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 »
Watching tonight’s episode of Rove – in which he attempted to interview 60 guests in an hour - was always going to be worth a look for comedy... Read More »
Sam Simmons must be kicking himself. If only he’d done The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote in blackface, people might be actually talking about it... Read More »
Reaction to the Hey Hey blackface incident keeps coming - and not just on this blog. Hungry Beast gave us Blackface for Beginners last night, a two and a half minute history of the genre, which is probably the best thing they've done so far, so kudos for that. Monday night's Media Watch also delivered an interesting insight or two; first they helpfully pointed out which part of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice you might like to mention in your letter of complaint to Channel 9, and secondly they explained why it has to be a letter. Meanwhile, on Wikipedia, the entry for Hey Hey It's Saturday has been edited and re-edited by users wishing to make sure their view on the incident was known, with mixed... Read More »
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 »
Here’s a question: what makes the Hey Hey it’s Saturday blackface controversy different from the controversy over The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch, or Hungry Beast’s promo for a fake story about netball rape,... Read More »
This week's most overlooked debut was Hungry Beast, which inevitably stood no chance against the Hey Hey reunion and the premiere of Celebrity Masterchef. That's probably just as well for those “19 newcomers to television” who are involved as “tell us something we don't know” - the show's motto - it... Read More »
Look what turned up in our inbox at the end of business Friday – okay, you probably already know all this, but it’s always fun to see the original press release so you can see just how little work in involved in journalism... Read More »
There’s a long tradition in post-apocalyptic film and literature where the shattered survivors of a world after some unimaginable holocaust desperately attempt to escape into the... Read More »
The number one thing a comedy has to do is make people laugh. But that’s kinda hard, so every few years there comes along a sweeping trend in comedy – one that doesn’t involve comedy at all. Instead of simply trying to make people... Read More »