Australian Tumbleweeds
Dead in the water
The first episode of Die on Your Feet, the long un-aired Greg Fleet sitcom about five Melbourne stand-ups/friends (Greg Fleet as Bob, Alan Brough as OJ, Steven Gates as JJ, Corinne Grant as Sophie and Adam Hills as Brian), finally made it to air on Thursday. And if you’re wondering why we’ve taken this long to review it, it’s because we have to rely on friends (thanks!) to get hold of this sort of thing (anyone want to crowdfund our purchasing a HD TV?). So, will we be asking our source to send us episode 2..? Maybe.
First episodes are always difficult: they’re setting up the characters, planting the seeds for some upcoming plots, and establishing a format and style for the rest of the show. But if this is anything to go by we’re in for seven more episodes of comedians sitting around trying to out smart-arse each other, and not a lot else happening. OK, there was a plot about how Brian and Sophie used to date each other, which can easily be played across the rest of the series, and this episode had a bit of “peril” for O.J., who didn’t have a spot on the Gala or an ad in the MICF programme…all of which could see him losing $40,000, but mostly it was just some or all of the five sitting around trading quips and insults.
…All of which might have been bearable if said quips and insults were really funny. Sadly not. Mostly we see them bitching about other comedians they know, who (presumably for legal reasons) aren’t actual living comedians that the audience would be familiar with, leaving anyone watching this to try and work out what they’re talking about. Add in some pointless talking head cutaways with the main characters which do nothing to drive the plot forward, and, well, there’s a lot of dead wood in this series.
Once again, we can do no better than to quote Jumperpants, who commented on Die on Your Feet following its screening at last year’s MICF:
There are a lot of reasons why it will not be bought or aired unless for drama points. Here are some.
1. Very little story. Largely a group of comedians sitting round talking about the comedy industry and not being particularly entertaining.
2. Adam Hills and Corinne Grant cannot act.
3. Shot like a soapy. Terrible lighting, there are scenes where outdoor scenes look like they were shot in a studio.
4. Way way too much swearing to play it at a reasonable hour. Most of the swearing is pointless and boring.
5. The ‘story’ is intercut with to camera pieces where the characters talk about comedy. This is not really different from the other scenes and adds nothing.
6. All of the characters are all unlikeable and very similar.
7. The ‘drama’ is awful, Corinne Grant and Adam Hills have zero chemistry and you don’t believe for a second that they went out.
8. They admitted they started shooting without finishing the script and it shows.
9. Very poorly directed. Some scenes have documentary style shaky cam, some have traditional set shots but with weird cut aways to actors saying nothing and looking blanks, probably indicating a lack of coverage. Strange use of crane shots when actors a sitting in an empty theatre for no apparent reason other than GNW having the crane in place for the Gala.
9. The ‘plot’ in unbelievable. In episode one Brough’s character laments that he isn’t on at the gala and as such will not sell tickets to his show. The other characters act like this is the end of the world and he will never get on at such short notice. In the next scene a phone call has been made and he is performing at the gala.
10. There are strange music choices. i.e original music with lyrics by the boring one from the Gadflys playing in the background that make it hard to concentrate on the dialogue.
11. No actual comedy performing shown. So it’s a ‘comedy’ about characters who are comedians who talk about comedy but you don’t get to see the characters perform. This is fine if it was a traditional narrative show but it’s cut up like a sketch show where the same boring characters are drinking together in a different location in each scene. You have very little idea about what they are like either as people or comedians. You could swap their lines around for the most part and there would be little difference.
12. The insider machinations of the comedy industry appears much more interesting in theory than in practice.
I like most of the people involved as performers, some of them I’ve been watching for over 10 years as a live comedy fan. I also don’t mind GNW’s shows. They introduced me to a lot of live comedy. This is looks like something made by someone who has never directed or written anything before. It’s that bad. Really it’s an absolute car crash. The only thing I don’t understand is how they didn’t realise it and put it in a draw forever.
Vale Hamish & Andy’s South American Gap Year
How many more times can it go on? How many more examples of the same thing can we put up with before a nation finally says “enough”. It’s just the same thing over and over and over again, repeated with a relentless monotony, lacking fresh insights and wit, providing nothing but the same dull feeling of having the same buttons pressed again and again and again to ever diminishing results.
