Bean Is A Carrot, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds - Page 25 of 52
Once were comedy Warriors
If there’s one thing we admire about the new ABC series The Warriors it’s the makers’ honesty. While various shows market themselves as comedies or comedy-dramas, when they’ve barely two gags in them to rub together, once it started shooting and realised it wasn’t funny, The Warriors quickly re-branded itself as a drama. ABC Media... Read More »
John Clarke, thanks for your time
We honestly thought Clarke & Dawe would never end. Two men, a couple of chairs, a great script – the perfect satirical format. Things were looking a bit shaky for John Clarke and Bryan Dawe towards the end of the Howard years, when Gerard Henderson was banging on about left-wing bias in comedy and shows... Read More »
Ripper, Donna!
Sketch group Aunty Donna have been releasing episodes of their new web series Ripper Aussie Summer every Friday for the past seven weeks, and it’s quite good. The trio play various characters, gathered together in a backyard for a barbecue, except, this being Aunty Donna, this backyard is very much its own universe. One of... Read More »
And the Logie goes to…the least worst show or person!
When even the Herald-Sun’s pointing out there’s only one woman nominated for a Gold Logie this year, you know there’s a problem with Australian television. JESSICA Marais has earned applause for playing ground-breaking women in two roles across two TV networks — now she’s about to star in a new Logies controversy, as the only... Read More »
Pacific Heat: Not too hot
In things we missed news, Pacific Heat finished up its premiere run on Foxtel’s The Comedy Channel a few weeks ago. You didn’t notice either? Fair enough. It was a kind of a “miss it and it doesn’t matter” show. A parody of a cop show should have been an easy win for Working Dog... Read More »
Satire’s hard problem
Clarke & Dawe returned to our screens last week and once again reminded us how satirists should be doing it: it’s about pointing out where things are going wrong. Satire only achieves what it’s there to do if it leaves the audience laughing, better informed and angry for change. And this is something that’s only... Read More »
Mychonny, Yourchonny, Everybodychonny!
Does broadcast TV have a future beyond the things that only it can do best: news, live coverage of sport and big budget “event TV”? With Netflix, Amazon, Stan and other streaming services offering drama, documentary, and films to watch anytime you want, should broadcasters like the ABC even bother? When it comes to comedy,... Read More »
Keeping it local, Behave Yourself!
It’s press release time! A major investment in locally produced, prime-time programming. (20 February 2017) Channel Seven will begin work on three locally produced programs, two of which are original formats. “The quality of the work coming out of our development team is exceptional,” says Seven’s Director of Network Programming Angus Ross. “The three commissions... Read More »
Hey Hey It’s Stop Laughing… This is serious Day
An obvious omission from the first series of Stop Laughing…This is serious was Hey Hey It’s Saturday. A show which in its day was hugely popular, but on reflection seems embarrassing. And we don’t just mean the Jackson Jive. It was impossible not to watch all the clips from Hey Hey… – and the various... Read More »
Comedy blap on the radar
Even in the risk averse comedy climate that is Australia’s, you’d think a show featuring Gina Reilly and Hamish Blake could get funding. But no, Ryan Shelton’s new web series How To Life has been funded by Britain’s Channel 4 and is currently available online as part of Comedy Blaps. Comedy Blaps is Channel 4’s... Read More »