Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

Usually It Takes Longer For Grapes To Turn This Sour

Remember The Roast? Remember how it started in 2010 as entertainment show parody WTF! before turning up on ABC2 and Foxtel’s Comedy Channel as a daily two minute news parody before being expanded this year to a full ten minutes four days a week? Remember how to any of the hundreds of struggling comedians in this country the chance to make that much comedy on a regular basis would be a massive opportunity? Remember how comedy is such a tricky business to get even a toe-hold into that loads of provably decent comedians go years between television shows? Remember how bonafide comedy geniuses like Tony Martin can’t even get their own show on television? Remember how when The Roast got the chop after four years they said this:

“we were hoping because we were the lowest budget production in the history of the planet and produced more original comedy content than any other show in the country right now, we’d skate through unscathed.”

And then this:

“We’d also like to wish young, promising comedians like Shaun Micallef and The Chaser the best of luck as we pass the torch down to them.“

Remember when you first realised The Roast really were the smug unfunny jerks they appeared to be on their own smug, unfunny show?

*

Look, we get that having your show axed is tough, especially when you give off every indication of being overly entitled upper-middle class types who’ve never been told “no” in your lives. But seriously, what is wrong with these guys?

“Lowest budget production in the history of the planet” they say, seemingly never having even watched a single second of the literally billion times funnier work of John Clarke & Brian Dawe. “Original comedy content” they say, somehow confusing “original” with “funny” while also confusing “original” with “the same kind of half-arsed news parody everyone’s been doing since the dawn of time”. At least they haven’t pulled out the old “we’re giving the next generation of satirists a chance” line yet, so we can’t point out it’s been the same core team since the show started so that “new generation” they’re talking about is themselves yet again.

It must be difficult putting together a shithouse news parody at a time when Shaun Micallef is consistently making a really good one. And also when Shaun Micallef is a comedian who’s succeeded through hard work and years of effort, constantly working to hone his comedy skills, always out there trying something new in the rare periods when he’s not working on his own regular comedy gigs. And also when Shaun Micallef isn’t, for example, some utterly unremarkable guy in a suit whose only comedy work seems to have been on a show that only lasted this long because the ABC could buy it in bulk.

Oh yeah, and despite The Roast dropping hints a-plenty that they were dumped for budget reasons, other more reliable sources seem to suggest it was because the ABC finally watched an episode:

While decisions about ABC programming are being affected by looming government funding cuts, Fairfax Media understands the axing was part of the normal programming review process.

It went for four years. It had a good run. It’s over. And “jokes” like this at the expense of the only network that would have aired your crap:

In an announcement on the program on Monday night, The Roast team said: “It’s still unclear what show will replace The Roast on ABC2 but being ABC2 we can assume the current frontrunners include insightful documentaries like I Married My Staircase, My Penis Is A White Collar Criminal and Dawn Porter: Almost Fell Over in the Shower Today.”
Just go a really long way towards making you look like a bunch of petulant unfunny twats who shouldn’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Christmas Came Early This Year

Yeah, you heard us:

Who knew there was an upside to massive budget cuts? Guess even entrenched failure cruising on autopilot can’t last forever.

*is lynched by an angry mob while leaving Tumbleweeds HQ*

Ok, look: in theory the demise of any comedy show is bad news – it means less comedy, after all – but after literally years and 100’s of episodes which started out as a thick slice of smug shit from untalented blow-ins then failed to improve in any real way (trust us on this, we were watching Charles Firth’s pet project back in 2010 when it was an entertainment parody on Go! called WTF!), it’s clearly for the best for all concerned that the cast and crew of The Roast are now free to take on new challenges. Like filling in a dole form.

Oh wait, they’re all young white Sydney guys from upper middle-class backgrounds: they’ll be back with a new series of “viral videos” within a fortnight. And it’s not like the team don’t have other ways to earn a quid.

And yes, we noticed how they made it clear they wouldn’t be back “on the ABC”. Someone’s not letting the dream die just yet…

Radio – Suckers Never Play Me (2014 remix)

Hang on a second, just let us get open the bumper book of media cliches… ah, here we go:

It’s getting to that time of year where Australian radio stations all start playing musical chairs. Only the music they’re playing sounds a lot like Nickelback. Still, the use of the word “beloved” in this story is pure comedy gold.

HUGHESY and Kate have been poached by a rival radio network to take on Hamish Blake and Andy Lee.

The beloved duo of Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek will be heard nationally in the drive timeslot on Kiis FM, switching from their long time home at Nova.

The pair quit Nova’s breakfast show after 12 years in November last year.

Scoring the pair is a costly coup for Kiis, who will use their new stars to re-brand the network currently known as Mix in Melbourne.

Kiis did the same thing last year when they lured Kyle and Jackie O from a rival network for their Sydney breakfast shift.

It means Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek will go up against Hamish and Andy, who announced their return to drive radio for Austereo last week.

