Bean Is A Carrot, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds - Page 49 of 52
From podcast to broadcast
Unless you're a bunch of mates having a laugh or foolish enough to think there's serious money to be made from the world of podcasting, you're probably making podcasts strategically. I.e. you're “talent” trying to get a paid gig by proving your worth through a podcast, or you're a broadcaster trying to build an audience for a team or concept through a podcast. The latter strategy appears to have paid off for the ABC with the podcast Is It Just... Read More »
Milsom making a play to be our Tina Fey?
It was inevitable that at least one of this country’s female comedians would attempt a Julia Gillard impersonation sooner or later. Sure, someone from Double Take did it last year, but with Gillard now running the country there’s a gap in the market – an opportunity to fill the shoes of Anthony Ackroyd, whose Kevin... Read More »
Old News is Bad News
Earlier this month I argued that it's quantity, not quality that seems to be the watchword at the offices of GNW TV Productions, makers of Good News Week. Now TV Tonight has brought us the news that over-extending each episode by an hour isn't the only way GNW saves on production costs - they film two episodes in one session, saving them money on studio hire and staff fees - at the expense of... Read More »
A comedy fan in The Lodge?
We've argued before on this blog that The Gillies Report deserves a DVD release. It was enormously popular at the time, it won a Logie in 1986 for Best Light Entertainment Series, it's fondly remembered by those who saw it, many of the sketches still stand up (there are plenty on YouTube), it's a significant series in the history of Australian comedy, and now it seems a future Prime Minister once sat in its audience. What more could you... Read More »
Four Lions, Five Wimps
British comedy legend Chris Morris was at the Sydney Film Festival last weekend attending the Australian premiere of his film Four Lions, a comedy about suicide bombers. And as part of the festival he was interviewed in front of an audience by The Chaser's Julian... Read More »
Non-brevity is the arsehole of wit
Australian TV’s not exactly crying out for more panel shows, but the recently launched Santo, Sam and Ed’s Cup Fever is a welcome addition to the schedules. It’s a fun mix of chat, sketches and enjoyably bad jokes (only Santo Cilauro could sell a gag as bad as “Diego Maradonut”), which even a non soccer... Read More »
Going out on a meh
Lowdown has now finished and while it wasn’t an amazingly great show by any stretch of the imagination it has been the Australian comedy TV highlight of the year so far. Why? Because unlike anything else on offer – panel shows, dramedies, Hey Hey It’s Saturday - it was a reasonably well-written show with some decent laughs in it. And with dramedies and panel/variety shows the dominant formats in entertainment right now, a scripted show which gets laughs is something to be happy about. So, what the hell was going on with that final... Read More »
The Wonderful World of Australian Comedy Online Part 4: Sketch comedy
In yet another indication that the future of entertainment is online, a recent-ish episode of the Mediaweek podcast revealed that Andrew Denton's production company Zapruder's Other Films has employed nine members of the Hungry Beast team to work on “online projects”. What exactly these projects are was not revealed; it's also not terribly clear at this stage what types of entertainment will work best in an online... Read More »
Chuck another dramedy on the barbie
Nothing makes a comedy fan’s heart sink more than the arrival of a new dramedy. Not because comedy and drama shouldn’t ever be combined, but because dramedies always seem to be either populist light dramas with little-to-no actual comedy (Packed to the Rafters) or sitcoms which turned out to be so woefully laugh free that... Read More »
Our alright of nights
Ah, yes, the Logies...Australian television's night of nights, where the show itself is often as good as the programmes it's awarding. But despite that, there's always one good reason to tune in: when you bring together a large number of this country's most high profile ego manics and show-offs, and allow them to get as pissed as they like, there's a strong probability that at least one of them will make an idiot of themselves. On live... Read More »