the first series a must-see for anyone who liked to laugh… often at (not with) Josh Thomas. The revival on Nine wasn’t exactly bad, but it lacked whatever it was that originally made it classic viewing. And now it’s back again! Yay?
The new version on Ten isn’t out there trying to reinvent the format. There’s three teams, representing the eternal values of “old fart” “smartarse” and “easily distracted young person”. They answer a bunch of mostly pop-culture and history questions while the host occasionally gets annoyed. It sort of worked then, it kind of works now.
What nobody really wants to admit is that a big part of what made this work in the first place was the personalities involved. Shaun Micallef is, well, Shaun Micallef. His first run at host was probably the last time he really let his freak flag fly on national television. Since then he’s worked hard to show he can be trusted to host, well, pretty much everything. Nobody would have guessed the host who gave us a competition to see who could best shovel ectoplasm into a toilet would be fronting a travel series a decade later.
Amanda Keller did a decent if unremarkable job as Baby Boomer team captain, but it was Charlie Pickering as head of Gen X and Josh Thomas as Gen Y boss that made the whole thing work. Yes, they were kinda crap – a trait they have both stuck with to this day. It was Pickering’s blatant grovelling and Thomas’ empty-headed spaciness that made them good foils for Micallef, and gave their teams personality beyond “he’s young” and “he’s slightly less young”.
So far the current version (known as Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Gen) has shown none of that. It’s only the first episode, but as the revival on Nine didn’t have it either despite bringing back a still fairly manic Micallef, we’re not holding out a lot of hope. At least Hughesy seems to understand the brief, though being a demented old rattletrap might be his actual act these days.
Otherwise, the only other plus is host Anne Edmonds. She’s funny in the kind of self-aware way that can almost sell some of the dodgier jokes. She also seems to get that the show only works if the dynamic between her and the teams largely involves her being annoyed. The captains, on the other hand, are yet to reveal an ability to do their share of the heavy lifting.
The show is too long and the set is way too big and the games are wacky without being wacky enough. All of which is to say that this is a game show first and a comedy second. Which is fine, but don’t expect us to tune in each week unless things rapidly spiral out of control. And even then, it’s still going to be a game show for the whole family, so… nope.
The real problem here as far as we’re concerned is anoldone. Game shows are always game shows first, no matter how funny they want to be. The format almost always finds a way to block the comedy. Every second that’s spent explaining the rules of a game is a second we’re not laughing. Unless it involves Tom Gleisner in a stupid hat and even then it’s iffy.
As a silly game show, Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Gen is fine. As comedy, it’s not there yet. And that “yet” is pretty optimistic.
Isn’t it lovely when all the nice characters end up happy at the end of a TV series? And the bad characters get what they deserve? That was the heartwarming vibe the final episode of the second series of Austin was going for.
So, instead of blethering on about why Austin isn’t funny again, in this blog, we’re going to pose one simple question with reference to Austin: shouldn’t Australian funding bodies – and Austin was funded by Screen Australia, Screen Canberra and Screen New South Wales – fund a mostly Australian show?
Sure, Austin was mainly set in Canberra and employed mostly Australian actors and crew. But with three out of four of the creators and most of the writers being British (including Kevin Cecil and Andy Reilly, who wrote for British comedies like Black Books and Little Britain), plus the top-billed stars being British comedians Ben Miller and Sally Phillips, whatever happened to this being a vehicle for Love on the Spectrum’s Michael Theo?
Seriously, Michael, call your agent, because those Brits in charge gave you less airtime than you should be getting in a sitcom named for the character you played!
Much of the time, it felt like the main theme of Austin wasn’t about a guy finding out who his real father is, or discovering he’s a talented writer, or getting the confidence to leave the home he grew up in, or even about him being autistic in the world. The main theme of Austin was a bickering British couple trying to make a children’s TV series despite one of them being cancelled for accidentally sharing far-right content on social media.
That’s what got most of the screen time, anyway. Those scenes where Austin got a girlfriend or Austin’s mum hooked up with a government minister were all pretty perfunctory and had very little depth, even for a show of this type. Were they worth the investment from three Australian funding bodies?
We get that funding bodies and the for-profit production companies that take their cash (Northern Pictures and ITV Studios, in the case of Austin) want to be able to sell their shows to other countries, and having two British comedians front and centre would presumably help with that. But, again, should Australian funding bodies be stumping up most of the cash to make shows which aren’t really telling Australian stories?
