Commercial Comedy Comin’ Atcha

Remember how we were wondering if we were ever going to see Seven’s long-promised sketch show Orange is the New Brown? Seems we are – and sooner than we expected:

New Seven sketch comedy Orange is the New Brown, featuring Nazem Hussain, will debut next week

(that’s 8:30pm Thursday November 8 on Seven)

Following on from Nazeem’s cult hits Salam Café and Legally Brown, Orange is the New Brown continues the comedian’s brand of race, politics and pop-culture with a twist.

From a Real Housewives-type melodrama set in a prison to racial stereotypes when playing charades, this is the show that believes the biggest laughs can be found right under your nose, shamelessly poking fun at real life and modern Australia.

Glass half empty time: is there so much Australian comedy hitting our screens at the end of the ratings year because there’s just so much of it on during the year this is the only time they can fit it in, or is it that Australian comedy is the kind of thing that seems like a good idea in theory but when the programmers finally see the finished product they’re like “shit, do we really have to put this on during ratings?”. We’ll find out in less than a week!

As for the future of Australian comedy, the only commercial network all that interested in Australian comedy – that’d be Ten – had their up fronts this week, and unlike everybody else they actually had a bunch of comedy projects to announce for 2019. Surprising no-one (especially after Ten’s new owners CBS recently bought the international rights to the format), Have You Been Paying Attention? will be back; somewhat more surprising was this:

Ten has revealed four Pilot Week programs will return to air next year: Trial by Kyle, Taboo, Kinne Tonight and Rove McManus’ Bring Back Saturday Night.

Thinking about it, if they had to go through with anything from Pilot Week (and they really didn’t), these probably make the most sense. Trial by Kyle costs bugger-all and attracts attention; Taboo is the kind of “classy” show it doesn’t hurt to have around (even if it still feels like a better fit for SBS). Kinne Tonight was easily the best all-round scripted comedy of the week, and Bring Back Saturday Night is… probably a cheap way to keep Rove on side. Did we imagine there were rumours a while back that The Project was maybe kinda possibly leaving Ten?

Otherwise… well, it’s mostly steady as she goes:

Ten’s Bachelor in Paradise, Hughesy We Have a Problem, Show Me The Movie and Pointless will all return

Gotta keep churning out that content! But technically 75% of that is technically comedy, so it looks like we’ll be busy next year.

Oh, and in old news there’s this:

Ten will also premiere a new comedy series, Mr Black, on the network.

Good to see that even though they lost The Simpsons they hung onto this guy.