The State of Play in the World Today
Looks like someone at Fairfax has noticed there isn't much Australian comedy on the commercial networks these... Read More »
Comedy TV
The Weekly Week Six: The End.
This was the week where The Weekly finally decided it was time to stop carving out that rut it’s been so proud of and just settle back into it. No more tinkering with the format: everything we saw this week was old news. More importantly, the tone of the show – which is probably the... Read More »
Spread a Little Too Thin
Initially we thought Open Slather was going to be two shows roughly bolted together. As The Comedy Channel’s high profile return to original Australian comedy, the promos traded hard – very hard – on the idea that this was gathering the titans of local sketch comedy circa 1990: Magda Szubanski, Gina Riley, Jane Turner, Michael... Read More »
The Weekly Week Five – argle bargle or foofaraw?
Hey, remember this? Don’t worry if you don’t recall that classic segment from 2013’s This Week Live, as Tom Gleeson kindly brought it back on this week’s episode of The Weekly rebranded as “Hard Chat”. Yep, This Week Live might have been axed due to low ratings and general disinterest, but that doesn’t mean its... Read More »
The Agony of Vale
The present series of The Agony of… ended this evening, but don’t expect an exciting new series to replace it next week. Oh... Read More »
The Weekly Week Four: Yeah, We’re Not Going To Do This Every Week
This was the week it took the ABC’s top topical news satire program less than two minutes before breaking out the Mark “Jacko” Jackson jokes. You remember, that guy from before Charlie Pickering hit puberty? C’mon, we know the average age of an Australian comedy writer is “I used to work for Max Gillies”, but... Read More »
Wait, What? Can You Say That Again?
Remember when people used to complain that Have You Been Paying Attention? was too scripted? Yeah, because actually writing jokes is a bad thing when you’re trying to be funny. But after the opening segment of their first episode for 2015 it’s time to throw those complaints in the bin, as the combination of actual... Read More »
Ebony and Ivory – 8MMM: the reappraisal
Seems we made an error in our review of the first episode of 8MMM Aboriginal Radio. Lots of commenters have told us that the constant racism from the show’s training manager Dave is entirely realistic. Guess there must be lots of white people in Alice Springs who can’t even buy bread in a supermarket without... Read More »
The Weekly Week Three: Week As Piss
Week three and the deck chairs are starting to be shuffled around. Gone is Kitty Flanagan’s segment; gone too the interview. In their place we get a UK correspondent fulfilling exactly the same role international comedy correspondents have been filling since satellite links became feasible, and Pickering hitting the road as a roving correspondent himself... Read More »
Compulsory Logies Wrap-Up Post
Comedy never comes out of a Logies ceremony looking great. Last night we saw the usual mix of light-hearted industry backslapping, and results which ranged from the surprisingly good to the fairly baffling. Here’s a quick... Read More »