Oh yeah, that:

After weeks of speculation, Southern Cross Austereo today announced that from July next year Hamish and Andy will return to the lucrative national drive timeslot (4pm — 6pm) that they dominated so convincingly for five years until 2010.

…

“We are taking an actual break,” said Hamish to news.com.au.

“We’ve made the decision to not officially commit to another TV show next year … but we just haven’t had a bit of time off in a very long time. Between doing radio and TV for the last few years we just wanted a bit of space and to work on a few other things that we’ve got bubbling along that may or may not amount to anything.”

The radio duo wouldn’t say how long their new contract with Southern Cross Austereo is but Andy did suggest that he’s keen to tweak the show slightly before they kick things off in July.

“I’ve put in an application to have it changed to Andy and Hamish,” he joked.

Hamish and Andy quit the drive show in 2010 after five years, during which they broadcast from Afghanistan, travelled around Australia in ‘Caravans of Courage’ and even crossed the Bass strait in a tall ship.

But they’re sure they’ll be able to come up with new ideas that can top what they’ve achieved in the past.

“At the end of every year I always felt like we were out of ideas,” said Hamish.

“And then by the sheer process of turning the mic’s on and turning up each day and having a chat with each other, funny things just seem to arise, mostly driven by our listeners.

“You can’t write out five years of ideas on paper now but that’s what we love about radio, that once you start doing it adventures arise and it’s a great format that you’re able to explore those adventures in.”

Hang on a sec – didn’t that first story say:

Hughesy and Kate will get a crucial head start, with Hamish and Andy not on air until July, after they’ve filmed another chapter in their travel TV series.

What happened to taking “a bit of time off” to “work on a few other things that we’ve got bubbling along”?

There’s two ways to read this. The first is that News.com.au got their facts wrong and just assumed Hamish & Andy are filming another instalment of their travel show when in fact they really are taking a break. Seems fair enough. Move along folks, nothing more to see here.

The second way is that when you’re talking about Australian commercial radio you can never ever go wrong expecting more of the same. Look at the names in those stories: they’re the same old tired pros, perfectly capable of churning out the same old bland radio they’ve been doing for the last decade or more. When was the last time anyone even realised they were listening to Matt Tilley? Who would have guessed those shithouse “gotcha” calls were the only trace of personality he had?

“that’s what we love about radio, that once you start doing it adventures arise”. Who is Andy Lee trying to kid? Once you start doing radio in Australia your soul dies. And that’s the way pretty much everyone involved likes it. Why else would every show sound exactly the same – thirty seconds max between songs for the hosts to bark at each other about what they did on the weekend then it’s time to take some calls! But first three minutes of ads back-to-back and a bunch of Taylor Swift songs only slightly sped up and with the last 30 seconds faded down so we can get back to the ads.

These days the hard-core nutter fanbase of Get This – maybe give the Rex Hunt and “people want ducks” references a rest guys, it has only been seven years – has largely overshadowed just how funny that show was. And it was a radio show! That was popular and rated well! But who wants to put in that kind of effort to make good radio comedy these days? Better to just hire yet another double act who ran out of things to say to each other a half decade ago and get them to take a bunch of slightly awkward calls from the kind of people who call into radio shows to talk about the weirdest place they had sex.

Ugh, we’re even depressing ourselves here. Let’s give the last word on Australian radio to Tony Martin:

‘I’ve never met Kyle Sandilands and he certainly does a different kind of radio from what I have done, but I will say for Kyle Sandilands: there is nobody that says more true things about how commercial radio works.

”People in commercial radio are generally terrified to speak honestly until they’re sacked, whereas Kyle Sandilands said something a few years ago, which no one in commercial radio had been brave enough to say, which is that commercial radio is the only job where your boss is someone who has failed at your job, which is literally the case. I think a lot of people cheered when he said that.”

Strike the Tents

True story: when this week’s episode of The Chaser’s Media Circus came on, one of us got up from their seat, walked out the back door, walked up the driveway to the street, and then stood there for a full minute wondering exactly what it was they were doing. We’re not saying Media Circus is a show that we’d rather leave the house than watch; this is a case where actions clearly speak louder than words.

The Chaser have never been afraid to cosy up to the groups they’re making fun of, so seeing a bunch of commercial television presenters on the couch for this week’s episode wasn’t exactly a surprise. But it did hammer home our initial suspicions: this isn’t so much a satirical look at the week’s news – and the way it’s being reported – as it is a comedy panel show based on the news. Presumably somebody somewhere likes these things; it’s certainly rating well.

As we said when we looked at the first episode, the big problem with this format is that while the hosts get to talk shit on a couch, those at home get a lot less actual comedy per minute. Making news jokes first requires you to tell the news story; Mad as Hell gets away with it by being tightly scripted and fast paced, which are two things no-one is saying about Media Circus. Plus being a quiz show means there’s more dead air while people actually answer the quiz, and then – maybe – you get to a joke.

