Is The Late Show the most overrated Australian comedy of the last twenty years? The answer may surprise you: yes it is. Not only is it massively overrated, it continues to be overrated to this very day – which, considering we’re currently celebrating the twenty year anniversary of its initial airing on the ABC, gives... Read More »
Well, that’s Hamish & Andy screwed. To explain further: like pretty much everything in life, once a comedian’s act stops growing it starts dying. Once you settle in to doing the same thing again and again, no matter how successful you are at it eventually people will get bored. It’s a great problem to have... Read More »
What’s that you say? The Olympics is nothing but a massive marketing exercise thinly disguised as a sporting event? SAY WHAAAAAAAAAAAohfuckoff. Yes, once again the smug arseholes behind and in front of the camera at the Gruen sweatshop are back to tell us the fucking obvious – and just to warn you up front, this... Read More »
If you’re going to be a comedian, you have to make a choice: do you make comedy designed to appeal to the masses, or do you follow your heart? On the one hand, appealing to the masses seems like the smart way to achieve mass appeal but idiots will call you a sell-out; on the... Read More »
Premiering tonight on ABC1 in the not terribly good timeslot of 6.25pm is the new Working Dog series Audrey’s Kitchen, six 3-minute episodes based on their 2010 parody cookbook Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan... Read More »
It might be hard to spot from beneath the cloud of gloom and despair that hangs over the Australian televised comedy scene, but at the moment we have two – count ’em – decent local comedy programs currently airing on Australian free-to-air television. We’ll spare you the suspense: we mean Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell... Read More »
For a few years now – well, it feels like years at least – we’ve been complaining / warning that Australian television likes everything about comedy but the making-people-laugh stuff. Of course, who listens to what we have to say? And so it has come to pass that in a few short weeks (July 25th)... Read More »
It was revealed in the British press last Thursday that Australia’s own Clive James is dying of cancer. He's not strictly a comedian, but his death would be a significant loss to Australian... Read More »
Here’s a question: when exactly did Australian political comedy go soft? Put another way, when Shaun Micallef, cuddly game-show host and master of light-hearted surrealism, can moderately startle at least one of the hard-boiled Tumbleweeds team by confusing John Howard’s biography with Mein Kampf and making a Tony Abbott joke based on not quite calling... Read More »
Down towards the “pointless” end of the Australian comedy news spectrum was this story which emerged on Saturday on the 3AW website. In brief, the story was that Chris Lilley had been banned from Facebook for posting a “lewd picture” in which some testicles were visible, i.e. a “sneaky nuts” photo.... Read More »