Australian Tumbleweeds
Vale Gold Diggers
Gold Diggers is over, and its anti-heroines Gertrude and Marigold Brewer have got somewhat towards their goal of marrying rich and living the easy life. But was it worth telling us their story of trying to find wealthy husbands over eight episodes? Given that the show’s schtick of talking like it’s 2023 even though it’s 1853 was getting boring in episode one, maybe not.
The basic joke of Gold Diggers – and a major problem with the show was that there pretty much was only one basic joke – was that Gertie and Goldie speak like a couple of TikTokers who think they’re intelligent feminists but are actually pretty clueless. Once you get past that, it’s a low-stakes Netflix-esque drama with the occasional sight gag, odd character, or funny line. If you’re seeking big laughs, maybe catch up on Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café, which does high-concept sitcoms featuring big courtroom scenes way better, albeit with an emphasis on “anything can happen” rather than an attempt to comment on contemporary culture, as Gold Diggers kind of tries to.
Which brings us to why this show was set in the 1850s when the target is now, where social media influencers telling women to put all their energy into bagging rich husbands have supposedly been blowing up recently. There’s presumably a bit more to it than that the title, Gold Diggers, is quite a good pun for a show set during the Gold Rush, but we’re not entirely convinced. Is there anything in the show which was funnier because it was set in the 1850s? Or would setting it in the present day be too reminiscent of recent-ish ABC comedies which make similar commentary on social media influencers, like 2019’s Content.
Another issue is that the Brewer sisters spend way too long in a town which doesn’t have a pool of rich potential husbands. Apart from the one guy, who’s already married to an old frenemy of theirs from the big smoke. So, they must hope that either one of the miners will strike it rich or some cashed-up dude will roll into town. Which kind of doesn’t happen.
What does happen, romantically, to the sisters is the opposite of their original intent – they fall in love with non-rich people. This is a nice twist if you’re invested in the plot and find the whole marrying-for-money thing a bit sad or distasteful. But not great if you were hoping that their hooking up with rich folk would result in big laughs.
Overall, Gold Diggers failed as a comedy. The historical setting didn’t generate a lot of laughs, their gold-digging and romantic adventures didn’t generate a lot of laughs and making them both obnoxious social media influencer types didn’t generate a lot laughs. So, what was the point? And why on earth did it need to be eight episodes long?
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Tonight Ain’t Your Night, Bro
A few people today have noticed something we picked up on yesterday: Channel Ten’s pulled the plug on tonight’s comedy line-up. No Thank God You’re Here, no The Inspired Unemployed. And why? The sudden realisation that Australian comedy is in a death spiral and they were only prolonging the agony? Worse: they don’t want it to interfere with the sport.
BUMPED
We’re talking, of course, of the big World Cup (is that right)… match? Between Australia and… England? Not the UK? Look, we barely give a fuck about sport at the best of times. When we’re told it’s our patriotic duty to watch a ball get kicked around? Open up a cell door because we’re turning traitor.
But we also can’t deny that the last game was a massive ratings smash. We didn’t think there were four million television sets left in the country, let alone four million free-to-air viewers. So it’s hardly surprising that the other commercial networks (Nine has also pulled tonight’s episode of The Block) are getting the hell out of its way. No point sending your best troops over the top directly into enemy machine gun fire and all that.
What is slightly interesting about this is that the ABC is standing firm. Good news for fans of Hard Quiz, Gruen and Gold Diggers! God knows they deserve some, what with their crap taste in television.
There’s a couple of possible reasons for this:
A): The ABC hate sport and Australia. Bloody typical.
B): The ABC want to give television audiences some real choice. It’d be nice to believe this, but having seen the rest of the ABC’s line-up across the year it doesn’t seem like “choice” is something they’re all that keen on delivering.
C): The ABC think it doesn’t really matter, because their main audience now is all on iView and will get caught up on tonight’s programming later if they’re too busy watching the Matildas live. And sure, this is definitely possible, though the idea of actually going out of your way to log onto iView to watch Hard Quiz is pretty depressing.
