Vale Open Slather
The final episode of Open Slather aired quietly a few weeks ago, and despite the many twists and turns in its production history it ended how it started out:... Read More »
Comedy TV
Don’t Mess With Your Ex
Shaun Micallef’s The Ex-PM finished up last week, going out the way it lived – as a half hour sitcom. Which made it a bit of an oddity on Australian television in 2015, as the days when the ABC’s head of scripted comedy was willing to make (or with the funding to make) sitcoms that... Read More »
Wil Anderson: Legacy Hire
The latest series of Gruen wrapped up last week after yet another ratings triumph: Gruen has ended a stellar run on ABC winning its timeslot again with 948,000 viewers. The show has never dipped below 900,000 all season (last week’s 897,000 was eventually adjusted to 900,000). Host Wil Anderson gave no indication if the show would return... Read More »
Ronny Chieng on The Daily Show – and other Aussies on American late night TV
If you’ve ever wanted to break into American late night TV, but were worried it would never happen because you’re not American, then there’s some good news: not being American doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore. The very British John Oliver is all over HBO with his investigative news comedy show Last Week Tonight,... Read More »
The unlikeable Ex-PM
Recent episodes of The Ex-PM have seen a shift away from plots which rely on the audience believing that Andrew Dugdale was once Prime Minister (as we pointed out in our first review of the series, this is difficult), to plots which rely on the audience believing that Andrew Dugdale is some guy who’s very... Read More »
AACTA-ing up
The nominees for the 2016 AACTA Awards were announced yesterday, and the comedy and light entertainment nominees aren’t bad at all… AACTA AWARD FOR BEST CHILDREN’S TELEVISION SERIES LITTLE LUNCH – Robyn Butler, Wayne Hope – ABC3 THE NEW ADVENTURES OF FIGARO PHO – Daniel Fill, Frank Verheggen, Luke Jurevicius – ABC3 NOWHERE BOYS SERIES... Read More »
Change or Die
So it seems How Not to Behave has been bumped for its final episode: What appears to be the final episode of How Not to Behave will air at 10pm on ABC this week. The show has made way for the return of Kitchen Cabinet this Wednesday. Meanwhile, the final five episodes of Open Slather have been... Read More »
Seriously, can you Please Like Me?
Welcome to a post in which we do two things we know you love: Quote extensively from a news story and get all annoyed about it. Slag off Josh Thomas. From TV Tonight… ABC’s mixed messages on Please Like Me ABC has bumped Please Like Me to a later timeslot after just one episode of... Read More »
Australian Media Eager to Please
Back when the ABC was running promos for Please Like Me and The Ex-PM pretty much back-to-back, we noticed something a little unusual: while the commercials for Micallef’s show focused on people actually saying and doing funny things, the Please Like Me spot only showed one thing, over and over – people laughing. Maybe we’re... Read More »
The unlikely Ex-PM
It’s hard to believe that Andrew Dugdale was ever put in charge of anything, let alone this country, but that’s the premise of The Ex-PM, the new ABC sitcom written by and starring Shaun Micallef. Once upon a time Andrew Dugdale (Micallef) had a popularity rating of 76%, which saw him win four elections and... Read More »