We’ve complained about the way comedy is used as a marketing tool for a long time now. Your new drama is a bit of a dud? Your panel show is a chore? Your game show just plain sucks? Call it a comedy! People love comedy! And when they realise there’s no laughs to be found?... Read More »
Optics is the ABC’s big sitcom for 2025. If you’re thinking “hang on, that can’t be right”, we agree. Now point out what else they have to offer this year. The return of Mother and Son? A bunch of imports? Nothing else? Sure, the usual unfunny dramedies are no doubt soon to surface, but as... Read More »
There are a lot of questions around Question Everything. Fortunately, most of them have pretty obvious answers. Well, except for the big one, but we’ll get to that. Question one: did they deliberately set out to make a show this shit? Well, no: originally Question Everything was clearly an attempt at something akin to Gruen... Read More »
What could be more Christmas-y than a dysfunctional family, mental illness and a dying dog? That seems to be the thinking behind Nugget is Dead?: A Christmas Story, Stan’s Australian-made Christmas movie for 2024, anyway. Written by and starring Vic Zerbst and Jenna Owen (The Feed and the upcoming sitcom Optics), this sees Zerbst as... Read More »
Whenever the conversation turns to discussing what kinds of comedy programs we need in 2024, the same classics are pushed forward. “We need another Late Show,” we hear. “Bring back The Big Gig,” is another one. “It’s time to revive Good News Week,” says someone we didn’t invite. “What about The Glasshouse?” and yeah, we’re... Read More »
The ABC’s 2025 upfronts announcement last week says a lot about why the ABC makes the scripted comedies it does. And it’s all about where comedy programming sits within the ABC’s corporate structure. A couple of years ago the ABC restructured and split its operations into two areas: Content and News. Content oversees comedy, drama,... Read More »
Question Everything’s been on a journey. Remember when it was part news explainer, part fake news debunker, with vibes of Hungry Beast? Now it seems to be trying to cut The Cheap Seats’ lunch, right down to showing clips from the very sources The Cheap Seats has brought to national attention. Like 7 News’ Tasmanian... Read More »
So that’s it for Have You Been Paying Attention? for the year. As usual there’s not a whole lot to say. It’s the well-oiled machine that other well-oiled machines look up to, a finely honed gag-fest that’s been at its peak for so long it’s fair enough to wonder if it’ll ever drop off or... Read More »
Okay, we’re a week late with our Fisk review. But c’mon: if you need us to tell you to watch what is easily the best Australian sitcom this decade, you might as well send us your bank details and be done with it. There are a lot of things Fisk isn’t. For one, it isn’t... Read More »
Various reviews of this country’s very own remake of The Office (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) have been published in the past week which range from “Why bother re-making The Office?” to “What’s the point of re-making The Office?”. And fair enough, there are already two versions of The Office in English, and countless... Read More »