We don’t really cover stand-up / live comedy here all that much and so, while the spotlight shines brightly on the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the next few weeks we’ll mostly be ranting away about Chris Lilley and trying to drum up support for Tony Martin’s nerd-friendly interview show A Quiet Word With… (starts... Read More »
For all the tough questions being asked on Hungry Beast, one seems to have been overlooked: why is it that, when producer Andrew Denton says “The whole point of this was to bring new people into the industry”, this third series sees the same faces back in the ring for yet another swing? After all,... Read More »
Yes, Laid finished up a few days ago, but it seemed like a good idea to wait just in case the Fairfax papers – specifically The Age – tried to slip in some more good words for a show they love so much they should just bloody well marry it. During its final week it... Read More »
We've heard a lot in the past week about how the BBC would screen exclusive footage from Chris Lilley's Angry Boys as part of their biennial fundraiser Comic Relief. Appearing on Comic Relief is obviously a massive coup for any Australian comedian, but it's notable that Lilley's Angry Boys wasn't considered one of the highlights in... Read More »
There’s a clip from Chris Lilley’s upcoming series Angry Boys currently doing the rounds (for example, here), and surprise surprise, it contains no surprises whatsoever. Well, maybe it does if you were expecting Lilley to do anything new or different now that he’s playing with the big boys (Angry Boys is co-funded by the BBC... Read More »
One of the biggest stories in comedy in both Australia and Britain in the past week has centred on the allegations made by The Games' writers and creators John Clarke and Ross Stevenson on The Drum... Read More »
Now that the chorus of voices calling for Live From Planet Earth have faded, their unholy bloodlust sated, a new round of voices can be heard. “They pulled it too soon”, these voices say, “They didn’t give it a chance to find its feet”. And who’s to say they don’t have a point? Well, us... Read More »
One of the many fun ways to pass the time while waiting to laugh watching Laid is to spot the various lines and scenes lifted from other shows. Sometimes they’re too generic to seriously attribute to a single source: for example, no-one actually invented the term “ass-clown”, but it’s not exactly in common usage in... Read More »
It was probably inevitable that we'd never find out how Girl Flat ended, nor indeed did many want to, but to axe a show that was improving (if not in ratings then certainly in quality) because it didn't bring huge audiences after it was bumped at the last minute into a late-night slot to allow Nine to cover the Christchurch Earthquake seems a little unfair. What happened to all that “give it a chance” stuff Nine were pushing after that disastrous first... Read More »
It’s no real shock that we like The Jesters a lot. This behind-the-scenes sitcom about a group of Chaser-style comedians and their grumpy producer stars Mick Molloy and is packed with references to and plots based on Australian television comedy; the only way to make a sitcom more to our liking would be to announce that Tony Martin was going to be a regular on the upcoming series of The... Read More »