For a man so consistently hilarious, it’s a little surprising that Shaun Micallef has never quite cracked the secret of sitcom success. Welcher & Welcher has its defenders – ironically, they don’t include Micallef himself – but it’s generally seen as more miss than hit, while the first season of The Ex-PM never really scaled... Read More »
It would be fair to say that tonight’s new Wednesday night sitcom double bill of Rosehaven followed by The Letdown didn’t initially excite us. We found the first series of Rosehaven a bit patchy, and we really disliked the pilot of The Letdown when it aired last year as part of Comedy Showroom, yet both... Read More »
If you had to think of a single word to describe Australian television comedy – and that word was legally required to be complimentary – you couldn’t go far wrong with “polished”. Whatever the many, many many, many many many flaws with our nation’s comedy output, one thing it pretty much always manages to do... Read More »
After almost five months, the replacement for the short-lived John Conway Tonight, Aaron Chen Tonight, is here – and it’s not that different to the original. And if like us, you enjoyed Aaron Chen’s stand-out appearances as Conway’s ineffectual, geeky sidekick, and hoped he’d build on that when he took over the show, this is... Read More »
It’s fair to say we haven’t really taken to The Edge of the Bush, Anne Edmond’s short-form sitcom airing each week after Get Krack!n’. It’s partly the clash of dark and moody and over-the-top, zany characters that isn’t working for us, but also that it feels like an idea that seemed hilarious on paper or... Read More »
Okay, so we’ve already made our moral objections to Gruen painfully clear. Someone has to: a few days ago we heard an ABC radio host describe Gruen as a show that “hates advertising”. Yeah, it hates advertising so much all it does is show ads. This is a show where a panelist can say with... Read More »
One of the stand-out cameos in Get Krackin last week was Anne Edmonds as fashion expert Helen Bidou, a near-perfect parody of the sort of TV personality who’d continue to smile inanely and prattle on even as she was being forced into a straightjacket by the sort of mental health workers who presumably no longer... Read More »
Comedy isn’t a competition, but there’s only so many hours in a day so why settle for second best? Hackneyed writers spouting cliches we may very well be, but even we can recognise that Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell is the best Australian comedy of the year. Again. Do we even need to write a... Read More »
If you’re making a sitcom that’s of a consistently high standard each week, that means you’re doing a good job, right? And Utopia is doing a good job; every episode it makes valid points about how government works (or doesn’t work) and it usually raises a few laughs along the way. So why, after... Read More »
The verdict is in, and unsurprisingly everyone really loves Get Krack!n. Sure, some of these people doing the loving clearly weren’t watching Kate McLennan on Let Loose Live: Not long ago, most of us had never heard of Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney; now we can barely imagine Australian comedy without them. Australian comedy without... Read More »