Recently, there was an exciting announcement. The ABC said it was creating a new channel dedicated entirely to comedy, called ABC Comedy, on which they’d be airing a brand-new comedy tonight show, Tonightly with Tom Ballard. And, they’d be releasing heaps of new short-form comedy shows from new talent on iView under the Fresh Blood... Read More »
Tony Martin and Sarina Rowell spent three years trying to sell Childproof, their sitcom about a childfree couple, but were told it was too niche an idea, and that only those without children could possibly relate to it. That sounds ridiculous, right? There are heaps of people out there who’ve chosen not to have kids,... Read More »
So, Aaron Chen Tonight ended last week. Tucked away on late night ABC2, it was a show that was easily missed, which is a shame as it’s been one of the most interesting new comedies for years. Filmed in a real-life comedy room in Sydney, this started out as a shonky local take on US-style tonight shows... Read More »
That’ll teach us to be optimistic. When we watched the first episode of The Letdown we saw some potential in the series. Now, four episodes in, we’re just waiting for it to end. If we were the mother of a small child and we were thinking about The Letdown, our face would look like this. But more on... Read More »
It’s always a safe bet that a show introducing itself with “this could go anywhere” isn’t going to deliver, and so it is – so far – with Kennedy Molloy. Having said that, Kennedy Molloy has a lot of good things going for it. Jane Kennedy and Mick Molloy have been doing radio, comedy and... Read More »
It would be fair to say that tonight’s new Wednesday night sitcom double bill of Rosehaven followed by The Letdown didn’t initially excite us. We found the first series of Rosehaven a bit patchy, and we really disliked the pilot of The Letdown when it aired last year as part of Comedy Showroom, yet both... Read More »
On this blog, we often try to work out why certain shows or genres are or aren’t funny. So, if we had to vote for the genre least likely to generate laughs we’d probably go for short film.* The basic problem with short films doing comedy is that the sort of people who make short... Read More »
After almost five months, the replacement for the short-lived John Conway Tonight, Aaron Chen Tonight, is here – and it’s not that different to the original. And if like us, you enjoyed Aaron Chen’s stand-out appearances as Conway’s ineffectual, geeky sidekick, and hoped he’d build on that when he took over the show, this is... Read More »
It’s fair to say we haven’t really taken to The Edge of the Bush, Anne Edmond’s short-form sitcom airing each week after Get Krack!n’. It’s partly the clash of dark and moody and over-the-top, zany characters that isn’t working for us, but also that it feels like an idea that seemed hilarious on paper or... Read More »
For a while now we’ve been enjoying the occasional, but very much worth the wait, podcasts from the TEAM Effort team. That’s T for Tony Martin, E for Ed Kavalee, A for Ash Williams, M for Lawrence “Moonman” Mooney and Effort for, um, the guests, who have included the likes of Tom Gleisner, Leigh Sales, Jane... Read More »