It’s press release time! A major investment in locally produced, prime-time programming. (20 February 2017) Channel Seven will begin work on three locally produced programs, two of which are original formats. “The quality of the work coming out of our development team is exceptional,” says Seven’s Director of Network Programming Angus Ross. “The three commissions... Read More »
If you’re telling the life story of someone famous, it might seem obvious to occasionally mention exactly why they became famous in the first place. But that’s the kind of rookie mistake that separates unpaid bloggers from Australia’s telemovie elite, because while we sat through four hours of Hoges wondering exactly when it was going... Read More »
An obvious omission from the first series of Stop Laughing…This is serious was Hey Hey It’s Saturday. A show which in its day was hugely popular, but on reflection seems embarrassing. And we don’t just mean the Jackson Jive. It was impossible not to watch all the clips from Hey Hey… – and the various... Read More »
As we really should have mentioned earlier, Ten has grabbed the free-to-air rights to the local version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and starting tonight they’re screening it in (roughly) the HYBPA? timeslot for comedy fans who demand their laughs at the same time each week. Unfortunately for those who demand their laughs be... Read More »
Is it just us – and it usually is just us – or did that bit at the very start of this week’s The Weekly (now back for 2017!) basically say new regular Briggs was hired because he’s black? Obviously that’s not what they planned to say with their hilarious and of-the-moment parody of that... Read More »
In news that surprised no-one with the slightest idea of how money works, this just happened: Hey I have news. We have decided Season 4 #PleaseLikeMe is the last. I've loved making this show for you all so much. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/QKAk5nZQLV — Josh Thomas (@JoshThomas87) February 2, 2017 While it’s mildly interesting to us... Read More »
The first series of Stop Laughing…this is serious was a worthy if largely unsuccessful attempt to cover the entire history of Australian comedy in three 1-hour programs. Now it’s back for a second series, and in the first episode, the topic was characters. At the start of the episode, the following theory was posited: Barry... Read More »
One of the highlights of this year’s election was Sammy J’s Playground Politics, a faux kids show a la Play School that sunk the boots into our politicians with a cheezy child-friendly grin. So good news! As part of the ABC’s seemingly endless enthusiasm for putting on comedy during the non-ratings period, this week sees... Read More »
In word terms, 2016 was the year of “democracy sausage” and “post-truth”, but if the world of comedy had its say it’d probably go for “banter”, a term rightly mocked in The Yearly with Charlie Pickering for describing conversation that sounds funny but actually isn’t. Oh, the irony. But as joke after half-arsed observation died... Read More »
We’ve heard more exciting comedy announcements than the one about Fresh Blood alumni Fancy Boy and Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am getting series. But when we tuned into ABC2 last night and discovered that only one of them was terrible, we found ourselves feeling slightly less Scrooge and a little more Tiny Tim. It’s a... Read More »