Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2025
Welcome to the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2025. Our readers have been voting for the best and worst of Australian comedies of 2025, and you can find the results below, but first, here’s a reminder of the 2025 comedy year that was…
Every year with Australian comedy the baseline gets that much lower. We never really get a shocker of a year – there’s too many reliable favorites ticking along for that – but unless things get noticeably better, then they’re getting worse. Things did not get noticeably better in 2025.
Even in recent years, which were all average at best, there was usually something (often Fisk) that stood out from the pack. We need that kind of thing – something fresh and new that’s clearly head and shoulders above what surrounds it – every single year if Australian comedy isn’t going to slowly die. We did not get a show like that in 2025.
That’s not to say there weren’t good shows out there. But they’re all the kind of thing we should be building on: Have You Been Paying Attention? led to The Cheap Seats, which led to… a revival of Thank God You’re Here which seems to have been axed. Fair enough, that happens – but when that’s all that happens, things have gone off the boil.
We’re so used to Australian comedy being unexciting that we don’t realise that being unexciting is what’s going to kill it. The good shows are closer to the end of their run than the beginning; the new shows get axed before they can get better. Only Austin, which increasingly seems like a money laundering scheme for its UK producers, abides.
Part of the problem is television itself. Years ago we’d often (by our standards) be asked why we didn’t focus more on YouTube and other online outlets for comedy; the networks and streaming services clearly weren’t interested in new talent, so why not pay more attention to where the future was? And then it turned out that online comedy was as much of a dead end as far as developing talent went as everywhere else, shoutout to The Inspired Unemployed.
Much like big sporting events and nightly news programs, comedy as we know it is a creature of good old fashioned television. Online comedy is pranks, seven second sketches that rely on editing tricks, and fake newspapers with headlines like “Government Useless for Eightieth Year Running”; live performance is stand up and the occasional game show. You want anything beyond that, you need television – and television these days is pretty much rooted.
No only does Australian comedy have to work uphill just to exist on our televisions – maybe the ABC will get their act together but probably not; the second Ten changes owners that’ll be it for comedy on commercial TV – but the medium of television itself is on the way out. When it becomes a seamless transition from TikTok to YouTube to a streaming service that is legally required to make programming here but it doesn’t have to contain any local content, where does that leave comedy? And when comedy in 2025 still involves prank shows and Charlie Pickering, why should anyone care?
Seriously, even the spambots know what comedy fans need to make it through a year like the one we just had:
When we said we wanted the 80s back, this isn’t quite what we had in mind.
Worst Sketches
Runner-up
The Role of a Lifetime
15% of the total votes
Oh yeah, this happened. Remember a time when a decent comedy sketch could reverberate through society and give us a whole new way to look at something? Us neither.
Runner-up
The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
39% of the total votes
In the shithouse excuse for comedy that is The Weekly, those segments where Margaret Pomeranz reviews reality TV count as sketches. Enough said.
Winner
The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers
56% of the total votes
On the one hand, at least most of the time the pranks being played here were being played on the other members of the group. Who all heartily deserved whatever embarrassing ordeal they had to go through, make no mistake about that. But on the other hand, these pranks didn’t just take place in public where innocent members of the community were dragged in and at times made to suffer – they were also recorded and broadcast to unsuspecting viewers all across the country. We can all agree that just wasn’t on.
What voters said about The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers
I was about to name an extremely awful comedy show from Channel 31 but I decided not to because the show is made by a bunch of young student amateurs who are just having a go. But there is no excuse for The Inspired Unemployed… They are the perfect example of what might work online may not translate onto mainstream media.
If Ten’s going to insist on continuing with this Inspired Unemployed… thing, could they at least move the “un-” prefix back a word?
Failsons playing pranks on each other, it’s like living through outer suburban high-school all over again. This is a bad thing.
Worst Sitcom or Narrative Comedy
Runner-up
Optics
24% of the total votes
This show has been axed, so we’ll never find out how crack PR team Greta Goldman (Vic Zerbst), Nicole Kidman (Jenna Owen) and Ian Randell (Charles Firth) defend the reputation of their deceased, Jeffery Epstein-esque boss. Yes, that really was the plan for the show’s second series, with this plot foreshadowed, set up and comprehensively sizzled throughout season one. We’re guessing risk-averse executives at the ABC came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a great plan to renew a comedy where the heroes of the piece have to defend a sexual predator. Or maybe they just watched the first series and realised it wasn’t a very good show?
