Comedy Mysteries

Old News is No News

As previously mentioned, currently Australian television is serving up one (1) new Australian comedy series: The Weekly with Charlie Pickering. One show. Across all of Australian television. Real solid foundation we’ve got for a blog there. This perhaps wouldn’t be quite so big a problem if The Weekly was any good at its job. As... Read More »

Satire? You’ve Got to be Joking

Sometimes when you want to get rid of something, slowly whittling it down to nothing is the way to go. Other times, a big rug pull to get it over and done with works best. And when you’re the ABC looking to trash 50-odd years of satirical content, why not both at once? Let’s not... Read More »

The World of Tomorrow 2.0: Snore ABC

It’s been well over a year since the incoming federal Labor government promised a new cashed up world for the ABC. Okay, so 2023 was always going to be business as usual. But surely 2024 was going to present us with the fruits of that momentous electoral decision? Mo’ money, mo’ programming and all that.... Read More »

The World of Tomorrow

“We are all interested in the future,” someone once said, “because that is where we shall be spending the rest of our lives”. But what if the future looks really shit? Welcome to the magical world of Australian television’s plans for 2024. In recent weeks the commercial networks and streaming services have been holding their... Read More »

The End of an Era (we hope)

Earlier this week this not-exactly-news-type-news was announced: the days of Daryl Somers hosting Seven’s Dancing with the Stars are no more: “Seven let me know recently that they have signed Chris Brown to the network full-time and amongst his commitments he will be hosting DWTS.” Not only was it a case of “you know that... Read More »

WTFAQuestion Time

For some reason or another the ABC is currently running ads featuring Dr Karl. You know, the guy who answers all your science questions? Only if you actually listen to his answers, he often doesn’t answer your questions – he just throws out a bunch of quirky facts that are kind of adjacent to whatever... Read More »

WTFAQ&A

This week WTFAQ made its debut on the ABC. Not that it felt anything like a debut, as it’s really just the latest version of the kind of lightweight infotainment series the ABC has been flogging since at least Hungry Beast. Every time it returns we tune in to see if this time it’s actually... Read More »

Tonight Ain’t Your Night, Bro

A few people today have noticed something we picked up on yesterday: Channel Ten’s pulled the plug on tonight’s comedy line-up. No Thank God You’re Here, no The Inspired Unemployed. And why? The sudden realisation that Australian comedy is in a death spiral and they were only prolonging the agony? Worse: they don’t want it... Read More »

Treating the Host with the Contempt he Deserves

After 47 years and thirty five thousand episodes, there’s not a lot left to be said about The Weekly with Charlie Pickering. And even less to be said that’s positive. But in recent weeks we’ve noticed a trend that we can’t help but applaud: more and more often, the guests are treating Pickering like shit.... Read More »

And Then I Got High

We don’t often link to profile stories but we think you’ll agree this one is something special: No-one cared who Jason Gann was until he put on the mangy dog suit. For 10 years, Jason played the misanthropic, bong-smoking dog, Wilfred, first in a hit comedy series in Australia on SBS, and then in a... Read More »