So in week two they extended it to thirty-five minutes and going by that logic, Wednesday Night Fever would have been brilliant if they’d let it run for three hours a night. Then for this week’s third installment they added a few more members of the commercial media and occasionally let them talk about how the media works. Well, at least it was more informative than the “horse race or military operation” quiz.

Hey, remember when Randling would do “Either Or” where teams would have to guess if a name belonged to (say) a Shakespearean Character or a Car? That’s right: we just compared Media Circus to Randling. Bam. At least Media Circus is smart enough to get both teams competing to answer the same question rather than drag this unfunny shit out for minutes at a time. Still, Randling comparisons: that’s shiver down the spine stuff.

And then there’s the couch banter. To date there’s been three main food groups here: Chaser members, Chaser: The Next Generation, and old media pros. Notice anything missing? That’s right: where are the funny other comedians? Sorry, Peter Berner doesn’t count. Obviously this is a Chaser production and they’re the ones creating the laughs, but it wouldn’t hurt to drop in the occasional seasoned pro just to grease the wheels.

In part that’s because the C:TNG crew are, well… not really living up to expectations. They’re not unfunny, but it’s the same problem Working Dog had when they started with The Panel: panel shows are fiercely competitive and when you have a bunch of mates and professionals gunning for air time anyone not up to scratch is going to be left out. The new guys usually hold up ok on The Checkout, but here they’re being thrown in at the deep end and it’s not a format where “young smartarse” is really the face you want to put forward.

(Then again, what do we know? That was pretty much the persona projected by The Chaser for most of their careers and look how well it worked out for them.)

Over on Channel Ten they’re currently repeating episodes of Have You Been Paying Attention?, and it’s interesting to compare the two: for one thing, HYBPA? moves like greased lightning. The jokes there are broader (read: less “ABC”), based more on general news and pop culture (which means they don’t have to explain the context for everything), and the banter between contestants is never less than snappy. Obviously in going for depth The Chaser have to slow things down to explain what’s going on, which is… oh wait, who gives a rats? Be funny or get out.

The Chaser’s Media Circus is a weird mix of sloppy tossed-off stuff and well-honed comedy chops, which is why it’s difficult to dismiss it outright. They’ve built up a formidable research machine over the last few years (as seen in the oh so much better Hamster Wheel), so the clips they build their gags on or use to underline a point are often spot-on. The stand-alone segments (usually involving Andrew Hansen) are solid stuff too, and we’ll always have time for Chaz – his fact-checking snippets also have the advantage of being joke-based rather than setting up bad couch-based material.

But then there are long stretches made up of firmly average couch banter, riffs that go nowhere –

– for example, host Craig Reucassel brought up the weirdness of television news having traffic reports because no-one watches TV in their cars so this “news” is of no use to the people who actually need it, which is a good point only no-one answered it and there was no joke at the end so wow great observation there guys –

– quizes that drag out and a general feeling that in 2014 at least some of The Chaser wanted to make a television series that, unlike their previous efforts, didn’t require a huge amount of ongoing preparation. Guess what? It’s preparation that makes them – and just about everyone else on television – funny: if you don’t want to do the work to make a really funny television show, what exactly are we tuning in to see?

You News, You Lose

You know what the problem with satire is? Eventually someone upstairs goes “hey, if all the kids are getting their news from comedy shows, then our news shows should have some comedy in them!” And then you get crap like this:

If the new Friday night show is approved, it will include elements of 7.30, according to a planning workshop agenda obtained by Fairfax Media. It is also likely to feature Kitchen Cabinet’s Annabel Crabb and comedian Dan Ilic.

It will involve major political interviews, investigative reports and feature stories alongside “quirky”, “funny” and “human” stories. It may feature a live audience, a desk and some “amount of comedy and chat”.

Obviously, by “comedy” we’re not referring to Dan Ilic. Or anything else taking place on this show – unless, of course, they wise up and give Clarke & Dawe a regular slot (and with word out that there’s to be a new DVD collection of their work released in time for Christmas, maybe their profile at the ABC is once again on the upswing). Oh wait, Leigh Sales is going to be hosting, forget we mentioned Clarke & Dawe at all.

We’ve said this once before but it bears repeating now: when people – young, old, dead, whatever – watch a comedy news program, they’re not watching for the news; they’re watching for the comedy. That’s because comedy (which is difficult to make and extremely enjoyable when it does work) is of a higher value than the news (which is easy to uncover, at least in its basic television form, and at best leaves you pissed off or outraged). If you’re putting together a cheap & cheerful time-filler, it’s actually easier to make a decent-ish news program than it is to make a quality comedy show – which is why even news dead zone Australia has a number of 24 hour news channels but only a few hours of new television comedy a week.