Runner-up
Austin
39% of the total votes
Austin, we fear, will never get axed. It’ll just keep taking money from the UK and various Australian funding bodies and try to come up with half-interesting plots. And that might be difficult for a third series, because they’ve already done the “Austin gets famous/gets screwed over by his advisors/quits fame” plot. And the plot where his father and stepmother break up and then get back together again. What’s left for a third series? Austin’s Mum’s politician boyfriend becomes Prime Minister, and suddenly Austin’s in the first family? Oh no…
Winner
Mother and Son
56% of the total votes
The second series of Mother and Son started well, with a genuinely funny episode where the family go on holiday to a resort. Then, later in the series, we saw the return of Jean Kittson as Maggie’s friend Heather for some drunken old lady fun. But by episode eight, they’d basically run out of plot, and, er, turned a joint birthday party for the pair into a kind of wedding. Because audiences like weddings, and having a birthday looks like a wedding is funny, right? And once again, we are reminded of why the ABC can’t make sitcoms anymore; there’s too much emphasis on creating special, dramatic moments, and not enough on simply delivering belly laughs.
What voters said about Mother and Son
Mother and Son was not supposed to be a remake of a classic but a star vehicle for Matt Okine who used the name to have people watch his unfunny violation of a show. To refer this abomination to the original classic should be brought up in a comedy court of law.
Comedy should make us laugh – and laugh a lot! Save the drama for the drama shows pls!
Matt Okine with less hair and more moustache does not make him more likeable.
Worst Panel, Game or Stand-up Show
Runner-up
Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation
22% of the total votes
10’s reboot of the reboot of the original noughties hit included new host Anne Edmonds, a person in a rat costume (no idea) and more than one panellist calling the most famous person saved in their contacts. But despite all the zaniness (Colourful set! Dunking machine!), the pace was slow, the laughs were few and far between, and the whole thing felt like background TV. It wasn’t much better when Shaun Micallef hosted, but at least they put the effort into making it watchable.
Runner-up
Crime Night!
35% of the total votes
This was actually pretty funny, but only if you realised that the ABC clearly greenlit a wacky panel show where comedians were going to make fun of the cliches of true crime, and then someone realised that what that would actually mean was comedians making fun of the victims of real-life crimes. Cut to ABC management saying “oh shit” very loudly and then presenting the nation with a series so boringly pointless there’s no concrete evidence they even broadcast the second episode.
Winner
The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers
48% of the total votes
There’s a particular mindset out there amongst some comedy fans where they think the only “real” comedy happens in the moment. Planning, scripting, rehearsing: that stuff just gets in the way of the spontaneity that honest comedy requires. Whatever the set-up, it’s the natural, unscripted reactions that provide the real laughs, and generating those reactions should be what you should aim for. These comedy fans are idiots who usually spend their time laughing at harassment videos shot using Meta pervert glasses, and trying to lure them into watching broadcast television with the promise of more of the same old shit is both embarrassing and insulting.
What voters said about The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers
The Uninspired Overemployed is humiliation based comedy – not funny.
The Inspired Unemployed… need to join dole queue incognito. Just woeful.
After doing a rinky-dink version of Impractical Jokers and a rinky-dink version of Wildboyz, not sure what these blokes can do next. A rinky-dink version of Workaholics, maybe?
Worst Topical or Satirical Show
Runner-up
Thank God It’s Friday
19% of the total votes
When ABC Sydney’s Richard Glover retired from hosting TGIF, who was the logical successor? The only person still doing weekly topical comedy at the ABC: our old friend Charlie Pickering! And while Pickering and co. have swept away the Boomer vibe of Glover’s TGIF, this version is about as funny. With so few comedians with any profile doing topical material these days, there aren’t enough people who can provide topical laughs for this show. So, it’s a ramshackle, largely improvised, meander through whatever talking points the team have picked up from old and new media, with few laughs and almost no bite.
Runner-up
Optics
31% of the total votes
This was topical and / or satirical? All these shows about the media and politicans and publicists are just a lukewarm mix of writers writing about the only thing they know and commissioning editors who think regular audiences are as interested in the media as they are. The fact the promo image shows the three leads all talking into their phones tells you everything you need to know about Optics: if you don’t live your life on your phone are you even a real person, and if you do then what are you doing watching a television show?
Winner
The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
60% of the total votes
People say we just relentlessly hate on Pickering and The Weekly, but c’mon: if we really held the man in contempt, would we still be using his older (and more youthful) promo shot? Oh yeah, the show itself: now little more than Pickering presenting news clips and then saying “whaaaaaaat?” while a series of comedy guests trot out some half-baked routine that still outshines the host like a parking lot security light outshines a pile of dogshit, The Weekly circa 2025 basically sums up the ABC’s approach to pretty much everything: keep it boring and inoffensive, have no firm views about anything unless it’s a mawkish belief that the audience looks to you for moral guidance in troubled times, and act like being on television is a right rather than something earned through, you know, being funny and entertaining.
What voters said about The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
I’ll say this for Charlie Pickering’s Jon Stewart cosplay: it’s still on the air.