D): The ABC think it doesn’t really matter, because they know that their viewers ain’t going nowhere. In their minds the ABC audience is so firmly rusted-on that not only do they barely acknowledge the existence of commercial television, they don’t really care what they watch so long as that little ABC logo is in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
The reason why none of these possible reasons makes complete sense is because Wednesday night is meant to be the one night when the ABC really does compete with the commercial networks on their own terms. It’s comedy night! And while the days when the ABC would actually win the ratings thanks to a bunch of legitimately popular and crowd-pleasing programs are long gone, the stench of their blatant audience-chasing remains.
Or at least, something stinks
Gainfully Unemployed
Pranks! They’re the lowest form of comedy and we all know it. They’re the kind of thing your unfunny mate tries to get you to watch during half time at the footy, and you’ve only got yourself to blame because what are you doing at the footy in the first place. But we’ve laughed at fart jokes before: maybe The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical Jokers) won’t be a prank played on us?
We won’t leave you in suspense: the first episode wasn’t shit. It wasn’t classic comedy either, but you know… pranks. The secret sauce here is that the pranks were mostly being played on each other, a la Hamish & Andy when they were actually funny. Mates winding each other up = funny, The Chaser running up behind a politician waving a big prop = not so much. Sorted.
It’s a bit of a weird one to be airing in prime time on Australian television in 2023, in that it’s just a bunch of prank stuff that you’ll probably have forgotten before the end credits. Unless of course you’re the kind of person who hangs around the school yard / office kitchen asking people if they saw this amazing show you watched last night and if they’re silly enough to say no you then proceed to re-enact it (badly) for them. Isn’t this kind of thing why we invented the internet? So we could phase these people out of our lives?
(of course, the internet – mostly Instagram and TikTok – is where The Inspired Unemployed come from. Gotta get the kids back into the habit of watching commercial television somehow)
With four cast members, and with a format that requires each one of them to go through each prank scenario, decent ideas are a must. Spending eight minutes on a dud is the last thing you want. Fortunately, episode one featured a couple of decent comedy set-ups that were flexible enough to provide some variety in how things went. Strong basics: tick.
The four guys are just generic guys, with no real on-air personalities beyond “top blokes”. At this stage there’s no strong “oh shit, the blonde one hates this kind of stuff” side to things. On the other hand, nobody seems like a bastard either: they’re just mates trying to throw each other under a bus. So the character side of things… let’s say neutral for now.
As far as the actual pranks go, as you’d expect we’re talking hit and miss – but with more hits than misses. At worst they’re just kind of there (the balloon blowing-up one) or too over-the-top to be plausible to the regular people present (the “anal gazing” bit). But when they get a good thing going, they’re usually able to build on it to create a decent run of laughs (the phone break-up bit).
This kind of series is a bit hard to judge because while it’s good at what it’s trying to do, what it’s trying to do is be extremely disposable television. Ten is currently going all-in with local comedy – they’re currently showing four Australian comedy series a week, which no network has managed in a very long time (even the ABC’s Wednesday line-up usually tops out at three). While none of them are aiming all that high – it’s all panel shows, quiz shows, and prank shows – they’re all watchable at the very least. Which isn’t something that can be said about all current Australian comedy.
It’ll be interesting to see where (Impractical) Jokers goes from here, as episode one was almost entirely about the guys messing with each other – until the final “punishment” bit, where a wedding had to put up with a mildly offensive speech. It’s a lot harder to get successful laughs out of playing pranks on the unsuspecting public, mostly because 99 times out of a 100 there’s nowhere to go – you do the prank, they react, it’s over.
Remember when Kinne used to go out on the street and do stupid stuff trying to get passers-by to react? There’s a reason why your answer was “nope”.
Thank God You’re Back
As probably the only Australian comedy format of the 21st century with any nostalgic value attached to it (can’t wait for the Randling revival), we shouldn’t have been surprised that Thank God You’re Here finally made a comeback. But did the magic return with it?
Well, that depends: was there ever any magic there in the first place? Much as the show was much-loved, it didn’t take long to figure out the main appeal was seeing very funny people put into a situation where they found it extremely difficult to be very funny. A few people made it work; most struggled.