We speak, of course, of our reviews of the work of Hamish & Andy. You’re sick of reading them, we’re sick of writing them: what more is there to say? Wait, we’re not making the same joke again: seriously, what more can we say about a series that just does the same things over and over again in different locations in front of different bemused locals?
So we weren’t surprised that the final episode of Hamish & Andy’s South American Gap Year was just more eating zany stuff and crossing large bodies of water in wacky contraptions – they even showed footage from previous series to make sure we knew these failed water crossings were “a thing”. Great. We always knew the one thing Titanic needed was more laughs.
We’re not saying these shows aren’t amusing enough for what they are; the double act of Hamish “the wacky irreverent one” and Andy “the slightly more serious and exasperated one” still works fine, and throwing them into various situations where one of them can delight in the suffering of the other is a reliable way to exploit their dynamic. But c’mon.
It’s not even like they’re such skilled comedians they can afford to rest on their laurels. Having Hamish bring along a copy of Usain Bolt’s biography to read from during their attempt to walk (via a giant inflatable plastic toilet roll) up the Amazon was hardly sure-fire comedy gold. It was obviously there as the ’emergency’ joke if nothing else worked out – and luckily there was enough falling overboard and having the tube slowly deflate to keep things interesting – but it just wasn’t much of a joke.
On the one hand, Hamish & Andy are clearly playing to their strengths with all this: they’re good at improv, they have a good dynamic, they’re charming enough to get people watching. But those skills aren’t enough to base a television show on by themselves, and so they roam the globe doing the same pranks and stunts over and over in different locations because to do anything else seems beyond them.
At this stage we don’t know how to feel about this. Once we thought Hamish & Andy could do better; we got a few laughs out of their series Real Stories. But these days it’s become clear that this is their level, and when they stop doing Gap Year they’ll just drift off to host some kind of crazy game show or other equally forgettable gig. Or more likely just stay on radio forever; it’s not like it feels like they have any ambitions beyond palling around for 30 second bursts between commercials.
Maybe this is where commercial comedy is these days. Maybe television is just some unobtainable venue for scripted comedy and the best you can hope for if you get there is to run your one successful idea into the ground. It’s bizarre to think they’ve peaked when all they’re currently doing is wandering around going “wow, isn’t it weird that these people eat this stuff”, but after what, six series of the same show? This is as good as it’s ever going to get.
A Project Puzzle
Remember this?
Charlie Pickering’s final episode of The Project, after nearly five years at the desk, has aired on TEN, surrounded by family and the Project office staff…. Pickering is set to fly to the US to join his wife Sarah, while the show welcomes Wil Anderson as a guest host this week.
Which is why we were a little puzzled over this:
Charlie Pickering is back on The Project tonight as the show celebrates its 5th birthday.
But TEN advises he will also guest co-host the show until mid-August. That’s despite his grand exit -and very long farewell speech- in April.
But then we remembered this:
On-set blow-ups are a part of life when it comes to putting a live news and entertainment show to air five nights a week, according to The Project’s executive producer Craig Campbell.
But he denies that one such blow up was the catalyst for one of the Channel Ten show’s stars, Charlie Pickering, to quit.
”We have blow-ups all the time. I have them with everyone,” Campbell told PS this week, hosing down rumours of a showdown he and Pickering had last month while the show was being shot in Sydney.
”It’s part of being a member of a creative team that produces live television five nights of the week … We are under immense pressure. It comes with the territory. We are all very passionate people.”
Rumours have circulated throughout Channel Ten that Pickering himself had a rather ”combative” approach to dealing with the producers and staff on The Project.
PS approached Pickering’s management to discuss the rumours directly with him but he has not responded.
Campbell told PS: ”There are always creative differences. It’s just a part of this business. I’m sure there will be plenty more creative differences in the future.
”But there was absolutely no problem with Charlie. He has done an amazing job over the past five years … He graciously agreed to stick around a bit longer than he had originally planned.”
Rumours that some of the 40-odd staff working on the show had gone on ”stress leave” because of internal clashes were also ”off the mark”, said Campbell.
And we decided it wasn’t so much of a mystery after all.
*edit* And then last night there was this:
“I don’t know why you’re getting so angry, just like Steve,” Carrie Bickmore told Pickering after one news item. “Just enjoy it.”
“No we’re very different,” Pickering insisted. “Very different. I’m not like Steve. You take that back!
“No I will not ‘Move on’ voice-in-my-ear,” he told production crew.
“We’re like chalk and a completely different type of chalk.”