And since when was The Project something to emulate? Forgive us if we’ve misread the ratings for the last few years, but hasn’t it been something of a dud kept on-air because a): it’s a great cross-promotional vehicle for Ten, a network which b): has been struggling so badly in the ratings they literally had nothing to replace it with? And this is the ABC’s brave new cost-cutting scheme?

Here’s an idea: why not just put on repeats of Dad’s Army?  With the PM wanting us to be increasingly vigilant about the threat of home-grown terrorism, it’s never been more topical. Plus there’s a new movie version out soon – surely the ABC could get the film distribution company to kick in a few bucks for cross-promotion?

Basically, this crap is the worst of both worlds: unfunny comedy smeared over half-arsed news, hosted by people telling us to lighten up while providing a service that’s not quite as professional as the guy giving the ComSec report. And seriously, Dan Ilic again? Sure, A Rational Fear had its moments, but did everyone else from Hungry Beast die when we weren’t looking?

Soul Brother Number One

“When it comes to sodomi, you can’t afford to be a tight-arse”. Would you look at that: an actual joke on an Australian comedy shown on ABC2. And from one of the guys behind Beached Az! We should just pack up and quit, clearly we’re in a world where all the old signposts mean nothing. Holy crap, an “Accidentally Kelly Street” reference! “Karl Drogo”! This show’s a goldmine.

We’ve never been fans of The Bondi Hipsters, mostly because we enjoyed UK series Nathan Barley when it did the exact same thing only better a decade earlier. Plus being “an internet sensation” tends to turn us off for a number of reasons, largely to do with the level you have to pitch your comedy at to cut through online. So it’s fairly safe to say our expectations for Soul Mates were… not all that high.

And now that we’ve seen the first episode? Well, we’re still on the fence, but we’re slightly more towards the middle of it. Having four separate plotlines is a good way to keep things moving along, especially as it’s clear from the start that none of the storylines could support an entire episode on their own. The caveman one, this week at least, is basically just a “how dumb were people before they knew how things worked?” joke that barely holds up across the brief time it gets.

The Kiwi Assassins one presents a different set of problems: jokes about NZ accents and riffs on 80s action movies are funny for about 30 seconds the first time you encounter them, and then it’s move along folks, nothing to see here. Ok, your personal mileage may vary; let’s all just agree that they’re not a bottomless well of comedy, and that it’s a well that for pretty much anyone not still giggling at “fush n chups” or the idea of a three minute training montage set to a fake generic 80s pop hit (seriously guys, the joke died a death at the 60 second mark) the well has run dry. Plus New Zealand has been serving up some pretty decent comedy of late (the vampire comedy What We Do In The Shadows is funnier than any Australian film of the last five years, for one thing); getting laughs from how they speak when they’re getting laughs from actually being funny is not a great look.

The Time Travel Agents bit had a couple of decent jokes beyond “the future, where they dress funny”, so we’re going to put it in the “positive” column. The Yoko Ono one was helped by largely playing out in the background while other stuff was going on – the idea of having even two things going on at once seems to be one that Australian comedy has largely forgot. That’s one of the advantages of a TV show made by people who came to comedy from making their own sketches (in contrast to stand-up) – they have a better idea of how to get laughs beyond simply having people saying funny stuff (the future guy’s bottomless carry bag being an honest-to-god visual joke).

As for the Bondi Hipsters… well, as we said, this stuff was funnier when Nathan Barley did it a decade ago. And again, hipsters are an easy target. But at least here there were the hints of an actual comedy dynamic (the meek guy and the aggressive, slightly out-of-wack guy) which just made us even more depressed to realise a lot of Australian comedy can’t even manage that these days. Different personality types can be funny when played off against each other! Who knew?

Overall then, Soul Mates was better than we expected. We just weren’t expecting very much. Let’s call it “competent” for now: there were a lot of broad and easy jokes, but at least they were jokes, and giving the leads various comedy personas went some way towards diluting the smug annoyance that the Bondi Hipsters have generated on their solo outings. The real trouble is going to be stretching all this out across eight episodes, especially as the preview for next week didn’t hold out the promise for a lot of change – guess the cavemen are just going to be puzzled by pretty much everything we take for granted, huh?

The characters could get funnier the more we get to know them, or this could be one of those series that start out strong but by week three they’re just spinning their wheels. The future! It’s not just where you get to make jokes about how robots piss.

 

Vale Please Like Me series two

In Helen Razer’s recent examination of the history of the laugh track for The Saturday Paper –

– which is something of a must-read, if only for the part where she says:

It is not so much that the laughter is immediately infectious – psychological studies indicate that a laugh track or an enhanced “live” track, such as that used to augment sitcoms filmed in front of a studio audience, does not prompt viewers to laugh.

Then two paragraphs later:

The value of a joke, then, is determined by the inhuman mechanism of a laugh market and our laughter, heretofore a spontaneous physical reaction, becomes labour. Comedy becomes less a matter of jokes than it is of biopolitics. Just as a prisoner is required to undertake certain physical actions at certain times of the day, any poor sod doomed by habit to watch the immensely unfunny The Big Bang Theory is led by the culture’s wardens to chuckle at nothing.