And so it proved to be on the first episode back after 15 or so years. Each of the four solo segments plus the group challenge (the fake ads and sketches they used to throw in between segments were nowhere to be found) had their moments. They also had a lot of awkward and sometimes painful flailing about from people we’ve seen be a lot funnier just about everywhere else.
Look, it’s totally possible that what the no doubt massive audience wants to see is funny people taken down a peg or two by being stuck in a situation where they’re on the back foot. Us? When you’ve got a cast like Urzila Carlson, Aaron Chen, Julia Zemiro and Mark Bonanno, why would you do anything that got in the way of them being funny?
While the sketch ideas were well constructed and the support cast (many of whom were back from the original) kept things moving along, it’s still a show built around asking very funny people to instantly come up with the next word in a sentence. It’s difficult and stressful for anyone, especially in front of a huge live audience. For comedians used to scripting their own material? Tough ask.
Ironically, our long-standing issue with TGYH has been that it’s an improv show that doesn’t leave any room for improv. People are fed a set-up for a line, they say something hopefully funny, here comes the next set-up. There are firm barriers in place to prevent the sketch from going off the rails; ironically the funniest moment of the night was when Aaron Chen gave an answer that meant the next set-up didn’t work (or worked too well).
But if you’re going to do an improv show, do an improv show. Let the contestants come up with their own ideas on where things should go, and have sketches that rely on their skills (and allow them to push things in directions where they can be funny). TGYH just asks them to come up with the next word in a sentence; no matter what they say, the support cast will pull things back on script.
You can stuff up and be unfunny with one line, but then the sketch resets and you get another chance. The bad news is, you can only be so funny; the good news is, you can only fail so badly. Once you’ve seen a few episodes, you know what you’re going to get – unless there’s a real off-the-cuff expert on the stage, which going by the original series happens about once every three episodes. Not a great strike rate.
Still, this first show had more than enough polish to come across as a win. Ceclia Pacquola and Glenn Robbins unsurprisingly proved to be very safe pairs of hands. But there’s no escaping the fact that there were a lot of points during the segments where the cast – again, all very funny people – just didn’t come up with funny stuff.
Again, maybe that’s what the audience wants to see. A big part of the show is the “live” atmosphere, and failing is a big part of the risk that gives the whole thing its energy. But there’s a difference between “energy” and “funny”.
And this is a show that too often doesn’t seem focused enough on the funny.
Vale Utopia 2023
Utopia has come to an end, as we knew it would. But is this goodbye, or merely “I’ll be back”?
Yeah, an 80s movie reference feels pretty on brand for Utopia. Despite being stocked with young comedic talent, this last season has been a firm reminder that the oldies haven’t retired yet and if this is how you plan to run the place once they’re gone then they might just stick around a few decades longer.
Utopia‘s strengths have always been obvious. Strong cast, well crafted scripts, multiple storylines that tie together well, decent jokes. Australian sitcoms don’t set a high bar; Utopia cleared it with ease. So it’s a sign of respect more than anything that we’re not just saying “eh, good enough” and moving on.
(little preview of our upcoming Vale for Gold Diggers there)
This season of Utopia didn’t quite tip over into full Boomer outrage at political correctness gone mad. Thank god (you’re here) for that. But too often it felt like a series where the overriding view was that all this modern focus on diversity and insensitivity and considering other people’s feelings was getting in the way of getting things done. Wait, “felt like”? By the final episode, it was saying that outright.
Which is actually pretty funny for a series about a government department made up of pointless middlemen managers whose sole reason for existing is to sign off on projects conceived by one group and constructed by another. It’s bureaucracy gone mad!
But c’mon, who doesn’t want a sharp satire on how government bureaucracy delays things and makes them more expensive because they have to justify spending taxpayers money and deal with politician’s whims? We do! But too often Utopia wasn’t it.
Utopia was a show about a government department that never found a way to turn the satirical spotlight on itself. The NBA – well, the Tony and Nat part at least – were never wrong, just exasperated. And yet if you bothered to look it wasn’t hard to find numerous points throughout the series where they were, if not completely wrong, then clearly not 100% right.
Example time: remember the episode with the school kids hanging around? They were annoying smartarses that everyone wanted to pass off to someone else because they were… knowledgeable and engaged?
