Thinking about Dave Hughes? There’s never been a better time to explore his comedy career (yes, we have been re-reading Lolly Scramble), thanks to the efforts of the late-night programmers at the ABC. Drunks and insomniacs alike have been enjoying their fine work screening old episodes of The Glasshouse in the early hours of Friday morning, and thanks to the magic of timed recording you too can get in on the... Read More »
It’s fairly easy to overlook Rove’s stranglehold on Australia comedy at the moment. Even on Ten, Good News Week and Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation aren’t from the Roving Enterprise stable. But Nine has no Australian comedy to speak of, and Seven’s efforts are token at best (Kath & Kim every few years and Thank God... Read More »
Rove (the show and the man) returns to our screens this... Read More »
On JJJ a few weeks back, while talking up his upcoming ABC television series, John Safran described it as being full of pranks and making fun of people – basically, “everything people don’t want in comedy anymore”. And he has a... Read More »
Coming to Movie Extra next month is The Jesters, a sitcom which promises to “satirise the satirists”. In the show Mick Molloy plays former comedian Dave Davies, who takes four “upstarts” from the world of student newspapers and gives them their own TV show...but, ratings are poor and the show isn't funny so Davies tries to whip up some cheap publicity by asking one of the team to get... Read More »
When the first series of The Librarians arrived on the ABC back towards the end of 2007, it was pretty much the first ray of sunshine after a long, long winter for Australian... Read More »
So farewell then The Chaser's War on Everything, whether it was the pointless and repetitive pranks, the seeming plagiarism, or the press and industry reaction - both the wowserish condemnation and slave-like devotion - it's sure given us something to talk about for the past three and a half years. If I were to sum up my feelings on the series I'd say that it was deeply disappointing and one of the great lost opportunities in Australian TV comedy history, but admittedly, there aren't that many who agree with... Read More »
If Bladerunner has taught us anything – and it hasn’t, though our memories of it sure did come in handy for getting all those late-series references to it on Newstopia – it’s that there’s nothing worse than an itch you can’t scratch. And because it’s increasingly obvious that it won’t be all that long before the itch that is The 7pm Project is scratched- in the racing sense of the... Read More »
With hindsight the upcoming return of Hey Hey it’s Saturday to our screens (link) was obvious, an excrement-laden juggernaught bearing down on an unwilling nation like a strident university student’s clumsy rape metaphor...... Read More »
One of the rarely mentioned but screamingly obvious factors behind the success of most of the ABC’s local comedy ventures over the last few years is the... Read More »