Prompting us to wonder if anyone – editors, the publisher, Razer herself – read over her story before publishing it, because last time we checked it’s hard to see how the “chuckle wardens” of the laugh track could lead anyone to do anything considering she just said a laugh track does not even prompt viewers to laugh, let alone “chuckle at nothing”, c’mon people this kind of garbled rambling garbage is just the kind of shit we need to-

*deep breath*

Ahem. Sorry about that.

Anyway, in that article she also writes this:

This nation’s most artful comedy in years is Josh Thomas’s heartbreaking Please Like Me, whose sad-funny season finale this week was made possible by a production team that would not even pitch the show as comedy let alone remind audiences of the constraints of the genre by the use of enhanced or artificial laughter.

Please Like Me wasn’t pitched as a comedy? Somebody should have told the ABC, as we went back into our archives and found this press release from 2012 with “COMEDY” stamped all over it:

JOSH THOMAS show goes into production for ABC1
 

Filming starts today on the new comedy series PLEASE LIKE ME, written by and starring comedian Josh Thomas (Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation). PLEASE LIKE ME will be shot on location in Melbourne and will air on ABC 1 later this year.

Inspired by Josh’s award-winning stand-up comedy, PLEASE LIKE ME is a 6 x 30 series about growing up quickly, and about realising that your parents are not heroes, but dopes with no idea what’s going on – just like you.

Award-winning stand-up comedian Josh Thomas is the Generation Y team captain on Network Ten’s Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation. He has appeared on The 7PM Project, Good News Week, Rove, ABC TV Q&A, and as host of the 2011 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala. In 2010, he was nominated for a TV Week Logie Award for Most Popular New Male Talent and won the GQ Comedian of the Year Award. He was the curator of the Inaugural Brisbane International Comedy Festival.

Josh Thomas says ”I feel a little bit guilty about all of these very talented people running around doing all this work because of what I typed up on my laptop late at night whilst drinking wine and probably also watching Hairspray.”

As well as writing the series, Josh Thomas stars in PLEASE LIKE ME as Josh, alongside his cavoodle, John. The series also stars Debra Lawrance (Home & Away) as Mum, David Roberts (Offspring) as Dad, Judi Farr (Unfolding Florence) as Aunty Peg and Caitlin Stasey (Tomorrow When The War Began, Neighbours).

ABC Head of Comedy Debbie Lee says “We’re so happy to be bringing Josh’s world to ABC TV in what promises to be such a funny and surprising series. PLEASE LIKE ME will show Josh’s talents in a whole new light.”

>Producer Todd Abbott says “We’re thrilled that the ABC have been such staunch supporters of this project, and that we’re going into production while it’s almost feasible for Josh Thomas to play a 20-year-old.

“The scripts that he has written have attracted a top-shelf crew and a dream cast.”

PLEASE LIKE ME is directed by AACTA and AFI award-winner Matthew Saville (The Slap, Cloudstreet, We Can Be Heroes) and produced by respected comedy producer Todd Abbott (Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey, Rove, The Dream with Roy & H.G.). Executive Producers are Todd Abbott, Kevin Whyte, Josh Thomas, Debbie Lee.

 

Heaven forbid we suggest that Thomas and everyone associated with Please Like Me – including its many fans in the media – were more than happy to call it a comedy right up until the moment they noticed people weren’t laughing.

Or, going by the ratings this season, watching: no-one seems to have made public the ratings for the last few episodes that we can find, which tells us it wasn’t in the top 20 digital channel shows. Considering the massive amount of promotion it received, that can’t be a good look.

On the positive side, with series three of Please Like Me already locked in thanks to the show being bought and paid for by US cable network Pivot, there’s a strong chance it’ll be shown on ABC1 whether the ABC likes it or not:

As a longer-term measure, the ABC is expected to closely explore shutting down multi-channel ABC2 and moving its youth-focused content to its main channel or online catch-up service iView.

Still, more comedy on ABC1 is always good news as far as we’re concerned… oh right, Please Like Me isn’t a comedy, is it? Razer’s incoherent drivel highlights a perpetual problem with this kind of dramedy: it’s not funny enough to be a comedy, not good enough as a drama to stand as a drama, and largely supported by people who lack both a sense of humour and even a rudimentary idea of how comedy works.

[for example, the real reason why Please Like Me doesn’t have a laugh track, above and beyond stylistic reasons – a laugh track would make it extremely difficult to claim it was a drama, for starters – is that, by being a single camera sitcom (that is, one filmed like a drama, and in contrast to traditional three camera sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends, which are filmed in front of a studio audience), there’s simply no plausible place for the laughter to be coming from. Single camera sitcoms don’t have laugh tracks because there’s no audience there to be laughing (or not): Razer’s article about “oh no, laugh tracks are coming back, what does this mean for our culture, damn you capitalism” totally ignores the fact that what she’s really talking about is a drift back to three camera, studio-based sitcoms and away from the single-camera format that shows like Larry Sanders originated and later efforts like Scrubs popularised.]

