13 schoolyards, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds - Page 93 of 115

Vale Randling

Here’s the thing: on the day after the final episode of Randling aired we went through all the major metropolitan newspapers looking to see on which page they announced the winner. A 27 week prime-time competition featuring many of Australia’s premiere comedians and social commentators had all been building up to one big result: of... Read More »

Singing From The Same Old Hymn Sheet

Why, isn’t that UK comedy stalwart Mark Heap in the opening scene of new ABC comedy A Moody Christmas? Why yes it is. Will we ever see him again? Probably not. Still, having him in the background of one scene is better than nothing at all, and he does provide a signpost to the path... Read More »

Gruen: Brings Your Ancestors Back From The Dead

What is there left to say about the Gruen series of programs that we haven’t already groaned out while lying on the floor of a grimy pub toilet splattered in our own vomit? You all know the drill: we complain that they’re nothing but advertising for the very idea of advertising presented by a comedy... Read More »

C&D Music Factory

So on Wednesday while doing our usual browse through the lists of upcoming DVD releases in the desperate hope that someone will finally bring out a Newstopia collection – or more realistically considering our tastes, a Let Loose Live / Live From Planet Earth box set with cast & crew commentary – we noticed something... Read More »

Is Australian Comedy Sexist?

Short answer: yes. Or no. Maybe? Dammit, we’re going to have to think about this one for a moment. Let’s back up for a second. Last weeks episode of The Hamster Wheel had a segment on sexism in the Australian media. Yay Chaser! Or perhaps not, as a few people have expressed some doubts about... Read More »

Reading the Tea Leaves

Is Q&A a terrible show or what? Answers accepted only in the form of a snappy tweet that we can run across the bottom of the screen as we co-op social media into not realising that the ‘debate’ we offer is nothing more enlightening than the dregs of the letters page in your local News... Read More »

You Can’t Handle The Truth

Whadda know? Turns out The Unbelievable Truth isn’t half bad. The jokes are funny and there’s a lot of them, the dodgy panel format is constantly being broken up by cutaways and in studio antics, and… oh wait, maybe we should actually describe the show first: Craig Reucassel from The Chaser is your host, there’s... Read More »

Blah Blah Blah

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Australian comedy is currently not operating at peak efficiency. In fact, it’s coughing its guts up all over the place. Duds to the left, ratings flops to the right, tired old formats hacking out their final breath everywhere else. What does it say about... Read More »

You’d Have To Be Mental

“I tried to make MENTAL as politically incorrect as I could because I think I’m not a fan of political correctness, especially in comedy and especially not when it comes to this subject matter, mental illness, because political correctness, for me, is another way of saying, “We don’t want to talk about it.” Use the... Read More »

So Let’s Get Back Together and Do It Again

A few months back we ran a post about how, for all its critical praise and fannish worship, The Late Show wasn’t all that influential when it came to actual Australian comedy television. Someone wrote in to take us to task for not mentioning The Chaser’s War On Everything, and rightly so: while it may... Read More »