Tea and misfits – Another Cuppa? with Granny Bingo

Granny Bingo has built up a cult following in the last decade for its comedy/drag bingo nights and live shows, with performers Thomas Jaspers, Kyle Minall and Scott Brennan playing pensioners Edith Vale, Maureen McGillicuddy and Caroline Springs. In Another Cuppa? with Granny Bingo (available on iView, YouTube or your favourite podcasting platform), the trio present a vodcast from their retirement home. Each week they’re joined by a celebrity guest, who’s given biscuits and cups of tea, and subjected to offbeat questioning.

As you might expect with this sort of thing, Barry Humphries is clearly an influence on Granny Bingo, from the show’s set, which looks like the sort of mid-20th-century suburban home where Sandy Stone might have lived, to the Dame Edna-esque malapropisms, innuendoes and digs at youth culture that make up much of the humour.

Not that there aren’t a few good laughs. Some of the sharpest and best material is about Edith’s tax avoidance and investments in mining companies and property, and this is used to its best effect in the episode with house affordability campaigner and TikToker Purple Pingers (Jordan van den Lamb).

Mr Pingers, to be fair, takes it all in bemused good humour. Other guests seem to tire of the Grannies after a while, and it’s hard not to blame them. Particularly the comedians, who might reasonably expect that the Granny Bingo team would work with them to get laughs, rather than, as it sometimes comes across, against them.

Did we detect a pissed-off air from lispy comedian Rhys Nicholason (The Weekly with Charlie Pickering), as Granny Bingo made him do an ad read for a local butcher, which contained more than the usual number of S’s? Yeah, we did.

There’s a reason why comedy character interviewers (like Norman Gunston, Pixie-Anne Wheatley or indeed Dame Edna) have tended to avoid getting comedians on their show as guests, because they are supposed to be the funny one. It’s better to get a serious actor or a politician or someone else famous who’s just going to collapse with laughter at your silly questions, rather than a comedian who thinks they’re there to make people laugh.

Another Cuppa? with Granny Bingo has some promising ideas and a few good laughs. It’s also nice to see the ABC use its online platforms to try out low-budget ideas with talent who’ve shown they can get an audience in clubs. But sadly, this show often fails to work with its guests effectively and lacks the consistent hilarity that it needs to sustain 10-15 minutes of your time. Which is odd, as Granny Bingo feels like the kind of act that would work brilliantly live, and they were pretty funny on The Cheap Seats a few weeks ago. Is this just a case of right act, wrong show?