It’s Been a Big Week in Comedy

C’mon: the return of The Cheap Seats (yay!), Gruen (boo!), Anne Edmonds announced as the new host of the returning Talkin’ ’bout Your Gen(eration), Sam Pang Tonight continuing to air long after any other Australian talk show would have been axed, Taskmaster Australia… is also on… Yep, it’s a big week in comedy!

It’s just not a new week, which is the problem.

It’s been quiet around here of late. Which seems a bit unusual in that it’s actually been a pretty good period for local comedy. The ABC is fucked of course, but 10 seems committed to Australian comedy in a way we haven’t seen from a commercial network in over a decade. Yes, they’re keeping good shows on the air. They’re also putting on other comedy to replace those shows when they finish. They have actual comedy timeslots where different shows rotate in and out, which is exactly what comedy needs.

The problem is that none of those shows are new shows. Even Sam Pang Tonight is a tonight show, which is a format older than many African nations. Who’s getting excited about the return of Gruen, a show that has remained unchanged since 2012? Nobody under 60! At least Wil Anderson made a joke about how the ABC has no young viewers. Gee, wonder why that is?

And look, The Cheap Seats is probably pound for pound the funniest show on Australian television. It is exactly the kind of show we should have back on our screens regular as clockwork. We need something to show audiences that hey, not all local productions are made for overseas audiences or as a form of brand maintenance.

But increasingly it’s hard to shake the idea that the reason why The Cheap Seats keeps on coming back has less to do with the fact that it’s really funny and more to do with it being an offshoot from Have You Been Paying Attention? Which is what, twelve years old now? And back in little over a week!

HYBPA? is a classic of Australian comedy. Okay, it’s from a team that once upon a time would ditch a series the second it threatened to become stale, but that’s how it goes in comedy. The older you get, the more you like to stick with things.

The problem isn’t that Working Dog are milking their current projects for all they’re worth. They’ve more than earned that right. It’s that everyone coming up is also locked into the wider cycle of keeping old formats alive for the sake of name recognition.

For example, Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation, a format that is only 16 years old, is back as Talkin’ ’bout Your Gen, and… uh… Yeah, we like Anne Edmonds, and we’re keen to see how she goes as host. Decent team captains (currently still under wraps) are going to be a vital, but there’s enough talent out there to make this work. The original did pretty well, even with Charlie Pickering and Josh Thomas.

TAYG is a show that only ever worked when it was very clearly tailored to the unique comedy stylings of Shaun Micallef. You can see why Edmonds got the gig. She has a similar range as Micallef as far as mixing stern and silly. But this is a show that was built on pushing things way too far in a fairly specific direction. Even Micallef couldn’t make the reboot on Nine all that memorable.

Anne Edmonds hosting a comedy game show? Great! Anne Edmonds hosting the third try at a format that first aired in 2009? That’s par for the course on Australian television, where old news is good news and new ideas can try again in a decade or two.

Sure, everyone knows that the last decent Australian television formats were invented when Kevin Rudd was PM. And by “everyone” we mean “everyone involved in program development on Australian television”. But just because 2009’s hit debuts The Project and Masterchef are still going strong doesn’t mean that 10 has to stay stuck in the past, right?

Oh who are we kidding they’ll be bringing back Magda Szubanski and The Spearman Experiment next.