Within the world of the series, the joke worked fine. They were an intrusion getting in the way of our cast doing their jobs; piss those brats right off. Once you stepped outside of the series? Hang on – the kids were just making them do their jobs. Which is funny… if your show is about a bunch of lovable slackers sticking it to the man by slacking off. Utopia is about the last two hardworking, sane people in a public service gone mad; making fun of kids because they also know what they’re talking about feels a bit off.
In fact, whenever the Utopia team deals with the public they’re a pain in the arse. Talkback callers (and the politicans who listen to them) are constantly demanding the impossible. Protestors don’t know what they’re on about. Modern standards of inclusiveness and integration are silly distractions. People get angry on social media for no reason at all! Okay, maybe the show had a point there.
Usually all this was presented as annoying time wasting crap coming from the NBA’s nominal bosses. But behind them, the public – on social media, on talkback radio, booing Tony on Q&A. And yet, Utopia is a show about government and the public service. Their whole job is based on managing and dealing with public demands. Tony and Nat may not have customers, but they work for the public. Those scenes where they’re told they have to take into account some new rule or attitude and they all but roll their eyes? They’re the ones in the wrong.
Early on the joke with Utopia was “the government keep promising these big schemes that are never going to happen haha high speed rail”. Increasingly the focus shifted to old people being annoyed that things have changed in the workplace and they can’t quite see the point. Which is a strong basis for comedy, only usually the old people are shown as out of touch hangovers from a time best forgotten not the last remaining voice of sanity, insert Principal Skinner “no, it’s the children who are wrong” meme here.
So what is Utopia trying to say? And it’s definitely trying to say something; it’s not Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe. Each week Tony and Nat* are forced to deal with the fact that their co-workers in the public service and their bosses in government are easily distracted, obsessed with irrelevancies, slaves to a fickle public, and not really interested in results. Just let us do our jobs!
Which involve… handling multiple overlapping issues simultaneously, dealing with the often conflicting concerns of a variety of stakeholders, managing public expectations, and working with timelines that in many cases extend well beyond any one political leader or department head. Wait, so Tony and Nat are complaining about what? Having to do their jobs?
Obviously the whole lousy system is broken. Drain the swamp! But you know, not like that. Just get rid of all the red tape and regulations! They’re getting in the way of decent, hard working people doing their real jobs! Sure, the red tape and regulations are often there to stop people being racist or sexist or ableist, but c’mon. We’re building a highway here, you’ve got to let the guys let off some steam.
After all that, there are two possible takeaways from Utopia. A): political correctness has indeed gone mad. B): government bodies are so concerned with side issues they’re no longer able to properly do their jobs. The team at Working Dog seem like decent people, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Option number two it is.
So why say that? It’d be nice to think the idea is to present the NBA as a decent, well-run, hard-at-it government body hamstrung by politicans. Sadly, most of the time the problems are presented as internal and intrinsic to a public body that has to respond to the public. So the answer lies in the private sector, where we just hire them to get the job done and leave them to it?
Trouble there is, a decade ago the idea that private industry was superior to the government when it comes to building infrastructure and providing services was just barely plausible. Today? Putting pubic services and infrastructure into private hands just means the government – that is, the public – is forced to pay rent on roads and facilities and utilities for decades while corporations – that is, not the public – cash in.
It’s a shit idea that sucks. In 2023 it makes as much sense as a basis for a comedy series as the wacky antics of a group of bureaucrats determined to cut back on the public health system because private industry can do it so much better. Well, for rich people at least.
The strange thing is, Utopia started out as a series designed to point out that very thing. Early episodes would present some element or other of perceived wisdom – high speed rail is a thing that will happen! Then they’d explain carefully and precisely why there were very good (but largely hidden) reasons why things are exactly why they are, and are unlikely to change.
It’s not hard to imagine an episode where some blokey politician turns up demanding to slash red tape. Let’s remove all the seemingly pointless concerns about office paintings not being inclusive and whatever! And then Tony could carefully point out to him across the course of the episode that every single example he wants removed has been put in place to help and assist people. Just not people the politician was used to considering as part of the workplace.
