Please Like Me won the award for Most Outstanding Comedy Program, in case you don’t know, beating these four programs:
Black Comedy
Rosehaven
Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell
Upper Middle Bogan
And as a blog which believes that the best type of comedy program is the one that makes you laugh the most, we were always going to be backing Mad As Hell in this category. Please Like Me may have (allegedly) been a ground-breaking look at gay relationships and mental illness, but it wasn’t as funny as Mad As Hell. Not even slightly.
What Please Like Me was, was the sort of program the critics liked. The sort of program people who prefer and value drama over comedy were always going vote for. Not that Please Like Me contained a great deal of drama, more that it seemed more highbrow at a surface-level glance than a show which regularly features a man dressed as an octopus bursting out of a locker to an early 80’s pop hit, while a character called Vice-Rear Cabin Boy Sir Bobo Gargle looks on.
It’s worrying that whoever picks the winners in the Most Outstanding Comedy category can’t spot the cleverly subversive satire that is the hilarious backbone of Mad As Hell, but this is the Logies and that sort of thing’s never been its forte.
Still, congratulations to whoever decided that Have You Been Paying Attention? was a more Outstanding Entertainment Program than The Weekly. And to the public for voting for Have You Been Paying Attention? in the Best Entertainment Program category. It’s a solid show that raises plenty of laughs each week, and it’s nice to see it win. Ditto Little Lunch in the Most Outstanding Children’s Program category.
Full marks too for the John Clarke tribute. John Clarke and the Logies seems an odd fit, but he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008 and was more than deserving of special recognition this year.
It was also nice to hear Debra Lawrence pay tribute to Clarke in her acceptance speech for Most Outstanding Supporting Actress for Please Like Me.
Debra: “John [Clarke] taught me you play an authentic character and let the script do its work.” #TVWEEKLogies
You know it’s a low benchmark at the Logies when Peter Helliar is the comedy standout although I did like Hamish and Andy.