Comedy TV

Gonna Make Ya Sweat ‘Till Ya Bleed

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 »

A Presumption of Shared Humanity

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 »

Audrey’s Kitchen

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 »

July 2012: A New Golden Age?

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 »

What’s So Funny About the Future of Australian Comedy?

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 »

The un-late Clive James

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 »

Thinking About Political Comedy?

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 »

Chris Lilley’s nuts

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 »

The Plummeting Value of the Euro

Hamish and Andy are back! And why shouldn’t they be? Yes, their 2011 show Gap Year didn’t quite deliver the kind of gangbuster figures Nine was no doubt hoping for, but it’s not like they soiled the rug with Live From Planet Earth numbers either. Whatever you think of them as comedians, having them back... Read More »

Willing to pay the Nice

So, Nice has made it to air and we finally got to see the context in which that duet of “Islands in the Stream”... Read More »