Sando 3: Sando continues to be broadcast

This week, Sando introduced a new dimension to the previously fairly-generic supportive-husband-of-the-daughter character Gary. Gary, due to issues in his childhood with his own parents, is addicted to skinny dipping. If he feels stressed, he whips off his clothes, jumps into the pool and everything’s fine. He’s safe, naked in the water. Aaaahhh…

Being addicted to skinny dipping is the kind of potentially-hilarious character quirk that if done well, say on Arrested Development, could be really funny. But this is Sando, so it just seems bizarre and ridiculous. Thanks for trying (no thanks).

But hey, we’re all still enjoying that list of fake suburbs at the start of the show, aren’t we? And the fact that they went with an “everything’s fucked at this branch of Sando’s Warehouse, so let’s have an insurance fire” plot.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, we’ve been watching the first two episodes of the new series of Roseanne, a show which has had all sorts of criticism, partly because of the bizarre and illogical pro-Trump tweets from its star, but, when you get down to watching it, is actually a pretty good show that seems to have captured the mood of the white working class in Trump’s America – in all its contradictions.

Imagine if an Australian family sitcom could do something like that. Really nail, in a funny way, those arguments we had with our older relatives last year about the gay marriage vote, or a few years earlier about Tony Abbott. Or about Bill Shorten, or Malcolm Turnbull, or Pauline Hanson, or loads of other things. Or not be about politics at all and just be a funny show where the various characters find themselves in amusing situations or having funny things to say to each other.

Why is Sando, a show which is basically a soap opera fully of bad sitcom characters, the best Australian comedy can do right now in terms of making a family sitcom?