Comedy TV

Connect the Dots and Win a Prize

Okay, so we know there’s going to be a new head of ABC comedy – one Mr Rick Kalowski – and for once there’s a solid track record of work we can examine to give us an idea of where things might be heading. Time to draw some wild and almost certainly inaccurate conclusions from... Read More »

The State of Play In the World Today

Press release time! RICK KALOWSKI APPOINTED ABC TV’S NEW HEAD OF COMEDY Rick Kalowski, former lawyer turned award-winning TV creator/writer/producer, has today been appointed ABC TV’s Head of Comedy. He will take up his position at ABC TV in Sydney in the second half of 2013. In the meantime, ABC Fiction will continue to manage... Read More »

Details are sketchy

Hmmm…this sure sounds worrying for the ABC… An output deal between the BBC and ABC will end after nearly 50 years following the announcement of a new BBC Drama and Comedy channel on... Read More »

Typing LOL Is Not The Same Thing As Actual Laughter

One of our contacts forwarded us this press release for tonight’s episode of The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting: It is random, it’s weird it’s awkward and uncomfortable. It’s not easy to boil down all the current cliches about what makes a comedy “good” in 2013 into a single line, but they’ve managed it.... Read More »

Rubbish Shows in Failure to Rate Non-Shocker

If you ever wanted to whiff deep the odor of desperation, simply hold your nose close to your television set during the ABC’s Wednesday night line-up. How bad has it become? This bad: It was a bad week for ABC’s Wednesday line-up this week and it is wasting no time in adjusting its schedule. From... Read More »

Things You Learn At The Logies

Well, you learn that no-one gives a fuck about Australian comedy, for starters. Mad as Hell was beaten by The X Factor? All the comedy categories replaced by “Best Presenter” and “Best Light Entertainment”? It’s enough to make you think The TV Week Logie Awards are nothing more than a promotional tool for the comedy-free... Read More »

Calling Occupants of Distant Interplanetary Craft

Making good comedy isn’t entirely about intangibles such as talent and a good sense of humour: there are things comedians can actively to do make their television programmes funnier. For one thing, some formats lend themselves to comedy more readily than others. A quasi-drama that largely involves a variety of twenty-somethings standing around in a... Read More »

Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight

We’ve been a bit negative around these parts of late, so let’s start off our review of The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting – or as we’ll call it from here on, Knife – with a positive: it’s giving fresh faces a shot at making comedy on ABC1. Traditionally the ABC’s major network has... Read More »

Vale Please Like Me

Well, that certainly wrapped up in a fashion that was bog-obvious from the start. So let’s let our attention wander a moment from the exciting world of Josh Thomas learning how to feel human emotions while remaining unable to speak in a human accent and discuss words. As in, do words actually mean anything in... Read More »

Vale The Agony of Life

Did the final episode of The Agony of Life just go to air? Even if it didn’t then we’re going to pay tribute to it anyway, because getting eight more episodes out of this concept is an achievement…of... Read More »