Comedy TV

The promise of election comedy

As the 2019 Federal election campaign draws to a close, here’s a rundown of the some of the election comedy specials you may have missed. Newsfighters Ex-Tonightly editor Dylan Behan has been making the Newsfighters podcast for a few months, with some of his work turning up on Dan Ilic’s A Rational Fear recently. Newsfighters... Read More »

HYBPA? is Back in Black

How long has it been since a commercial network in this country had two comedy series on the go at the same time? You’d think we’d know but clearly we’re too lazy to look it up: chances are it was Channel Ten that time too. And with Kinne Tonight starting back up in a week... Read More »

Countdown to democracy sausage

With just one week to go until our triennial democracy sausage party, Sammy J’s Government Coach is appearing in weeknightly instalments of Countdown to Glory, a mockumentary about the Liberal party’s 2019 federal election campaign. Sammy J has been using his Government Coach character as a concept through which to satirise the week’s politics for... Read More »

Am I (Mr) Black Enough For You

Looks like we owe the team behind Mr Black an apology. Ever since we first heard about this sitcom we’ve been making wisecracks about how much it’s obviously a Kingswood Country knock-off, with a bit of Meet the Parents and All in the Family mixed in. It was simplistic and superficial of us – we... Read More »

It’s a Fine Line Between Pleasure and Pain

What exactly is a comedy? We’ve gone on and on here over the years about the way Australian television is happy to treat comedy as some kind of special ingredient to liven up an otherwise boring project, but it’s an approach that’s become so ingrained that there’s a boatload of shows currently on the air... Read More »

The Weekly is a Long Time in Politics

Chris Lilley’s Lunatics might have been grabbing all the comedy headlines over the last week or so, but that doesn’t mean The Weekly hasn’t been pulling crowds for its election coverage. No, it’s the general ineptitude of The Weekly that explains why it hasn’t been pulling in crowds – in fact, it’s shedding around over... Read More »

The Lunatics are the people who commissioned this

The reviews of Chris Lilley’s Lunatics are in, and it’s not looking good for this country’s most hyped comedian. The Guardian: …one of the underlying problems in Lilley’s humour still remains: he continues to punch down, making fun of people who have not been afforded the same privileges as he. There’s also the fact that... Read More »

Lunatics: the first two episodes

You’d have to think Netflix would be a little disappointed with Lunatics. Not because it’s crap, though it is: being an internet company rather than a broadcast channel, Netflix’s business model is all about getting you to watch rather than quality. They love grabbing up past-their-prime big names because the residual fame is enough to... Read More »

It Don’t Matter If You’re Black or White

First, the good news: Correcting some confusion – in the new show Lunatics, Chris Lilley is not portraying a woman of colour. When the series is released you will see that Jana is a white woman with huge 70s style curly hair. — Laura Waters (@LauraWaters1) April 11, 2019 Then the bad: Well, Meet the... Read More »

The Week(ly) Shall Rise

Ok, so you know how, week after week after week, we complain that The Weekly is the same old thing? This week they changed it. And in a development that shocked us to our very core, it actually made the show better. Who even knew such a thing was possible? Yeah, maybe we should be... Read More »