Nothing worse than this pretend satire.
The Yearly… opened with a sombre Pickering advising us of “the healing power of laughter”. The Yearly… closed with Margaret Pomeranz talking about reality TV, and I felt sicker than ever.
Worst Comedy Film
Runner-up
Lesbian Space Princess
23% of the total votes
Look, we get that there’s only a handful of Australian comedy films a year and pretty much all of them are going to appear here. But sometimes that means we get a runner up that, while extremely obvious at times and not especially funny, is also not a particularly bad film taken on its own terms. Not this film, obviously, but you know, it does happen.
Runner-up
Kangaroo
25% of the total votes
You know the drill: jumped-up guy from the city (Ryan Corr) has no choice but to head out bush, where he finds a new way of living and makes friends with the zany inhabitants of the outback town he lands in. His new way of living, in this case, being caring for motherless joeys with a depressed schoolgirl mourning her dead Dad (Lily Whiteley). The cast is great – Brooke Satchwell, Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair, Trisha Morton-Thomas, Geneviève Lemon, Emily Taheny, Roy Billing, Ernie Dingo, Rarriwuy Hick – but this film fails to get many laughs. Who knew plots about mourning and caring for animals weren’t particularly hilarious?
Winner
Bump: A Christmas Film
30% of the total votes
The biggest and best joke in this telemovie, which is literally a 2025 version of a UK sitcom movie from the 70s where the cast all go on holiday to somewhere sunny and foreign, is that the actual series ended with one of the main characters dying so they had to set this in some tiny sliver of time between the last and second last episodes. Will they return each year to cram more and more events into those increasingly cramped few months, each installment having an increasingly slender grip on the actual time period when it has to take place until they’re all just stumbling around a radioactive wasteland wearing silver jumpsuits and being attacked by waves of explosive drones while saying “I hope Donald Trump does not win the next US election because this is, of course, the year 2024”? Fingers crossed.
What voters said about Bump: A Christmas Film
I had to genuinely look up each film because I have never heard of any of the nominees. Do you remember when Australian films made a positive cultural impact? When people would queue up to watch? Didn’t we used to be better than this?
Bump is really the epitome of comedy in Australia. Vanilla and bland. Meh.
“The film is set in between episodes 9 and 10 of the fifth season”, Bump who do you think you are, Cowboy Bebop?!
Best New Comedy
Runner-up
Crime Night!
13% of the total votes
So, Crime Night! is both the third-best new comedy and the second-worst panel show of 2025? Sometimes we wonder about you people… We don’t usually reveal who got fourth place in these awards, but for this category, it was Optics. 2025 was that kind of year, we guess. Personally, we’d have put Son of a Donkey in here, but perhaps we’re underestimating the appeal of [SOME BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENTS ABOUT CRIME NIGHT]
Runner-up
Ghosts Australia
17% of the total votes
This local version of the UK (and US show) was a decent enough watch, if not big on actual laughs, although Peter Rowsthorn gave it a crack as awful neighbour Richard. But in comedy, it’s often the case that you can get more laughs by playing it straight, so maybe if some of the ghost characters toned it down a little, this would be less a frantic dramedy and more a funny sitcom.
Winner
Sam Pang Tonight
55% of the total votes
Absolutely no one saw a new comedy tonight show coming for 2025, let alone a second series of one – it’s like all our getting pushed into a Christmas trees came at once! And yes, it’s cheap and a bit shambolic, and leans too much into doing bad jokes, but at least it’s someone being funny every week on TV. What we need is more shows like this, where the talent gets the freedom and space to try out things. Where you can mix old and new talent together, and where the brief is to make people laugh. Guess that’s what Mick Molloy and Glenn Robbins also plan to do on their upcoming new “comedy chat show”. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Sam Pang should feel very flattered indeed.
What voters said about Sam Pang Tonight…
Sam Pang Tonight. It’s not much but it’s something.
Perfect for 10. Cheap and it revels in it.
Sam Pang Tonight is a bit rough around the edges, however Pang-behind-a-desk is at his best when he’s confounded by what’s happening in front of him so perhaps make the edges a bit rougher?
Best Comedy
Runner-up
Tony Martin’s Sizzletown
32% of the total votes
In a world where bros rambling about nonsense is the go-to format for podcasts, it’s worth remembering that there is a better way to do things. Even if the podcast showing us that better way is one where bros ramble about nonsense. Why is Sizzletown the best comedy podcast in the country? Because Tony Martin and Matt Dower put the time in to create funny characters saying funny things, which are edited perfectly to make things even funnier. Long may the better way continue.