As a result, Please Like Me ends up being praised simply for what it is: it’s about young people living in the inner-city, Thomas is playing a gay character that isn’t a stereotype, it combines jokes with drama to make both stand out against the other, it takes a thoughtful approach to the subject of mental illness. All this is true as far as it goes; unfortunately most of the discussion around this season hasn’t reached the point of “is any of this any good?”

We’ve probably said way too much about Please Like Me this year, so we’ll cut this one short. Suffice to say, for us combining comedy and drama isn’t some kind of magic act that conceals the fact that neither the drama or the comedy were good enough to stand on their own. Mix in a lot of sloppy writing, erratic characterisation, an emphasis on “funny lines” rather than actual jokes, and an approach to drama largely built on “people dying is sad”, and you have an effort that, to be honest, we’d rather forget.

So we’ll probably be writing more snark about it any day now.

A Not-Exactly Awesome Foursome

Comedy: the ABC’s got you covered! Actually, maybe a little too covered – with four new comedy series starting in the one week you’d think they were having a closing down sale or something. We’ll give each series the extended treatment in the coming weeks, but just to get the ball rolling here’s our initial impressions of the quartet.

*The Chaser’s Media Circus: The ABC has a long tradition of current affairs-based comedy game shows – or at least, that’s what we think Good News Week and The Glasshouse were meant to be – and we have an almost as long tradition of disliking them. Partly it’s because of pacing: unless you really work hard to make a gameshow fast-paced (see the recent Have You Been Paying Attention?), things tend to get bogged down. First you have to explain the current affair bit, then the joke: again, unless you really streamline it, the end result is only about 50% comedy. And with most current affairs jokes being smirk-worthy at best – what, politicians are stupid and the media exaggerates things? – that 50% can feel like a lot less. As it does here.

The other big problem here – apart from the fact that this kind of show always feels a bit cheap unless you’re the UK and have massive depth when it comes to razor-sharp comedy minds – is that The Chaser work best when they put a bit of work in. With the exception of Chaz – who barely got a look-in this time around, which counts as a major negative for us – and Hansen, the Chaser team largely come off as decent front men who work best with a strong backroom behind them. So an improv-heavy gameshow format wouldn’t have been our choice for a Chaser showcase even if they’d figured out a way to make the format work. And the non-core Chaser guests? Well, they didn’t accidentally set light the set on fire, so there’s that.

We’ve already had a decent comedy gameshow (HYBPA?) and a smart current affairs comedy (Mad as Hell) this year: this is going to have to get a lot better real fast if it’s going to challenge either.

*Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery: It’s easy to forget this largely forgettable show traces its lineage back to Enough Rope – until we start getting the tragic tales of schoolyard tramua, that is. We’re no fans of Dave “Hughsie” Hughes here, but as a seasoned stand-up he did a decent enough job of making wandering through his childhood haunts into watchable television (especially when he linked it to his drive to perform, which is really the only thing we’re interested about).

It’s all very lightweight and big on cheap sentiment (sad parental stories are gold for this show), and Zemiro’s only vague interest in using this history lesson to shed any real light on how Hughsie developed his comedy style – what, not even a “all this bullying made me really… angriiiiiiiiii” (though we did get a list of influences, so that’s something) – is pretty shit. But hey, we got to see his kids and his mum and Warnambool looks like a nice town, so… great.

*Upper Middle Bogan: Slip-n-Slide! It’s nice to occasionally see some physical comedy in our local sitcoms, and while it wasn’t up there with Shaun Micallef’s rotating room skits from Full Frontal, it did provide yet more variety in what is the front-runner for Australia’s best sitcom. With a cast in double figures – and with them all being at least moderately well defined (not the same as deep, mind you) comedy characters – Upper Middle Bogan is a show that doesn’t have a problem filling an episode to the brim. Abandonment issues, faulty cooling, a reconciliation, the aforementioned slip-n-slide, a giant fan… Individually none of these elements are classic comedy, but it’s all about the pacing.

Well, not totally: having a quality comedy cast doesn’t hurt in the slightest. And the dialogue contains a few decent zingers too.

“They weren’t proper lies, they were just climate based lies.”

“This is a marriage, not an election.”

We’ve said it before, but here goes again: unless you’re an A-grade comedy genius, your next best bet when it comes to getting laughs is to pick up the pace. If you can’t be great at one thing then being good at a bunch of smaller things is almost as good. Plus there’s some actual affection between the characters, which is hard to pull off when you’re dealing with broad stereotypes (it’s all about the balance – a dash of sentiment is nice, filling half the episode with it is dull). It’s solid lightweight fun, and we’re glad to have it back.

