Words of Wisdom

So this has been stirring up a bit of chat around the traps:

“We could feel the writing was on the wall with network comedy in Australia,” says Kelly. “There are two that do it – 10 and ABC2 – but it’s Lord-of-the-Rings-style odyssey shit to get commissioned. Our experience is that when we were given the green light to either go make a pilot or a proof of concept, it needed to be everything to everyone, and we’d receive heavy rounds of notes.”

Which, you know, isn’t exactly news, but it’s still nice to hear someone – in this case, Aunty Donna’s Broden Kelly – say it out loud.

And he’s one of the few people who actually can say it. The whole point of this particular article is the Aunty Donna team talking about how, after being screwed around by various networks, Aunty Donna are going solo for the forseeable future.

The way they present it, it’s the only logical move. Looking at the current state of Australian television comedy, you wouldn’t want to argue with them.

What is kind of puzzling is that more people aren’t speaking out. Sure, if you’re Working Dog or Charlie Pickering, everything’s coming up roses. But for everyone else, it’s more like fertiliser. And yet the fact that Australian television (with limited exceptions) is basically out of the comedy business is treated as a bigger secret than an AFL players homosexuality.

The Australian media loves to paint a picture where young up-and-comers are all excited about the possibilities in comedy. Then the second your star fades you can shut the fuck up and fuck the fuck off. If you are someone who is funny but can’t get a show up, that’s your fault. Nobody likes a loser.

In 2025, this is obvious bullshit. Loads of funny people who should be on our screens are nowhere to be found. Tons of skilled professionals are thrown on the scrapheap ahead of time. The entire cast of Mad as Hell: where are they now?

Sure, if you’re a stand-up-slash-raconteur who can get laughs on a panel or game show, you can appear on a panel or game show and because they’re the only people who can get work the only shows we get are panel or game shows. Or is it the other way around?

Having someone who is clearly funny and also part of a clearly funny team come out and say “television isn’t interested in us” is important. Because it’s true, and because it’s something that needs to be dragged out into the open.

Audiences still have a vague idea that Australian television comedy is just going through a quiet patch – largely, it’s suggested, the fault of everyone in the country not being funny enough. Don’t worry, we’ll be back to culture-defining comedy like the good old days* before long. This simply isn’t the case.

Structural forces are firmly in place to prevent any decent scripted comedy from being made in this country. Unless something big changes, the genre is dead. We might still get the occasional revamp of an overseas format or much-loved classic, but fresh new scripted comedy? The ABC can’t even announce a new series of Fisk, and it just won every Logie on the bench.

Oh wait, that’s right:

“With the Oscars, if you win best director or best picture, you can have a career because there’s an industry there to support it,” says Bonanno. “What frustrates me about the Logies, the Awgies and Aactas is we give these awards out, but then what? There’s no room to grow. I won an Awgie for sitcom writing, and it did less for my career than before I had one.”

Though to be fair, the Awgies can be a bit crap.

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*Usually defined as “when Fast Forward was on”, “when The Late Show was on”, “when Kath & Kim was on” or “when Summer Heights High was on”