Comedy TV

A Beast of a programme

This week's most overlooked debut was Hungry Beast, which inevitably stood no chance against the Hey Hey reunion and the premiere of Celebrity Masterchef. That's probably just as well for those “19 newcomers to television” who are involved as “tell us something we don't know” - the show's motto - it... Read More »

Gilding the Lilley

Look what turned up in our inbox at the end of business Friday – okay, you probably already know all this, but it’s always fun to see the original press release so you can see just how little work in involved in journalism... Read More »

Burn GTV9, Burn.

There’s a long tradition in post-apocalyptic film and literature where the shattered survivors of a world after some unimaginable holocaust desperately attempt to escape into the... Read More »

Comedy Free Comedy

The number one thing a comedy has to do is make people laugh. But that’s kinda hard, so every few years there comes along a sweeping trend in comedy – one that doesn’t involve comedy at all. Instead of simply trying to make people... Read More »

We come not to praise Double Take, but to bury it

This week sees the last episode of Channel Seven’s sketch series Double Take. Unlike its former stablemate, the Ed Kavalee-hosted TV Burp, there are no calls for a second... Read More »

Comedy Mysteries: The Chaser’s War on Scheduling

Remember when the ABC cut back their order for the final series of The Chaser's War on Everything from eight episodes to six after the "make a Realistic Wish Foundation" sketch earned them a two week... Read More »

The Flim-Flam King of the Rim-Ram Room

Press releases are supposed to be full of over-oxygenated waffle designed to fan the flames of interest in a program that otherwise would barely rate a grunt as your average viewer clicked past it to repeats of Seinfeld... ... Read More »

Vale TV Burp

So farewell then TV Burp, the bought-in British format that could have worked. Some have argued that TV Burp wasn’t good enough to care about but, while it wasn’t the funniest thing ever, it was getting better. It certainly got more praise than its partner show Double Take (admittedly, not difficult), hence Seven swapping the... Read More »

The Mystery of Murray Foote (continues)

Sam Simmons...... Read More »

You Get What You Pay For

Pay TV in this country has been churning out sitcoms for well over a decade now, going at least as far back as Bob Franklin’s Introducing Gary... Read More »