Which kind of suggests someone stopped giving a shit quite a while ago.
Rejected but not neglected
A web series that was rejected by both the ABC’s Fresh Blood and SBS’s Comedy Runway, but did obtain money from a state funding body, is either going to be really good or really bad. We Are Darren and Riley is neither.
Made by Darren Low and Riley Nottingham, an up-and-coming comedy duo from Queensland, We Are Darren and Riley is a 10-part web series which sees the 22 year olds make various (largely unsuccessful) attempts to make it in the comedy world and hit it off with girls.
This is comedic territory that’s already been well explored – over explored, possibly – but funding body Screen Queensland obviously felt the pair had something as they gave them $7,500 to make this series. That money has given videos that might otherwise have been shot on a mate’s camera a professional gloss, but it does nothing to make them funnier.
The problem is largely with the script, which is a slightly odd mix of hoary old gags, plot and character clichés, and whimsy that doesn’t quite work. A lesser problem, but still a significant one, is the acting. As with a lot of semi-professional productions, there are few experienced performers in the cast and many off the jokes fall flat due to poorly timing or wooden delivery.
Having said that the pair do show some promise, and based on the assumption that some of the plots in We Are Darren and Riley were inspired by real life, they’re clearly driven and enthusiastic. Perhaps sitcom isn’t quite the right medium for them? Sketch comedy or working as a live double act might suit them better. Either way, future projects from them should be interesting.
Oh, and don’t ask us why they were rejected from Fresh Blood – We Are Darren and Riley was better than some of what did get made, and we’ll be surprised if that isn’t true of Comedy Runway too.
A Reference to that Midnight Oil Lyric We’re All Thinking Of
So regular commentator here Billy C alerted us to the good news: Greg Fleet’s self-funded sitcom Die on Your Feet is finally getting a public airing later this week!
We’ve mentioned this one before –
The most recent episode of Boxcutters concludes with a discussion of Greg Fleet’s Die On Your Feet, a dramedy featuring an all-star cast and directed by industry veteran Ted Robinson, which was filmed a couple of years ago but is most famous for not having made it to air. It was screened at MICF recently and Boxcutters presenter Josh Kinal went along to see it. “It wasn’t great”, he concluded, but the theories for it not airing are far more interesting. Cast member Adam Hills apparently reckons the ABC doesn’t want him, their flagship nice guy, playing a character who’s a “largely swearing arsehole”. There also seemed to be some hints that the show’s failure to make it to air was as much to do with politics as quality. For us, there are questions about whether a show with Alan Brough, Greg Fleet, Adam Hills, Steven Gates and Corinne Grant, and made by Ted Robinson, is likely to be worse than Please Like Me or Laid. If you’ve seen Die On Your Feet and have some thoughts on it please post a comment.
And the response wasn’t overwhelmingly positive, at least according to commentator Jumperpants:
I have seen Die on Your Feet. I didn’t stay for the whole thing. There are a lot of reasons why it will not be bought or aired unless for drama points. Here are some.
1. Very little story. Largely a group of comedians sitting round talking about the comedy industry and not being particularly entertaining.
2. Adam Hills and Corinne Grant cannot act.
3. Shot like a soapy. Terrible lighting, there are scenes where outdoor scenes look like they were shot in a studio.
4. Way way too much swearing to play it at a reasonable hour. Most of the swearing is pointless and boring.5. The ‘story’ is intercut with to camera pieces where the characters talk about comedy. This is not really different from the other scenes and adds nothing.
6. All of the characters are all unlikeable and very similar.
7. The ‘drama’ is awful, Corinne Grant and Adam Hills have zero chemistry and you don’t believe for a second that they went out.
8. They admitted they started shooting without finishing the script and it shows.
9. Very poorly directed. Some scenes have documentary style shaky cam, some have traditional set shots but with weird cut aways to actors saying nothing and looking blanks, probably indicating a lack of coverage. Strange use of crane shots when actors a sitting in an empty theatre for no apparent reason other than GNW having the crane in place for the Gala.
9. The ‘plot’ in unbelievable. In episode one Brough’s character laments that he isn’t on at the gala and as such will not sell tickets to his show. The other characters act like this is the end of the world and he will never get on at such short notice. In the next scene a phone call has been made and he is performing at the gala.
10. There are strange music choices. i.e original music with lyrics by the boring one from the Gadflys playing in the background that make it hard to concentrate on the dialogue.
