Comedy TV
Australian comedy, particularly Australian comedy television, seem to be in one of its many “meh” phases. Angry Boys drags on and on, and newcomer Can of Worms (putting aside all the justly deserved criticism it received for the vast difference between what it promised and what it delivered) is equally dull television. Even Lawrence Leung's Unbelievable, an entertaining and amusing comedy/documentary series looking at magic and the supernatural, is somewhat tainted by being yet another example of an over-used genre which dates back to at least the first half of the '90s and Michael Moore's TV... Read More »
- Comedy TV
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- July 05, 2011
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- Comments Off on The dog throws us a bone
The second episode of Wilfred (US) took a turn for the better this week with Wilfred's passive/aggressive bullying of Ryan toned down a lot, and the show generally feeling more like a reluctant buddy... Read More »
“Bogans! Scum of the Earth or YOU!! Find out tonight!” (and now that we have your attention…) There’s been a long-term trend in program making over the last half decade or so of taking the risk out of live (or the more common, “live-on-tape”) television. In much the same way that Thank God You’re Here... Read More »
Premiering tonight is Can of Worms, a new comedy panel show from Zapruder's Other Films. In recent years Zapruder's has earned a reputation for making intelligent, edgy television - The Gruen Transfer, one of their best known productions, is often talked of in reverential tones - so unsurprisingly, Gruen fans are positively panting with excitement about Can of... Read More »
No sooner did we dump our latest load of Chris Lilley snark on an unsuspecting internet – seriously folks, GRAN HAZ ALZHEIMER I’M GOING TO CREY – then The Age‘s Green Guide came out with their “50 Things We Like About TV” list and… well, you can probably guess the rest. So now, the rest:... Read More »
Let’s do a little basic math. The average episode length for an Australian comedy series – on the ABC at least – is six episodes. Once or twice a year there’ll be an eight-episode series, but that’s it. So if you were making a television series, you’d want your intentions (and the level of quality)... Read More »
- Comedy TV
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- June 25, 2011
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- Comments Off on Mad, bad and unfunny to know
As a sitcom, the original version of Wilfred never really quite worked. Chief amongst the problems was this: if you expect audiences to suspend their disbelief when it comes to such logic flaws as “Why is Adam the only one who can talk to Wilfred?” and “Why does Adam put up with both his bitch girlfriend and her pain in the arse mutt?” you should reward them with lots of... Read More »
With Angry Boys turning out to be the stinker we’ve been predicting since 2009, the nation’s focus has started to shift to… – sorry, you though this was another Angry Boys gripe-session? Don’t worry, we’ll let you know when we start our serious “hate to say I told you so” singalong for Lilley’s latest effort.... Read More »
We don’t normally get much mail here at Tumbleweeds Central, but our recent post on Lawrence Leung’s new show Unbelievable drove someone to write in with a John Safran / Leung connection we’d missed*. It seems that, for once, our comparison of Unbelievable with Safran’s earlier shows had some basis in real-world events: There is... Read More »
We all know how hard it is to make a living in comedy. We all know how much harder it is to make a living in comedy when you don’t actually make comedy. Even then, seeing Peter Helliar dust off pointless, annoying, Ricky Gervais-knock-off one-joke character Bryan “Strauchanie” Strauchan this week for a seemingly regular... Read More »
