Last week came the news that the annual best-in-festival award dished out by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Barry, named after Barry Humphries, would be renamed in light of Humphries’ comments on transgender people last year. As ABC News reported: Humphries is a household name for his iconic characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir... Read More »
Remember that story six months ago about that Tonightly sketch that upset the Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield, Cory Bernardi and various others, and inspired several complaints to ACMA and the ABC? Well, late last week, ACMA cleared the show: Today ACMA has found no breach by the ABC, noting the comedic context rather than... Read More »
Barry Humphries has been in the news a lot recently, because of outrage at some comments he made about trans people in an interview with Lloyd Evans for right-wing UK-based magazine The Spectator: I ask if his biggest crowd-pleaser, Dame Edna Everage, has attracted the attention of trans activists, who are swift to take offence... Read More »
In the wake of Rebel Wilson receiving a record payout as a result of winning her defamation lawsuit against Bauer Media, where does humanity possibly go from here? It’s the size of the payout that’s news-worthy; anyone with eyes to see knew she was going to win the second it was announced it was a... Read More »
Here’s a blast from the past: while watching the final episode of Growing Up Gracefully, the ABC’s latest not-quite-comedy to combine interviews with relationship experts with somewhat pointless sketches demonstrating not very sexy sex stuff, we noticed Marieke Hardy listed in the end credits as script supervisor. Script supervisor is a job that, as far... Read More »
Remember when Chris Lilley was funny? Yeah, us neither. Yet there’s always room to fall further, as he’s revealed with his latest “release”: Days after man who ran down Aboriginal teen was sentenced to 3 yrs, @ChrisLilley posts blackface vid "squashed n-": https://t.co/tgL3WuP18M pic.twitter.com/lVn2hrfG2t — Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) July 29, 2017 It seems that for... Read More »
You may have noticed we’re three weeks into the second season of The Family Law and we still haven’t managed to review it. But more likely you haven’t: while even high profile Australian television struggles to get attention these days, The Family Law, AKA the only Australian comedy SBS will be broadcasting this year, has... Read More »
We honestly thought Clarke & Dawe would never end. Two men, a couple of chairs, a great script – the perfect satirical format. Things were looking a bit shaky for John Clarke and Bryan Dawe towards the end of the Howard years, when Gerard Henderson was banging on about left-wing bias in comedy and shows... Read More »
The ABC has confirmed that John Clarke – yes, the funny one – passed away over the weekend of natural causes while hiking in the Victorian Grampians. He was 68. It’s hard to underestimate the size of this loss. As a mentor and friend he was an invaluable part of Australia’s comedy scene, and his... Read More »
Yesterday, TV Tonight reported that Channel 9 sitcom Here Come the Habibs, now two-thirds the way through its first series has been renewed: Nine has renewed its new sitcom Here Come the Habibs! for a second series. The series launched to 1.25m in overnight metro viewers, although Nine cites almost 3 million nationally including repeats... Read More »