11. No actual comedy performing shown. So it’s a ‘comedy’ about characters who are comedians who talk about comedy but you don’t get to see the characters perform. This is fine if it was a traditional narrative show but it’s cut up like a sketch show where the same boring characters are drinking together in a different location in each scene. You have very little idea about what they are like either as people or comedians. You could swap their lines around for the most part and there would be little difference.
12. The insider machinations of the comedy industry appears much more interesting in theory than in practice.
I like most of the people involved as performers, some of them I’ve been watching for over 10 years as a live comedy fan. I also don’t mind GNW’s shows. They introduced me to a lot of live comedy. This is looks like something made by someone who has never directed or written anything before. It’s that bad. Really it’s an absolute car crash. The only thing I don’t understand is how they didn’t realise it and put it in a draw forever.
Compared to Laid and Please Like Me? Two shows I really didn’t think much of. This is bafflingly bad and ill conceived. It’s looks and sounds awful.
If it is ever released on DVD I would buy it in an absolute second, it has the potential to become like The Room. There’s a scene where Adam Hills picks up a cricket bat and throws it across the room. That’s the whole scene! Also for some reason they seem to shoot a lot of scenes in the dark. i.e people watching tv in the dark, playing video games in the dark.
Like we wouldn’t know it was night unless the lights were all off.
But then Anna came along with a different take:
I was at the screening of Die on your Feet too. I did stay to the end.
The first few minutes of the first episode did feel like it was shot for a cheap soap, but that disappeared quickly, and I have to say that I really liked it.
I just wish I could see the last episode. I found the episodes and story line funny, very real, beautiful, sometimes surprisingly subtle and also, hilarious. For a change, I felt like it was not written for the lowest common denominator, which is so often the case. Some people want instant gratification, be it comedy, TV, technology, etc. They want colour, punch, bang, NOW. I don’t. Subtlety is underutilised and underappreciated. It won’t be one for everyone (clearly, after reading the review above), but if you hold on for the ride, you’re in for a lovely journey. ABC management need to stop trying to be commercial television and they need to show this. The place it should be shown is on the ABC, and it really deserves to be seen.
All of which has us more than slightly excited to see it, even if it is tucked away on the graveyard shift on a digital channel on the deadest night of the week. Which suggests either Fleet may have given it away for free or the programmers at Ten (who deserve kudos simply for putting it on – thanks guys!) are hoping to somehow lure the Dirty Laundry Live audience across when that show finishes for the night on ABC2.
[actually, DLL really should have Fleet on as a guest that night and just let him tell people about his upcoming show – you know, the way Micallef used to promo Mr and Mrs Murder when that was on after Mad as Hell over on Ten.]
Why it’s not on ABC would usually be the kind of snarky “mystery” we’d wrap this up with, but the various questions as to its quality have solved that for us. Plus, c’mon: we all know that in television production it’s all about the shows you can take credit for, and ones that come from outside – or the ones your predecessor shepherded through – are a lose-lose proposition: if they succeed someone else (in this case, Greg Fleet) gets all the credit, and if they fail you get all the blame for not spotting it was a dud. Better to keep your powder dry for something you really want to support.
Unless, you know, this turns out to be really good.
Stoops to Conquer
It started, as it always does, with a press release:
“I was absolutely devastated when Naz and Aamer decided to split. It was as if the fulcrum of Australian comedy had come asunder. They were just bloody funny.”
Helen Razer, comedy reviewer
“We did one last tour… and Aamer decided to add a joke he hadn’t done in any other shows…”
Nazeem Hussain
“Viral doesn’t even describe it, there was nary a corner of the internet not touched by this very hilarious moment.”
Helen Razer, comedy reviewer
Confused? So were we: who even calls Helen Razer a comedy reviewer these days? Surely we’re not the only people who remember this comment from ‘The Reviewer Reviewer’, a blog that covered Melbourne International Comedy Festival reviews a few years back:
“She [Helen Razer] also reviewed my [45 minute] show without seeing the first 10-15 mins. That’s a quarter of the show, maths fans. This approach doesn’t take into account what it does to a performer’s flow \ confidence when a distinctive-looking (and somewhat notorious) reviewer walks in late and sits right up the front-centre. I’d never assume that might be indicative of the normal show/script. I [naively] expected more from a lady I’d often admired \ enjoyed. Well, that’s solidarity for you. In response, I shall be buying one of her books, ripping out and discarding the first 150 pages, and reviewing what remains. Seems about right”
Wait, what? Oh, you’re confused as to what the press release was about. Sorry, our bad:
Australian Story: Divide and Conquer (Nazeem Hussain and Aamer Rahman)
Monday July 28, 8pm on ABC
We’re not exactly fans of Australian Story – there’s only so much cancer you can be expected to handle in half an hour – but hey, this episode’s got Tom Gleeson, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, for starters we couldn’t really tell if this was a repeat or not: it seemed to be either going over old ground or the 2011 episode on them didn’t really cover much of anything. And then suddenly BAM! Helen Razer is talking and we’re up to the present day. Guess it was mostly a repeat after all. A transcript of which you can read here.
