The final episode of Stop Laughing…this is Serious aired last night, and while we’re as delighted as anyone that 180 minutes of ABC time were given over to these programs, they were sadly a rather unsatisfying survey of the... Read More »
This post’s been sitting on the shelf for a few days because… well, we figured we said pretty much all we had to say when we covered the first episode. Especially as pretty much all our predictions for the future of this series came true. Diminishing results as week after week our heroes are dropped... Read More »
As much as we respect the work history of many of the experienced members of the cast, and are interested to see what the newbies have to offer, 20 weeks of Open Slather seems somewhat... Read More »
Most of the time history is messy, contradictory and hard to compartmentalise, and Stop Laughing…this Is Serious, a new documentary on Australian comedy, gets it right by keeping its themes broad and... Read More »
Judith Lucy’s spent the past six weeks exploring womanhood in Judith Lucy Is All Woman, and what have we learnt? That it’s virtually impossible to answer any of the questions she set out to explore?... Read More »
So we now have this to look forward to: If somebody doesn’t put together a sketch where *all* the cast members of Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation are hosting identical news comedy shows, we’ll… well, we’ll continue to throw all our sketch ideas into the bin where they belong. Ok, let’s be realistic here: Shaun MIcallef... Read More »
Ok, we’re just going to come right out and ask: do comedians make a shitload more money from live tours than they do from television? Because pretty much the only way we can figure out how this – THE serially selfconscious Bondi Hipsters are about to get up off their couch — to star in... Read More »
The trick with parodies is to make sure there’s more going on than just the parody. Those classic Mad Magazine movie spoofs had great art; Get Smart had a whole lot of jokes that had nothing to do with the “spy-fi” craze of the 60s. And the other end of the scale, SBS’s recent action... Read More »
“Why do comedians always make this sort of program these days? Why can’t they make proper comedies?” a friend of this blog enquired recently. He was talking about Judith Lucy Is All Woman, the latest in a line of personality-led, comedic explorations of a... Read More »
Mad as Hell is back! And, uh, yeah… ok, it’s taken us a couple of days to get around to mentioning it because we don’t really have all that much new to say. Shaun Micallef and his skilled team have created a finely honed satirical machine and by now they’re capable of hitting any target... Read More »