Bean Is A Carrot, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds
Vale Bad Company, Hello Make That Movie
Creating a hilarious ensemble sitcom isn’t easy, but some approaches work better than others. And as we say goodbye to Bad Company on the ABC and hello to Make That Movie on HBO Max, it’s not hard to identify which approach is funnier. Bad Company is a show that should have generated a lot more... Read More »
Glenn and Mick’s Celebrity Intervention – A Reassessment
Six weeks into Glenn and Mick’s Celebrity Intervention, and it’s time for a reassessment. If you watched the first episode, with Carrie Bickmore, and walked away never to return, we get you. Honestly, we thought we’d be writing about this show again much sooner, because after that opener, it was clearly going to be axed... Read More »
Let’s get Quizzical
Sky News Australia’s current relationship with comedy is being clipped and joked about on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering and The Cheap Seats, but can it generate its own laughs with the new weekly comedy quiz show Quizzical? Er, no. It cannot. And based on its first episode (which aired last Sunday, 17th May), it... Read More »
What a croc! Deadloch series 2
If you like your murder mysteries with a side order of comedy, then good news, Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan’s Deadloch is back for a new series on Amazon. And in this second series, Detectives Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) and Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) are in Darwin, trying to solve the mystery of what happened... Read More »
Vale Dog Park
Dog Park, the ABC’s post-Muster Dogs, canine-focused dramedy, about people who’ve become friends because they take their dogs to the same park, has ended. We will not miss it. Because while there’s worse TV out there, it’s hard to like a show which spends more time trying to tug at your heartstrings than it does... Read More »
Vale Sam Pang Tonight series 2
Did anyone have a 16-episode tonight show on their comedy bingo card this year? We sure didn’t. But Sam Pang Tonight defied expectations. Firstly, because it stayed on air. Secondly, because it was pretty good. We’re not saying Sam Pang Tonight is charting new areas of comedy – and it’s certainly well aware that it’s... Read More »
Here comes the bride. Again.
What’s the one thing that links many of Australia’s most average sitcoms of the last five years? No, it’s not that SOMETHING VERY DRAMATIC happens in the second-to-last episode. Although that does often happen too. * The answer is that there’s a wedding – or a wedding of sorts – in the final ever episode.... Read More »
Mother and Son vs Mother and Son
The other day, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article called Is the new Mother and Son already better than the original? Our reviewer says yes. It’s a legitimate question to ask about Matt Okine’s remake of the fondly remembered 80s/90s sitcom, although it’s notable that the SMH didn’t ask it when series one dropped... Read More »
Vale Austin series 2
Isn’t it lovely when all the nice characters end up happy at the end of a TV series? And the bad characters get what they deserve? That was the heartwarming vibe the final episode of the second series of Austin was going for. Not a funny vibe, sadly. But we expected that. And we’ve talked... Read More »
Why Shaun Micallef hasn’t quite destroyed the chat show
Shaun Micallef’s Eve of Destruction may not be a game-changing chat show, but it’s different enough to be interesting. Many chat shows try to get guests to make startling confessions or to cry over dead relatives, and there’s a bit of that here, but the bigger focus is on relatable, interesting stories. So far, so... Read More »