Britain has a television industry which makes high-quality shows famous throughout the world, including comedies. And they’re not funding shows about Australia; they’re funding shows about Britain. Featuring British characters, doing things in Britain. And while British television, like Australian television, seems to make fewer sitcoms these days, it’s not up to Australian television to give unemployed British comedians work. Although we seem to have done thata lot recently.
Australian funding bodies should focus on giving unemployed Australian comedians work on the comedies they fund. Australian comedians could make something at least as good as Austin without British help, and if it’s a good show, it might even sell overseas (hello Fisk). It’s time Australian funding bodies got better at funding local talent, and not funding further series of Austin would be a good start.
ABC, Screen Australia and VicScreen are thrilled to announce filming has commenced in Melbourne on Dog Park, a heart-warming new six-part comedy series starring Leon Ford (The Last Anniversary,Elvis) and the award-winning Celia Pacquola (Rosehaven, Love Me).
Produced by Matchbox Pictures, which is part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group, Dog Park was co-created by Leon Ford and Amanda Higgs (Bad Behaviour, Mustangs FC). The series is directed by Matthew Saville (Please Like Me, Upright) and Nina Buxton (Heartbreak High, Summer Love), and is written by Leon Ford, Penelope Chai (Troppo, Turn Up The Volume), Nick Coyle (Bump) and Chloe Wong (Turn Up The Volume).
In the grip of a mid-life crisis, Roland (Leon Ford) meets the eternal optimist Samantha (Celia Pacquola) and her mismatched, life-loving group of dog-parkers. As Roland begrudgingly keeps returning to the park, he comes to realise he actually really needs a community to belong to.
At a time when it’s needed most, Dog Park is a feel-good story of love, loyalty and licking – and doing good for the sake of it.
ABC Head of Scripted, Rachel Okine says: “We can’t wait to share this incredibly funny and furry show with ABC audiences. This very talented team have infused their story with heart and humour, and we’re delighted to bring you a show you can watch with the whole family, including your pet!”
Executive Producer for Matchbox Pictures and Co-Creator Amanda Higgs says: “We couldn’t be more thrilled to be joining with the ABC to bring some much-needed joy to the world right now, through the transformative power of dogs and the love of their human companions. We hope audiences will enjoy our series as much as we have delighted in making it. With huge thanks to our key investors in Screen Australia and VicScreen and our loyal team at Matchbox Pictures.”
Screen Australia Director of Narrative Content Louise Gough said, “Even cat people will adore Dog Park. As one of our cherished places of community and connection, the local dog park is the perfect backdrop for this latest funny-sad series from Leon Ford and accomplished producer Amanda Higgs. With its universal theme of belonging through the relatable world of dog park communities, this joyful series will capture hearts around the world – human and dogs alike!”
VicScreen CEO Caroline Pitcher said: “We’re paws-itively delighted to support Leon Ford and Amanda Higgs and the Matchbox Pictures team to make this joyful new series in Victoria. We can’t wait to see all the fun and games when Roland, Samantha and their four-legged friends’ rendezvous in Dog Park.”
Dog Park will premiere on ABC TV and ABC iview in 2026.
Has anyone ever, in the history of comedy, laughed at something described as a “feel good story”? How about “heart warming”? Or “doing good for the sake of it”? C’mon, that’s obviously a sure-fire recipe for comedy. Just think of all those hilarious kind-hearted sitcom characters over the years, like… uh… you know… yeah.
Oh wait, it’s “funny-sad”. Forget we said anything. About this being funny at least.
But Also John Clarke is a worthy tribute to one of Australasia’s great comedy figures. It’s a touching look at a much-loved husband and father, an insightful examination of the forces that shaped him and an always welcome retrospective covering some of the funniest material of the last 40 years. Frankly unmissable – five stars.
And with that out of the way, onto the actual discussion.
All of the above is 100% accurate, by the way. If you have any interest in the work of John Clarke – and if you don’t, please show yourself to the nearest exit – then it’s a must-see, both for the extensive clips and narration featuring the man himself, and also for the sensitive and compelling fashion in which director Lorin Clarke has put it all together. It’s an interesting documentary about an interesting person, which is a pretty rare thing at the best of times.
But for comedy nerds, the questions are slightly different. Backstory and tributes can only get you so far: where’s the obscure clips we’ve come to see? In Clarke’s case, so much of his career was firmly in the spotlight right from the start that “obscure” means something slightly different.
