Comedy TV

Tonightly 2.0 and the elephant in the room

Tonightly, the ABC Comedy nightly satire show that’s divided opinion on this blog and in the world of the mainstream media, is back. It was always going to be interesting to see how it would change in this new series, with the arrival of new executive producer Dan Ilic who promised (jokily) “to make it... Read More »

Taking it One Day at a Time

Let’s try this- -from a slightly different angle for once: what’s good about The Weekly with Charlie Pickering? Well, okay… let’s start with that it’s a show that takes advantage of its lengthy run and weekly schedule to change things up. Remember when Tom Gleeson’s fake travel segment Go Away was the only halfway decent... Read More »

Homecoming blues

Adelaide’s the kind of place a lot of young people move away from as soon as they can, gleefully embracing the wider range of opportunities in cities on the east coast or overseas, and only coming back when they really have to. Returning to Adelaide – or any other small-town type of place – after... Read More »

In For the Long Haul

Having Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation and Have You Been Paying Attention? on back-to-back (there was even time this week to go from one to the other without missing anything out) is both a great way to get two-and-a-bit hours worth of something close to actual entertainment from the commercial networks, and a handy way to... Read More »

MC Scat Chat

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with a show that’s just a jumble of unrelated parts, but there is definitely something wrong with The Weekly. No, we’re not talking about the way its listed as a comedy yet features straight news segments asking why isn’t dentistry covered by Medicare (hilarious!), or the fact it was allowed to... Read More »

Generations

Well, our worst fears came to pass: despite starting at 7.30, Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation ran just long enough to overlap with the start of Have You Been Paying Attention?. Comedy fan crisis! Fortunately TAYG is being repeated this Wednesday night (weird that HYBPA? is currently one and done screening-wise though), plus there’s all the... Read More »

The path to paradise begins in hell

On the surface, Corey White’s Roadmap to Paradise looks like another of those shows, in the tradition of John Safran, which uses comedy to make a point. Except it isn’t; Corey White takes a different approach. He’s got actual solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing our society – the state of democracy,... Read More »

If it ain’t broke, it’s Have You Been Paying Attention?

Making a one-off funny show is relatively easy; making a long-running show is also fairly easy. Combining the two is where it gets a little difficult, and not just because of the generally held belief that a comedy that starts strong is bound to drop off quickly (aka the Fawlty Towers defense). So hats off... Read More »

Vale Tonightly with Tom Ballard series 1

After almost six months, we’re going to declare Tonightly with Tom Ballard a success. Not in terms of ratings… Tonightly, which aired four days a week on ABC 2, pulled low ratings during its debut run. An average episode got less than 50,000 people watching, which meant it didn’t make it into the top 20... Read More »

The Weekly Gruen

So it took maybe ten minutes into 2018’s first episode of Gruen for someone to say “doing no advertising is silly” and fuck, how did that massive foot-shaped hole suddenly get in our television screen? And this was during a segment on the current banking royal commission, which – from our half-arsed reading of the... Read More »