Comedy TV

Upper middle grade

When you compare Upper Middle Bogan and It’s A Date to the other Australian sitcoms of this year - Housos, Please Like Me, Leongatha, TwentySomething - and the horrors to come, it’s clear that they’ve been the... Read More »

Sa’me ol’ La’me

So, you’ve all seen this by now, right? Ah, so many questions. For one, who thought giving us a one minute clip where the first 20 seconds consist of teenage girls going “love you” was going to make a good impression. Oh wait, that’s Chris Lilley’s patented “insight”, isn’t it. Wow, who knew teenage girls... Read More »

Barely Legal

Okay, so Legally Brown: remember when SBS used to show Chappelle’s Show pretty much non-stop Monday nights? Yes, that’s the laziest possible comparison, but we are talking about Australian television here. And yeah we know that, in the US at least, the sketch show format where the host / performer(s) comes out and do a... Read More »

Delivering the blands

Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder may now be, as The Chaser put it, “Denton free”, but their new show Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery still has the air of Denton’s meisterwerk Enough Rope about... Read More »

Tractor Monkeys is Back!

Tractor Monkeys is back! Can’t you feel the excitement in the air? The electricity humming across this great land as in homes and pubs and vacant lots people look up with a thrill in their hearts at the news that Tractor Monkeys is back! Finally life has meaning again. Finally we have cause to go... Read More »

A Rebel in Time

In the hall of mirrors that is the internet these days it’s hard to tell what anybody really believes. So while you’d think this column in today’s Sydney Morning Herald would be music to our ears… The following is not going to make me very popular, but given the hype surrounding the subject matter, I... Read More »

Vale Election Coverage

Those of you who are Media Watch fans would have noticed that fearless prosecutor of all that’s dubious in the Australian media – no, it doesn’t run for three hours a day every day, why do you ask? – turned its sights this week onto the final episode of The Hamster Decides: Hello, I’m Paul... Read More »

On The Up

Is it just us or have the last few episodes of Upper Middle Bogan been a bit funnier the earlier ones? The fact that they were written by Tony Martin (episode 4 – “Picture Perfect”) and Gary McCaffrie (episode 5 – “No Angel”) may be a hint as to... Read More »

She Goes She Goes She Goes… She Just Goes (and comes back)

Well, looks like a): all our speculation was wrong apart from b): the part where we guessed Chris Lilley was completely out of ideas: Australia’s favourite mean girl is back Ja’mie King returns to her private schoolgirl roots for ABC TV After months of speculation and rumour, ABC TV is pleased to confirm that Australia’s... Read More »

A Gran(d) Legacy

Well, isn’t this a surprising turn of events: Guess which character is coming back in my new show? http://t.co/nTyz38JrRO pic.twitter.com/j6MNUsYt26 — Chris Lilley (@ChrisLilley) September 4, 2013 Hmm… could it be the one that involves Lilley putting on an unlikely costume for a 40-something man then saying “outrageous” things before the music gets all serious... Read More »