Talkin’ ’bout Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Gen

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 The revival on Nine wasn’t exactly bad, but it lacked whatever it was that originally made it classic viewing.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 an old one. 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.