Maybe they’re holding that one back for next season.
.
*Does anyone else think it’s strange that the two leads are basically identical and almost never interact? Obviously it’s so they can run similar storylines about different things – one gets the big external issues, the other gets the office / internal storylines – but it does leave the series feeling a bit repetitive, especially as everyone else is basically playing the same character, which is “an idiot”.
Our thoughts on the 2023 Logies
Ugh.
Oh, alright… The 2023 Logies was exactly what we’ve come to expect from the Logies: the occasional funny moment and deserved winner, but mostly a lot of awards going to shows and people who barely deserve a shrug.
Some early funny moments came from Sam Pang with a cold opening featuring former Logies hosts giving him advice, in which Wendy Harmer revealed she’s hidden in a cupboard ever since her much-derided hosting stint in 2002. This was followed by a strong opening monologue from Pang, peppered with gags about the various stars who turned down the hosting gig. Pang seemed to go down well with people on social media, thus saving him from joining Wendy Harmer in the cupboard.
The first award, for Most Outstanding Comedy Program, went to Colin from Accounts, beating Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, Fisk, Summer Love and Taskmaster. Given this very strong list of nominees, it’s astounding that Colin from Accounts won. Sure, there is a market out there for romantic comedies but it’s hard to work out what exactly the appeal of this show is. The leads are not only boring and annoying but also unfunny. Naturally, the show’s creators and stars, Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, later picked up Silver Logies for Most Outstanding Actress and Most Outstanding Actor.
Later, Shaun Micallef presented the Bert Newton Award for Most Popular Presenter, an award he was also nominated for. His introduction, deconstructing the art of television presenting, drew big laughs from the audience, but sadly he didn’t win. Still, at least the Mad As Hell crew seemed to be having a fun time.
Losers are grinners 💜 pic.twitter.com/tVX4vinoHA
— Christie Whelan (@Christie_Whelan) July 30, 2023
There was better news for comedy later in the evening when Working Dog won two awards, first for Most Popular Comedy Program for Have You Been Paying Attention?, then Most Outstanding Entertainment Programme for The Cheap Seats. This resulted in some amusing acceptance speeches from the stars of both shows, including Ed Kavalee reading out a speech Sam Pang had planned to deliver had Front Bar beaten Have You Been Paying Attention?
Most Popular Entertainment Program went to Googlebox Australia, beating Gruen Nation and Hard Quiz, amongst others. While the In Memoriam segment included Karl Stefanovic paying tribute to Barry Humphries and Kate Miller-Heidke singing “Xanadu” in memory of Olivia Newton-John. There was also Pang’s amusing tribute to the shows we lost in 2022, including Rush, Blow Up and The Real Love Boat.
The Silver Logie for Most Popular Actress went to Fisk creator and star Kitty Flanagan, who beat fellow Fisk star Julia Zemiro and Wellmania’s Celeste Barber. Flanagan wasn’t at the Logies, as she was gigging in Adelaide, so Zemiro accepted the award on her behalf. Later, Flanagan celebrated her win in a local bar:
As the evening drew to a close, Sam Neill beat Colin from Account’s Patrick Brammell for the Silver Logie for Most Popular Actor, and then Daryl Somers turned up to present the Gold Logie, so all hopes of Shaun Micallef winning rapidly faded.
They say you get the government you deserve because you vote for it, and the same is true of the Logies. And Australia, it seems, doesn’t want to award TV’s top honour to a comedian who’s entertained us for more than 25 years. No, it wants to reward a woman who a tribunal found:
made “vilifying” remarks about links between the Muslim community and terrorism that may encourage hatred towards Australian Muslims
As the justified outrage about Kruger’s win gathered pace on social media, Kruger herself got up on stage and delivered a rambling and at times odd acceptance speech. She referenced her agent, she made a bad joke about something her agent had said about Hamish Blake, which Blake took surprisingly well, and then she mentioned a sign she’d seen backstage, which read:
Hosting is not about what you do, it’s about how you make other people feel.