*It’s A Date: Tonight’s theme is “Do set-up dates work?” The trouble with this show is that while the dates (two an episode) usually start out strong – here they involve a young woman and a pastry delivery guy roped into a date by a breakfast radio show, plus a women expecting to date her friend’s brother-in-law only to get stuck with his dad – once people are actually on a date the storytelling options narrow down fairly fast. Awkward conversations do get stale eventually, despite what the last decade of Australian comedy would have you believe.

But then here comes the heartwarming romance as our wacky miss-matched couple learn to connect on a more human level (despite the comedy set-ups) and we’re looking at our watch because c’mon guys, you’ve only got less than fifteen minutes each here to bring the funny and the tinkly piano music isn’t cutting the mustard. Yes, we know that sustaining comedy over an extended period is hard and a bit of tonal variety is a great way to keep things interesting, but let’s say it again: IT’S ONLY FIFTEEN MINUTES JUST BE FUNNY. Really, even the breakfast radio one – which is prank heavy and so presumably going to be “the funny one” has to get in a bunch of sad moments (she’s crying because she’s physically incapable of having children! Ha!) and the relationship is doomed anyway because breakfast radio is evil. Well, we can’t argue with that.

We’ve got nothing against love – no, really – but one problem here that could have been easily solved is that both stories are taking roughly the same tone of “awwww lurv you guys.” There’s eight episodes of this, which means sixteen dates, and if they’re all hitting roughly the same note then boredom’s going to set in fast. And if they don’t – if in later weeks we get a bunch of hilariously mean people screwing each other over alongside the sweet tales of true love found – then why didn’t they pair each of the “nice” stories here with one of those ones for variety? Guess we’ll have to stay tuned…

A Matter Of Perspective

How could we have gotten it so very, very wrong?

JOSH THOMAS’ PLEASE LIKE ME SERIES ONE NOMINATED FOR INTERNATIONAL EMMY

ABC is thrilled to announce Please Like Me (Series One) has been nominated for an International Emmy for Best Comedy Series – the only Australian show nominated at this year’s awards in any category.

 
Created, written by and starring Josh Thomas, Please Like Me has been critically acclaimed around the world, and was recently commissioned by ABC TV, in collaboration with US television network Pivot, for a third series to air in 2015.

 
In reference to the International Emmy nomination, ABC Director of Television Richard Finlayson said: “ABC are thrilled at this incredible achievement from a remarkable show. Josh Thomas and his team have done not just ABC, but all of us in Aussie TV, proud.”

And so far so good as far as we’re concerned. It really is a big deal to be nominated, and this nomination is the kind of thing those involved with the show should be proud of. Unlike the actual ratings for the show, but that’s a subject for another time.

Then there’s this:

ABC TV Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski said, “Please Like Me is a series only the ABC could have made – and as well as Josh and his amazing team, I offer my huge gratitude to my ABC predecessors Debbie Lee and Stuart Menzies, who commissioned one of our greatest shows”.

We’re assuming that was meant to say “a series only the ABC could have made… with a lot of help from that US cable network that basically took over the funding after series one. Because a comedy series based around a comedian hanging out with his friends making jokes and talking about his relationship problems is sooo groundbreaking.”

And let’s read that last part again:

“one of our greatest shows” – ABC TV Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski

Do we really have to list all of the comedy shows that the ABC has done over the years that Please Like Me would have to be better than for this statement to be even remotely plausible? For arguments sake, let’s say that “greatest” is defined as “all time top ten”. For this statement to be true there have not been ten comedy series better than Please Like Me across the history of the ABC. Please Like Me is in the all-time top ten ABC comedies. All-time.

Just off the top of our heads, here’s ten other ABC comedy series:

*The Gillies Report

*The Big Gig

*Kath & Kim

*Frontline

*The Games

*The Micallef P(r)ogram(me)

*Summer Heights High

*The Money or the Gun

*Spicks & Specks

*Mother & Son

Now cross one off that list, because Please Like Me is better than at least one of those shows. You might disagree with those ten shows; feel free to come up with ten of your own. But remember, Please Like Me has to be in there somewhere, because according to the current Head of ABC Comedy it’s “one of our greatest shows”.

Wait – he didn’t even say they were specifically comedy shows…

All The News That’s Fit To Paste

Press release round-up!

ABC Mental As… reaches Australian audiences on TV, radio and online and raises $1.47 million for mental health research

It was the week the ABC went dotty and audiences answered the call to support ABC Mental As… On TV 5.9 million Australians tuned in during mental health week and $1.47 million has been raised for mental health research to date.

The biggest cross-platform programming event the ABC has ever held, ABC Mental As… saw the broadcaster start a national conversation about mental health issues and engage its audiences in a very important issue that affects the majority of Australians in some way during their lifetime.