Usually it means “stuff that’s fallen off the radar” – Bob Franklin’s numerous works for pay TV in the 90s, for example. Here it largely means “stuff that isn’t all that important in the scheme of things”. This is a look back at a very popular comedian: if you’re a fan, you’ve probably seen a lot of this before, and can think of a lot of other things they didn’t have time to include.
It’s also, as you’d expect from a film with a lot of NZ funding, very much focused on Fred Dagg – it’s at least a quarter of the film, and possibly close to a third. Australian comedy fans might be a bit less interested, but it’s also the part of the film where Clarke’s career has some real shape to it. He came from nowhere, became a star / made enemies, and the whole thing got so big he had to leave town and start again elsewhere.
Because this is basically a salute / retrospective with some family insights scattered throughout, it hits pretty much all the high points without having much room for the quirkier corners. Clarke was turning up in every local sitcom for a while there, from Welcher & Welcher to Kath & Kim, but his supporting roles in other people’s efforts – aside from his star turn in Death in Brunswick – are largely left out. Fans of his work playing the same character he always did – only now he’s evil – in Crackerjack, bad news… though there is a photo of Mick Molloy here at one stage so keep your chin up.
There’s also not a whole lot about his work on The Gillies Report, which is a bit of a shame. Farnarkling does get a decent look, but there’s a bit of a feeling overall that The Gillies Report was something of a dead end – it’s not like Clarke did that kind of thing again, and here Gerry Connelly gets as much air time as Max Gillies, which is definitely a statement of some kind.
The political interviews Clarke & Dawe did for close to three decades obviously get their fair share of love, with appearances from various ABC staffers (and Jana Wendt) to provide a bit of behind-the-scenes colour. Their bumping from the actual (then) 7.30 Report to a stand alone slot, or their dumping from A Current Affair suggest not everyone behind the scenes were big fans; we don’t expect this kind of doco to name names, but now that Clarke & Dawe are safely in the rear view mirror it certainly seems like the bumps have been smoothed out in the official history.
As a bunch of cranks, we’d love someone to take a closer look at his legacy – not just in New Zealand (which this does to some extent), but in Australia, where you’d have to say the picture is far less rosy. Do we need to point out once again that the ABC axed *all* their satirical content after the election of the Albanese government? Probably not, but we just can’t help ourselves.
So plenty of food for thought here. Clarke was clearly a unique talent – and a wonderful human being besides, unless you were an authority figure – and this is a worthy tribute to his life and works. Run, don’t walk to check it out on the big screen; just don’t complain to us that they didn’t show that clip from BackBerner where he played Peter Reith.
So this has been stirring up a bit of chat around the traps:
“We could feel the writing was on the wall with network comedy in Australia,” says Kelly. “There are two that do it – 10 and ABC2 – but it’s Lord-of-the-Rings-style odyssey shit to get commissioned. Our experience is that when we were given the green light to either go make a pilot or a proof of concept, it needed to be everything to everyone, and we’d receive heavy rounds of notes.”
Which, you know, isn’t exactly news, but it’s still nice to hear someone – in this case, Aunty Donna’s Broden Kelly – say it out loud.
And he’s one of the few people who actually can say it. The whole point of this particular article is the Aunty Donna team talking about how, after being screwed around by various networks, Aunty Donna are going solo for the forseeable future.
The way they present it, it’s the only logical move. Looking at the current state of Australian television comedy, you wouldn’t want to argue with them.
What is kind of puzzling is that more people aren’t speaking out. Sure, if you’re Working Dog or Charlie Pickering, everything’s coming up roses. But for everyone else, it’s more like fertiliser. And yet the fact that Australian television (with limited exceptions) is basically out of the comedy business is treated as a bigger secret than an AFL players homosexuality.
The Australian media loves to paint a picture where young up-and-comers are all excited about the possibilities in comedy. Then the second your star fades you can shut the fuck up and fuck the fuck off. If you are someone who is funny but can’t get a show up, that’s your fault. Nobody likes a loser.
In 2025, this is obvious bullshit. Loads of funny people who should be on our screens are nowhere to be found. Tons of skilled professionals are thrown on the scrapheap ahead of time. The entire cast of Mad as Hell: where are they now?
Sure, if you’re a stand-up-slash-raconteur who can get laughs on a panel or game show, you can appear on a panel or game show and because they’re the only people who can get work the only shows we get are panel or game shows. Or is it the other way around?