Wow. She really has no idea how she’s made people feel at all. Worried for our Muslim brothers and sisters, who you got away with vilifying. Desperately sad that we missed out on what no doubt would have been a hilarious and memorable ending to the Logies had Shaun Micallef won the Gold. Tired because the Logies has run over and we’ve got working in the morning. That’ll do for a start.
Waste Not, Want Not
Five years ago War on Waste was yet another of the ABC’s attempts to make consumer affairs television entertaining. Now it’s back, and it’s not even trying to be funny. So why are we mentioning it?
We’re all used to the ABC’s endless efforts to cash in on nostalgia for things we didn’t even realise were gone. Beyond that, War on Waste is an odd reminder of an period that once defined the ABC. We’re talking, of course, about The Chaser Era.
While today it’s just one of many websites that punch out satirical headlines at a steady rate, a decade ago The Chaser dominated the non sitcom-side of ABC comedy.
Topical humour? You had The Chaser’s War on Everything, The Hamster Wheel, and The Chaser’s Media Circus. Election comedy coverage? They had a special or series each federal election for fifteen years (2001-2016). Panel shows? The Unbelievable Truth (ok, that was on Seven). Consumer affairs? The Checkout. They were on radio, they put out books, they did live tours: the “Chaser boys” were everywhere.
And now they’re not. They’re not even behind The War on Waste (that’d be Lune Media, home of a bunch of similar comedian-fronted series including Shaun Micallef’s Brain Eisteddfod), though if you read the end credits you’ll see many of their members being thanked. Still, with its mix of facts, stunts – there’s a lot of big piles of garbage being dumped in public places – and host Craig Reucassel, there’s a touch of time travel in every episode.
Exactly why The Chaser faded from our screens is… well, not really a mystery. It’s just hard to nail down. Their attempts to introduce a “next generation” never caught on. Politicians wised up to their pranks. Moving to couch-based chat with Media Circus was a flop; shows like Mad as Hell and The Weekly edged them out.
And of course, once the Abbott / Turnbull / Morrison era began it became pretty clear the ABC didn’t want people making fun of the Abbott / Turnbull / Morrison era. The Chaser’s court jester act required the support of management and the indulgence of intelligent politicans. Uh oh.
The main difference between 2013 and 2023 is that The War on Waste, like just about everything on Australian television fronted by a comedian now, isn’t even trying to be funny. The formula once used to deliver middling gags about politicans is now presenting viewers with depressing stats about trash.
Much like this blog, come to think of it. Maybe we should get Reucassel to host.
Get Your Back Side Trackside (again)
Hey look, The Back Side of Television is back, and it’s so good we actually watched every episode before coming here to tell you about it. Yeah yeah, we’ll get around to watching those other episodes of Gold Diggers later – it’s just nice to be watching an Australian comedy where you come away thinking “more, please”.
But is it a comedy? As a look back at the weird and… well, mostly just weird world of Australian television, there are plenty of moments across the six half hour episodes (now all available on Binge) where you’ll laugh. But there are a lot more moments where you’ll be more like “huh, I did not know that” or “geez, they really trashed children’s television because of Fat Cat?”
This “documentary, but with snark” approach isn’t exactly a new trend – see our earlier coverage of The Betoota Advocate Presents – and while the growing lack of actual comedy in so-called comedy programs is a bit of a downer, at least in this case the show itself is so good it doesn’t feel like we’re missing out.
Each episode features a central topic or two surrounded by a few shorter segments that are just going for laughs; edit together enough bizarre intros to Unsolved Mysteries and you’re going to strike comedy gold eventually. Beyond that, the idea is to shine some light on how television in this country is (or was) made, whether it’s the way the networks often put good series in the bin, how what you see isn’t what you get with games shows*, or the feeling that an awful lot of Australian television seems to have been based on the idea of trying to prevent anyone else from muscling in on the producers turf.
Host Mitch McTaggart’s done his research and then some. There’s a lot of old press material backing up the unseen and long forgotten material here – shithouse sitcom for kids Carrots is only the tip of the crappy iceberg – to create a range of stories that are both well told and eyebrow-raising.
