Comedy TV

Double Take Take Two

Seven isn’t quite confident enough of this week’s new return to sketch comedy Double Take to send out full episodes to reviewers, but they have sent out discs featuring ten minutes worth of sketches to various media outlets and surprise surprise, one just happens to have fallen into our... Read More »

Sometimes dead is better

So Daryl Somers wants to bring Hey Hey It's Saturday back- well, according to The Herald-Sun he does, on the back of a Facebook campaign to revive the ill-lamented series (here).... Read More »

Gerard Henderson vs The Chaser

If there was a running gag throughout this week’s Chaser, it was Andrew Hanson’s furious letter-writer character Phillip Harley of Adelaide complaining about how the the show wasn’t attacking enough religious groups. The Harley character has usually popped-up once or twice in each episode of the current series to complain about various non-issues, but it... Read More »

Gavan Disney’s wood

It’s long been an article of faith that the only Australian showbiz book better than a warts-n-all look behind the scenes of Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s 20-odd year run would be Tony Martin’s occasionally mentioned (and most likely a gag) examination of MMM management Wankers Away! But that was until the Gavan Disney sex... Read More »

Great Australian Comedy Mysteries of the 20th Century #1: Shaun Micallef on Comic Relief 1999

Back in 2006 a person on a forum I frequented asked whether it was true that Shaun Micallef had appeared on Comic Relief in 1999. In order to confirm this I went straight to the BBC's INFAX database, which lists, among others things, who appeared in what programme. I typed in Micallef's name but found he was not listed. Then I typed in Comic Relief 1999, but did not spot Micallef in the cast list. I concluded that Shaun Micallef had not been in the show - it seemed pretty unlikely anyway – and totally forgot about... Read More »

Double Take? More like spit take

Time to hate on a show that hasn't even been broadcast... Read More »

yet again with The Chaser…

It was probably around the “Baby Day Spa’ sketch on this week’s episode of The Chaser’s War on Everything that I realised a couple of... Read More »

Never forgive, never forget…

Our love of The Mick Molloy Show isn’t exactly a secret – as the closest thing to an One True Successor to the genius of The Late Show, its demise at the hands of the tabloid press remains a true tragedy. So it was interesting to hear from a friend of a friend’s friend recently the following... Read More »

The Chaser is still exactly the same

A recent article which appeared in the Herald-Sun and various other Murdoch-owned newspapers and websites argued that The Chaser had “gone soft”, “looked tentative” and was now taking “aim at some easy targets”. It's hard to not ask where Vickery and Horan were during the first two series of The Chaser's War on Everything, or even the first two episodes of the current... Read More »

Catherine Deveny knows comedy

We all know what the tabloid press were doing during the furore over The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish” foundation sketch: they were obsessed with making rational and well-reasoned contributions to the debate, if the Herald-Sun’s “They spat in the face of dying children” headline was anything to go... Read More »