Double Zero is Still Zero

Press release time!

Charlie Pickering returns to ABC with a double offering

Friday, September 18, 2015 — Following a highly successful debut season, ABC TV is thrilled to announce The Weekly will return this December with an end of year special called The Yearly.

Host Charlie Pickering: “The team at The Weekly is currently on an extended hiatus from screen duties. Our priority has been expending much-needed time and development funding coming up with a name for the one-hour annual news roundup special. After a laborious three minutes, we settled on The Yearly and will be taking the rest of the time off. See you in December!”

The Yearly will put an arm around the shoulder of 2015, gently take it aside and ask it to take a long hard look at itself. Charlie, Tom Gleeson and Kitty Flanagan, along with The Weekly’s global correspondents, will make sense, and make light, of an extraordinary year of change, upheaval and ridiculous breakfast television clips that no family can afford to miss.

And the good news doesn’t stop there. Charlie and the team will also return with an entirely new season of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering in 2016.

The news comedy show that Australia has ended up with will be back on our screens in February to again cut through the white noise of news, identifying this country’s hypocrisies and absurdities and finding new ways to laugh through the tears. Charlie will again be flanked by two of Australia’s best loved comedians Tom Gleeson and Kitty Flanagan, who would have been rapt to return even if they weren’t contractually obliged to do so.

Executive Producer Chris Walker: “It’s very exciting to be coming back so soon, and one thing we can be sure of in this country is that 2016 will be even ‘newsier’ than 2015 … so I personally can’t wait to see what Charlie, Tom and Kitty come up with.”

ABC Head of Entertainment Jon Casimir: “The Weekly With Charlie Pickering has established itself this year as a genuine new voice, a part of the public discourse, sometimes urgent, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes silly, always funny. We’re very proud to bring more of it to a hungry audience.”

The Yearly will premiere in December on ABC.

“And the good news doesn’t stop there”. No, the good news stopped with the headline. Actually, it stopped with “Charlie Pickering”.

You know how we work here: we drag quotes out of the press release (“highly successful debut season”; “two of Australia’s best-loved comedians”; “identifying this country’s hypocrisies and absurdities”) and point out that the truth lies roughly 180 degrees the other way. But this? Way too much to handle on a Friday afternoon. Talk it out amongst yourselves.

We did like the way the ABC boss referred to a “hungry audience” though. Shame he didn’t specify exactly what they were hungry for that they’d swallow this.