Runner-up
The Back Side of Television / The Last Year of Television
34% of the total votes
Honestly, the only reason we can think of why these shows didn’t win is because not enough people have access to Foxtel / Binge. Both were extremely entertaining, often laugh-out-loud funny, and at times even educational, though we won’t hold that against them. More than mere clip shows or nostalgia porn, they constantly used the (very funny) clips being served up to raise questions – usually about just how sleazy, stupid, vindictive or downright criminal Australian television could be (short answer: very). On top of that, host and driving force Mitch McTaggart is easily the smartest and most insightful commentator we have on Australian television at the moment; being extremely funny is just the icing on the cake.
Winner
Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee
44% of the total votes
We’re not the world’s biggest fans of Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee, but luckily we don’t have to be. And it’s clearly not a bad show! It’s the kind of thing that absolutely would not work with anyone else hosting (or co-hosting), which is always a sign of quality. Both Guy and Aaron Chen are excellent, the contestants are often pretty good for contestants on a comedy game show, and you don’t need us to tell you that the games and wordplay are of a uniformly high standard. If only it wasn’t a comedy game show, a genre that even on its best day never quite clicks with us. But hey, this is a well deserved triumph over a blog run by sour-faced grumps who spend half their time grumbling we never got a second series of Audrey’s Kitchen. Take a bow, Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee, you’ve earned it!
What voters said about Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee
I know the …Spelling Bee isn’t super popular around these parts, but it’s damn funny, the jokes are clever, it has a personality that’s often missing from these types of things, and the games are just the right level of fun and interesting. The panellists are a little more hit-and-miss than I’d like but that’s Australia for you.
I admit, …Mont-Spelling Bee is at it’s most charming when Montgomery seems bemused the show is even happening.
Enjoyable nerdy fun.
We asked our readers… What did you think of comedy in 2025?
Declining slowly.
Some old favourites still working well, and Sam Pang’s show a nice addition, but where is the innovation? In the live comedy rooms and on-line, it seems. Not on the telly.
If there was narrative/sketch comedy in Australia this year you really, REALLY had to look for it. Can the Disney-Netflix-Google overlords just invent happy pills already so we can laugh our tits off at the inevitable “Arse: The Movie”?
Could be sharper and have more of a bite.
Praying for Larry Ellison to never look at Ten in 2026.
I honestly can’t recall watching or being eager to watch a scripted Australian comedy show in 2025. Most of the better programs are panel programs or quiz shows with humorous content. This is an indication of how far we’ve fallen. Is it a lack of talent? A lack of proper training in the pubs and clubs? Talented people being ignored for the likes of Dave Hughes and Matt Okine? Who knows! All I know is comedy in Australian mainstream media is now irrelevant.
Network TV has never felt more on life support than it does now. Hyperactive ten second TikTok’s aren’t going to replace it. So where does comedy live now?
Pretty uninspired. The internet continues to be the place where Australian comedy shines. TV is dead to me. Film is too risk averse to ever make anything for anyone that isn’t a spreadsheet on a Screen Australia accountants computer.
Australian TV has become a stale wasteland for comedy. Including the ABC.
Utterly dire, and no one knows what they’re doing. I pitched a show to the commissioning editor of Binge who said it was the best pitch they’d ever heard in their life, then they said no. Maybe the third lead character should’ve been a dog.
Nowhere near enough of it.
Lisa Simpson comes to mind in her response to what it’s like to be a member of the MTV generation that feels neither highs nor lows – eh!?! with a shoulder shrug. That about sums it up for me.
Need more sketch comedy to return.
On TV? Pathetic! Same old faces, most of whom were not funny to start with.
I’ve largely given up on looking for it or expecting it.
Australia having pretty much the best non-Japanese version of Last One Laughing (bar the hosts), it’s clear why we’ve got Shaun Micallef hosting mild chat shows and documentaries.
It’s been firing on all cylinders. Bring on more!
About as good as the film industry. I.e. the worst for a long time.
God we need more funding for Australian comedy talent (but I would like to say that Haven’t You Done Well / Aunty Donna have been doing a solid job and need more mainstream recognition).
Getting there. An improvement on last year’s offerings.
Not enough episodes of the good shows.
No real terrible standouts, that’s rare
It’s a bit repeated tbh. Are there any new ideas? It could have been worse – we could have been dumped another Hey! Hey!… Daryl Somers special.
There’s green shoots. Kangaroo was a lovely film, Sam Pang worked. And 2026 looks more promising. The worry is ABC’s continually bad choices in what to invest in, and lazy celebrity casting in comedy and docos.
2025 felt like treading water – no real standout successes, for the most part people just chugged along doing what you’d expect them to do. When we look back on 2025, the general feeling will be “oh well”.
The above is a selection of the many comments we received. Thank you for voting and commenting, and we’ll be back soon with our thoughts on new comedy throughout 2026…
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