13 schoolyards, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds - Page 76 of 112
And The Winner Is… Sid-e-knee
As people who run an awards ceremony of our own – well, the general public vote in the Australian Tumbleweed Awards, but you know what we mean – we have a tiny bit of compassion for the AWGIE awards. Clearly The Australian Writers Guild’s hearts are in the right place: considering how low on the... Read More »
Taxicab Confessions
First, an apology: We honestly thought we’d covered Back Seat Drivers (Tuesdays around 10pm, ABC2) back when it first started a few weeks ago. But then we realised we only thought we’d covered it because it was exactly the same as a dozen or more equally forgettable shows we’ve dozed off to over the years.... Read More »
You Wouldn’t Read About It
Comedy, especially in Australia, is a tough business to make a long-term go of. We can count on one hand the number of comedians from the mid-90s who are still creatively vital in 2014, and once you curl back the fingers for Working Dog and Shaun Micallef the rest of the hand can go home... Read More »
Viral Prankster Plays Prank, Australian Media Eats It Up.
One of the things that frustrates us about the current media – in all its forms – is that there’s not enough following up. Politicians make crazy claims about their future plans, newspapers print them, and then ten years later someone looks around and goes “oh, they never did build that billion-dollar scheme, did they?”... Read More »
Reality Bites
You may not have noticed what with the all-out media blitz for Josh Thomas’ Please Like Me, but the ABC launched a few other comedy programs in the last few weeks. Press release time! Reality TV is TV right now. Everything else is just making up the numbers. And yet, for all its cultural force,... Read More »
Yet Another Theory About Please Like Me
Okay, so despite Please Like Me tanking in the ratings- yes, despite wall-to-wall media attention in this country it rates less than, oh, every other show you’ve ever heard of – local critics continue to go nuts over it. Here’s a quick cross-section that’s been brought to our attention: There’s this: American and Australian critics... Read More »
The Right Kind of Chap
We’ve been pretty hard on Fairfax’s television reviewers these last few years, what with their blatant nepotism and incessant championing of complete shit. But of late we’ve been wondering: have we gotten them all wrong? Back when Marieke Hardy’s Laid was more than just a punchline to a joke about wasting taxpayer funds, Fairfax’s writers... Read More »
Big Swinging Dicks
“I’m not the problem today mum, you’re the problem” Well, no Josh, you’re always the problem in Please Like Me. But for a brief shining moment early on in episode two of series two, it looked like maybe that problem had been solved. Josh was the put-upon son, his crazy mum was crazy, and as... Read More »
Vale Hamish & Andy’s South American Gap Year
How many more times can it go on? How many more examples of the same thing can we put up with before a nation finally says “enough”. It’s just the same thing over and over and over again, repeated with a relentless monotony, lacking fresh insights and wit, providing nothing but the same dull feeling... Read More »