What there isn’t in this series is a lot of straight TV reviewing (that’s more of a Last Year of Television thing), but review-ish segments like the compare and contrast between shark-themed television (the recent Bite Club and the 80s Shark’s Paradise) are funny and informative. Like much of what’s on show in the rest of the series, they’re also a grim reminder that the local industry has really become a lot more bland and boring in the 21st century.
Obviously it helps a lot to be already interested in television, but this is quality stuff whichever direction you approach it from. The final episode is a bit of an outlier, being mostly a television-related true-crime expose (complete with re-enactments, featuring an orange turtleneck with Tony Martin inside). It’s a high point in a series that doesn’t put a foot wrong.
If McTaggart wanted to shift his focus to more popular subjects** and become a much bigger name, he could. This is a series that literally spells out how television news went from being educational and informative to a blatant attempt to terrify viewers because of ratings, so don’t think he’s not aware where the money lies.
For now at least, we*** should all be grateful he’s sticking with the small screen.
.
*a segment that was memorable in part because, while it was having a go at the networks for being shonky, it also took the time to point out that a lot of the attacks on networks for being shonky were also in themselves shonky – the point here isn’t merely to have a go at bad television, it’s to hold bad television up to a decent standard. The enemy of my enemy isn’t my friend if they’re both as bad as each other
**this usually means sport
***television-loving nerds
Utopia’s culture war
It’s been hard not to feel a little uncomfortable watching Utopia lately. Every week there’s a subplot about a culture war-type issue (training on respect in the workplace kills off a burgeoning romance, a staff member objects to a poster because it sends a non-inclusive message, an old photo surfaces of Nat wearing a Sombrero and this is interpreted as cultural appropriation) and the conclusion seems to be that caring about issues like sexual harassment, inclusivity and identity is, at worst, bad, or, at least, a waste of time.
And, sure, Utopia is far from equivalent to a Sky News rant on how “the woke brigade” are making the lives of “ordinary people” worse. But the basic conclusion seems to be the same: this stuff has gone too far.
Of course, how it comes across on the show and what it’s intended to be, might be different. Episodes in earlier series of Utopia included subplots making fun of the way in which a seemingly basic social event in an office, such as a morning tea, can take far longer to organise and involve far more people than it should. And arguably, the culture war-type subplots in the current series are an extension of that comic idea; groups of people in an office can devote more time than is perhaps necessary to something that is not an organisation’s core business.
Having said that, this type of comedy is probably the sort of thing you find funnier the further up the hierarchy in an organisation you are. If you’re in the lower strata of an organisation, a half-hour spent away from your desk chatting and eating cake is a good thing. As is having greater confidence that issues like sexual harassment, equity and cultural identity are understood by your colleagues.
Watching these subplots play out, therefore feels a bit uncomfortable. Especially as Utopia often isn’t a terribly funny program. You also start to wonder if the viewpoint Utopia seems to be expressing genuinely reflects the views of the writers, Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch, and Santo Cilauro, three of the most prolific, successful, and respected comedy writers and performers in this country over the past four decades.
Utopia seems to be a far cry from the days of Frontline when Gleisner, Sitch, Cilauro and Jane Kennedy understood and perfectly satirised one thing that really has gone too far: tabloid journalism. The same tabloid journalism, such as the Murdoch-owned media and the Daily Mail, that push ideas about “the woke brigade” and stoke community fears about ethnic minorities (e.g., African gangs) or how the advancement of women is causing problems for men.
So, are these sub-plots in Utopia a reflection of Gleisner, Sitch and Cilauro’s point of view? Or is it careless or thoughtless writing? We suspect more the latter, and there’s no evidence that they hold racist or sexist viewpoints*. It also feels like the kind of comedy you write if you’ve, say, been running your own company for three decades, rather than, say, being a jobbing writer/performer.
It also feels like a direct response to observing phenomena like “cancel culture” and the so-called “New Puritanism” and imagining how that might play out in an office. And, yes, it’s true that people trying to tackle these issues do over-correct, but fixing the problem is important, and if you ridicule trying to fix the problem too hard it does tend to look like you prefer the status quo.
As the kids say, “Pick a side”. And in the case of Utopia, the side the writers have picked seems to be “this is bad”.
* Although the several examples of blacking up in The Late Show are a bit of a shock.