Having someone who is clearly funny and also part of a clearly funny team come out and say “television isn’t interested in us” is important. Because it’s true, and because it’s something that needs to be dragged out into the open.
Audiences still have a vague idea that Australian television comedy is just going through a quiet patch – largely, it’s suggested, the fault of everyone in the country not being funny enough. Don’t worry, we’ll be back to culture-defining comedy like the good old days* before long. This simply isn’t the case.
Structural forces are firmly in place to prevent any decent scripted comedy from being made in this country. Unless something big changes, the genre is dead. We might still get the occasional revamp of an overseas format or much-loved classic, but fresh new scripted comedy? The ABC can’t even announce a new series of Fisk, and it just won every Logie on the bench.
Oh wait, that’s right:
“With the Oscars, if you win best director or best picture, you can have a career because there’s an industry there to support it,” says Bonanno. “What frustrates me about the Logies, the Awgies and Aactas is we give these awards out, but then what? There’s no room to grow. I won an Awgie for sitcom writing, and it did less for my career than before I had one.”
Though to be fair, the Awgies can be a bit crap.
.
*Usually defined as “when Fast Forward was on”, “when The Late Show was on”, “when Kath & Kim was on” or “when Summer Heights High was on”
It’s the halfway point of Austin series 2, and what have we learned? Not to watch Austin for starters. When an episode begins with Austin (Michael Theo) being told by his publicist that if he wants to sell books to the kids he has to say his favourite singer is Taylor Swift… what the fuck is this?
A hundred taxpayer-funded episodes ago this was a sweet story of a young man trying to connect with his morally flexible father. Now it’s somehow developed into not one but two pissweak media satires. You remember media satire – that’s when the scriptwriters vanish up their own arse. Is there anything audiences care less about than the comedy that arises from a book tour? How about the comedy that arises from putting together a television show?
We joke, of course – there’s no comedy to be found here, just references to Euphoria. And let’s just linger at the scene of this car crash for a moment. Why does Austin – who loves Frank Sinatra, The Goodies and Doctor Who – have the taste of a 55-year-old man? He’s in his late 20s, and the joke is just that he’s an out-of-touch nerd. So why isn’t he a fan of, say, the MCU? We hear that’s daggy now.
But of course, the real point of this scene is to tell the audience of 55-year-olds that they – like Austin – have good taste. All this modern muck? Rubbish. In Austin, either you are a 50-year-old or you think like one. The ABC sure does know its audience.
Which is presumably why this season seems to be turning into a fictionalised version of Love on the Spectrum. You know, the much-loved show that gave Theo his big break. Once, his real-life search for romance won the nation’s heart. Now he’s back looking for love, only this time… it’s scripted. So yeah, a lot less charming.
This romance subplot also features Natalie Abbott, AKA the star of Aftertaste. Does her two-for-two appearance in two of the ABC’s most aimlessly pissweak sitcoms of recent years make her a name you can trust when it comes to comedies you can’t? Seems harsh, but you can’t argue with facts.
As for the other plot thread – which, we should point out, in no real way overlaps with Austin’s search for love and pop cultural relevance – it’s about the dramas of casting a children’s television show. Oh great. This plot somehow manages to be both totally unrealistic and deathly familiar. It’s the kind of thing sitcom writers come up with when their only point of reference is other sitcoms.
It’s not that the wacky comedic premise isn’t a wacky comedy premise. Sure, it’s totally possible* that a TV production company would buy the rights to a series of illustrated kids books, then decide to film them as a live action series with a man in a bear suit, then hire a high profile actor to play the bear and be fine with him cutting a hole in the front of the bear suit so his face would be visible. Possible… just not funny.
Maybe it would get laughs if the comedy was “oh no, we accidentally sold our property to a bunch of complete fuckwits who are totally going to ruin it”. Instead, we’re supposed to treat them as serious professionals, and Julian (Ben Miller), the book’s author, as a meddling chump who’s ruined everything. Which he has, obviously. Just not in a way that’s funny or much of anything beyond a bunch of stale sitcom gestures.
It’s not a new insight to point out that Austin feels very much like a show where the audience is not an active consideration. But increasingly it feels like a show where reality hardly gets a look in either. Why are we getting jokes about book tours and television production when neither feels even remotely authentic or interesting?
Making shit up is fine if it’s funny shit. But Austin exists in a half-baked fantasy world where even situations the audience will never experience – book tours, television sets – don’t feel plausible. And we all know what funny shit without the funny is.
