Bean Is A Carrot, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds - Page 51 of 52
The Gervais Delusion
As part of my ongoing examination of Australian comedy online (see my last blog) I've been working my way through every Australian comedy podcast I can find. I'll write more fully about more of them in the future, but one thing I've been struck by is how few of them contain scripted... Read More »
The wonderful world of Australian comedy online – Part 1
A week or so ago a reader commented on one of our recent blogs: “The networks are useless, dying and clueless. I really hope that Australian comedy can find it's way online. There are some excellent US comedy websites with loads of little web series on them.” And because we take your feedback seriously down here at Australian Tumbleweeds - well, that and there's almost no Australian comedy on that isn't a panel game - I've decided to dip my toe into the wonderful world of Australian comedy content online, starting with... Read More »
Yet another panel show
Is all Australian TV comedy now a lame panel show with next-to-no laughs? Seemingly thousands of such programmes have either returned or started-up in the past few weeks, with only Hungry Beast and Clarke & Dawe suggesting there's an alternative approach to getting laughs. In this climate I'm almost pining for that STITCH thing 13 schoolyards mentioned in his last blog - at least it'll offer something... Read More »
It’s actually pretty easy to believe it wasn’t better
Whilst updating iTunes last week I noticed that what had been the podcast feed for ABC Local Radio's 2008 comedy talent quest The Comedy Hour has now become the podcast feed for ABC Adelaide's Talkback Gardening, that perennial favourite of my father and many of his friends. If it wasn't for the fact that the ABC are great fans of recycling podcast feeds (do they think they're rationed?), I could probably draw a crap metaphor for the ABC's interest in The Comedy Hour from this – and indeed, there wasn't much interest in it from them - but my main feeling is one of sadness, that The Comedy Hour is yet another comedy writer's competition that's been shut down for good (although that's been pretty clear for a year or so... Read More »
Whatever happened to Whatever Happened to That Guy??
In August last year Tony Martin (yes, him again) wrote a piece for The Scrivener's Fancy called Just While We're Waiting, in which he listed some rejected ideas for his weekly column, one of which was “Whatever happened to Whatever Happened to That Guy??” It was a funny question, and one I feel worth expanding on, so hopefully Tony won't mind me stealing... Read More »
So easy: RIP Don Lane
Maybe it's because to my generation Don Lane was a guy who'd clearly been famous once, but for what we weren't sure. His appearance on The Late Show was fun, and he presented American football on the ABC and turned up in the odd special, but that was it: he was just some old has-been in embarrassing trousers. So why am I about to launch into a heartfelt tribute to the Lanky Yank? Because, to paraphrase his theme song, he made it so... Read More »
The Censor’s Test
This weekend Sydney-siders had the chance to attend World's Funniest Island, a two-day, Big Day Out-style festival of comedy on Cockatoo Island. Amongst the acts were Alexei Sayle, The Goodies, Jane Bussman, Merrick & Rosso, the Scared Weird Little Guys and a host of others. The Goodies' show, featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden with Bill Oddie on video (he's currently ill, so couldn't make it) in conversation with The Chaser's Andrew Hanson, is of particular interest as it featured censored footage from The Goodies which was recently discovered in Australia but no longer exists within the BBC Archives. With recent talk about how “political correctness” and media OUTRAGE is, or may be, resulting in the censorship of comedy, it's interesting to examine what was actually censored from comedy almost 40 years... Read More »
Short Thoughts
This week's Hungry Beast proved to be more of the same: unfunny sketches and stuff we already knew. (Snack bars for kids are packed full of sugar, apparently. What next? They tell us the world's round?!) But at least that netball group sex scandal sketch turned out to be a joke (and I don't say that because I agree with The Daily Telegraph that the sketch was an “outrage” and “poor taste humour” that “raise[s] new questions about the judgement of senior ABC staff” - the only outrage and misjudgements here are that a sketch so unfunny could make it to air), and anyway, as the Hungry Beast team gleefully informed us during the opening to episode 2, the real joke wasn't that netballers would get themselves caught in such a scandal, it was on us. Ha ha – fooled you! You thought we'd actually do a longer version next week! You idiot!... Read More »