As for the new news that justifies this update, it’s basically that “Fear of a Brown Planet” split up. Luckily Rahman’s final comedy bit went viral and gave him the confidence to keep going with comedy. In other news, Hussain’s TV career is really taking off, Rahman’s married now… and then Helen Razer said some more stuff and we really started to seriously wonder why she’s the one bringing us up to speed with these guys’ careers.
Sure, we know how these shows work: with barely half an hour to play with, you need talking heads to fill in the gaps. But didn’t the first 20-odd minutes do enough to establish their bona fides? This far into their careers, why did we need someone to tell us their break-up was a big deal, their going viral was a big deal, that Hussain is really a mainstream entertainer, and so on?
At least in the old material the talking heads made sense: their manager Bec Sutherland (who was once and may still be Tim Minchin’s manager), fellow comics, their family. And sure, in other episodes dealing with bigger issues you probably need outside experts for context. But here? We don’t need a comedy critic to tell us they’re funny on a television show about them: just stick on some clips and let us make up our own minds.
As with most things in life, the more we think about this the angrier we get: with only around 6 minutes of new material on the duo, why waste a single solitary second on someone telling us stuff we already know? They’re funny? Got it. Rahman’s clip went viral? Hussain already talked about it. Their break-up shocked the nation? Maybe find someone who isn’t a notorious self-promoter who spends most of her days butting into other people’s online conversations to inform them that they’re doing life wrong to bring us up to speed on that stuff.
In better news, Hussain’s SBS2 series Legally Brown is back next month. Razer doesn’t seem to be one of the guests.
Mockumentary time…excellent?
From Endemol, the makers of Big Brother, and Checkpoint Media, the makers of Fancy Boy (which was part of Fresh Blood), comes the webseries Dayne’s World, a documentary about South Africa-Australian stand-up Dayne Rathbone.
Rathbone won Raw Comedy in 2011 and has since been making a name for himself on the circuit doing a hybrid of character comedy and stand-up. This six part series, the first two episodes of which are now on YouTube, is fronted by another stand-up, Mike Nayna, who follows Rathbone around as he develops his play about Nelson Mandela and directs a short film based on one of his stand-up routines.
For us Dayne’s World was a difficult watch. It treads the delicate, Derek-esque line of making a comedy about someone with some kind of disability or mental health issue – and that’s hard to pull off, even Fawlty Towers didn’t quite achieve it.
At least, we’re assuming that Dayne’s mentally ill – how else to explain a scene from Dayne’s short film in which Dayne’s Dad snogs an actress while his provocatively-dressed Mum lies poutily in bed next to Dayne’s brother? Who’d think that was a good thing to film?
The alternative is that Dayne’s just a hugely misguided “artist”, who’s managed to achieve a certain level of success, and this series will slowly see his life unravel as it’s revealed that he’s just not very good.
With four episodes to go it’s hard to tell where this is heading, and with the slow pace and the low joke rate we’re not necessarily inspired to find out, but as it’s racked up an impressive number of views since it launched there’s clearly some interest out there.
Getting In Early For This One
Normally we see television shows the same way you do: by illegally downloading them from torrents a few weeks after they first aired because we totally forgot they were on. Sometimes, when it’s a particularly dodgy local effort we know no-one else is going to record, we’ll watch them as they happen. But today’s post is about something that almost never happens: we saw a television show that hasn’t even aired yet.