The challenge was to use the ABC’s storytelling resources to lead the community in breaking down some of the stigmas associated with mental illness, raise awareness of those issues and to in the process help raise some much needed funding for mental health research.

The week culminated in the Friday Night Crack Up, a live broadcast that saw some of Australia’s finest entertainers and celebrities from every network band together for this great cause.

The Friday Night Crack Up achieved a combined metro and regional reach of 2 million across ABC and ABC2 while ABC TV Mental Health programming had a combined metro and regional reach of 5.9 million viewers between 5 to 12 October. One in four Australians tuned in to ABC TV during this landmark week of programming. (Source: OzTAM and RegionalTAM)

There’s a lot more after that, but we’re all about the comedy here. Wow, who would have guessed a comedy-based variety show would rate so well? Ok, Daryl Somers for one, but his idea of “comedy-based variety” and the general public’s part company around the time he says he wants to host.

Still, that’s a fairly impressive figure, and while no doubt a lot of the audience drawing power came from the various one-off bits from high profile comedy types (Rob Sitch as Mike Moore, Shaun Micallef and Frances Greenslade, etc) – and having it be the capper to an entire themed week wouldn’t have hurt either – you’d have to think someone somewhere at the ABC is thinking of a way to keep the ball rolling. Compared to pretty much anything else on television, live variety is still relatively cheap; even if all the ABC’s attempts at it in the 21st century have first stunk then sunk, if at first you don’t succeed…

THE CHASER’S MEDIA CIRCUS

The Chaser team returns to ABC TV this Wednesday at 8.30pm, with a brand new format, The Chaser’s Media Circus, which turns the news game into a game show.

Each week, host Craig Reucassel and two teams of guests dissect the week’s news together with Chas Licciardello, the one-man media brains trust who is a sort of cross between Dickie Knee and Rain Man.

Joining the Media Circus this week for Team Australia are Ben Jenkins (The Checkout), Waleed Aly (The Project) and Andrew Hansen (The Chaser). ASIO has been informed that Alex Lee (The Roast), journalist Ellen Fanning and Chris Taylor (The Chaser) are officially part of Team Evil.

The Chaser’s Media Circus: the news game where everyone loses. Wednesdays at 8.30pm on ABC.

Wow, the more we hear about this the less interested we become. If it didn’t have the Chaser name on it we’d be worried it was shaping up to be The Gruen News; having someone from The Roast on board doesn’t exactly raise our hopes for sparkling satire. Still, The Chaser have been solid comedy performers these last few years. The benefit of the doubt remains in effect.

JULIA ZEMIRO’S HOME DELIVERY

New series starts Wednesday October 15 at 9.00pm, ABC

Julia Zemiro returns to walk our favourite funny people down memory lane, and back home to their old stomping ground.  With each step uncovering the people, places and events that shaped them into the person we know today.

Shot entirely on location, this nine-part series – six in Australia and three in the UK – features home-grown guests: Dave Hughes; Wendy Harmer; Julia Morris; Nazeem Hussain; Sam Simmons and Stephen Curry. The Home Delivery UK episodes star Bill Bailey, Ross Noble and Ruth Jones.

Julia Zemiro is an interviewer of great charm, wit and depth.  She puts her guests at ease with her genuine curiosity and warmth, and they respond by opening up and sharing parts of their lives not usually revealed to interviewers.   She plays along with her comedic companions in a way that delights and entertains but she is also an astute and sensitive listener, willing to probe and ask the difficult questions. 

Each trip back in time is as different as the performers are themselves. Some revel in returning to place they grew up and may not have seen in years and share happy memories and heart -warming anecdotes. For others, returning to the scenes of their formative years is a more complicated and bittersweet experience.

All guests set off on their ‘day of Delivery’ willing to go deep.  They reveal personal stories from their childhoods to the present day.  They open up about their Mums and Dads, brothers and sisters.  They spill their guts, share their stories both happy and sad and give the viewer real insight into the performer within and the person they are.

The series starts on 15 October with Dave Hughes, followed by Wendy Harmer, Ross Noble, Julia Morris, Bill Bailey, Sam Simmons, Ruth Jones, Nazeem Hussain and finally Stephen Curry.

This one’s a dilly of a pickle. The first series was a bit of a disappointment to us, though it lifted its game as it went along. The big problem seemed to be that it largely relied on the guests’ ability to tell their own stories, rather than being based around a strong interviewer as host. Zemiro’s recent ABC interview with new Doctor Who Peter Capaldi didn’t exactly convince us that she’s been developing her skills in that area, so this could shape up to be a bit more hit and miss than we’d like.

Of course, we’d also like it to be about how the guests developed as comedians, not a bunch of random heart-warming or -wrenching tales of youthful suffering, but it’s from the folks who brought you the blatantly manipulative Enough Rope: even we know you can’t zoom in on those award-winning tears if they’re not there.

Australian Tumbleweeds is Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.
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