Why someone would send us a link to a place that re-directed us to another place and then required a password to get to yet another place that contained the first episode of the second series of Please Like Me, we don’t know. Oh wait, yes we do: because the “industry insider” who sent us the link thought it was hilarious how little we enjoyed the first series and wanted to know what we’d think of the second. So unknown benefactor, here goes:
1): We didn’t like it the first time so we can hardly expect anyone to pay attention to our complaining now. Yes, the first series of Please Like Me was a wildly uneven mix of old folk acting confused and Thomas hanging out with his buddies acting confused and also kissing hot boys. It was also largely based around the idea that juxtaposing mawkish sentiment and blanket rudeness (*cough The Office cough*) would somehow create comedy. But as the show was successful enough – by “successful” we mean “sold overseas” – to get a second series, we can’t really blame writer / creator / star Josh Thomas for serving up more of the same.
2): We’re not big fans of Thomas anyway. So you’d think having a character tell Thomas’ character within the first minute of the first episode of series two that “maybe the reason people don’t respond to you well in nightclubs is because of your sad-as-shit face” would at least get a laugh out of us. But then Thomas – who takes this comment pretty well, presumably because he wrote it because it’s his television show – starts all but dancing a jig and turning the leprechaun voice up to eleven and we’re already looking at the clock. But to stress: writing a sitcom that’s tonally The Office if The Office was 80% about David Brent and 60% of that was David Brent trying to get laid has worked for him in the past, so why would he change now?
3): It’s pretty gay. A drag acts sings the title song, there’s guys in spangly shorts, two dudes are making out on the dancefloor, Thomas wears a “I [heart] Swedish Boys” t-shirt and we’re barely four minutes in. We note this because the “other” ABC comedy that was pretty gay – Outland – received a fairly negative response. Not to mention the rumours that the first series of Please Like Me was bumped from ABC1 to ABC2 when Thomas came out as gay and re-wrote the script to make his character openly gay. Overseas money, you guys! Forcing the ABC to be more tolerant.
4): Thomas’ love life is once again a major focus of the show. Well, what else did you expect? He’s moping about a boy he can’t have, he’s sitting across from this boy in his loungeroom with a cushion on his lap because LOLBONERS. Have we mentioned that it really, really helps to like Thomas if you’re going to watch this show?
5): The first scene that doesn’t actually feature Thomas has someone talking about him. “Whenever Poochie’s not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, ‘where’s Poochie?'” Sorry, not sure why this came to mind.
This actually feels like a Thomas stand-up monologue that he’s given his (on-screen) mother to say because he wanted to get it on-air but his character is currently too depressed about his tragic love life to deliver it. Doesn’t make it any less annoying though. Yes, we remember his mum was an annoying character and drug-addled ranter in series one; that doesn’t mean an extended blathering monologue from her that feels a heck of a lot like something Thomas would say is either funny or entertaining. But yet again, this crap worked for him the first time around.
6): Josh picks up and holds a baby! Don’t burn all your “A” material just yet, there’s nine and a half more episodes to go yet. Plus that third series that’s already been announced. What else can Thomas pick up? Oh wait, he’s already tried to pick up a guy and failed. Maybe “picking up” is going to be the theme of this season – each week Thomas picks up various objects while also trying to pick up various romantic interests. Yeah, our attention’s wandering a bit.
7): Ok, this might be different this series: is it us or is Thomas actually a bit of a prick? He has a scene early on with his dad which is basically Thomas just baiting him, insulting him, or laughing at him when he tries to be serious. Sure, his dad was a bit of a nob in the first series, but considering how his dad seems to be making an effort this time around having Thomas act like a prick makes him seem like, well, a prick. Which we’ve been told is part of the point of the show, but if that’s the case he’s doing it wrong.
8): And so it goes. It’s safe to say not a whole lot happens this episode (at least until the “crazieeeee” mum turns up at the end to blow everything up). It’s the usual run of strings-free (or is it?) sex, baby sitting, baby shitting, and sing-alongs, because while this is billed as a “comedy” it’s really one of those “hang-out” dramedies where audiences are expected to be so much in love with the characters they’ll be content to just, you know, hang out with them. They’re friends for people who don’t have any friends.
Well fuck that. We might not have any friends but that’s why we have books and alcohol and the box set of Frontline. This kind of insipid lightweight crap is a waste of time for everyone not collecting a pay check from it. Being amazingly generous even for us, we’ll admit that if you’re desperate for any kind of portrayal of twenty-something life this does contain that. But then it also contains a bunch of stuff about his parents. Who aren’t that funny either.
Look, it’s just more of the same. There aren’t any big changes that we could spot – Caitlin Stacey isn’t back yet, but that’s hardly a shock considering how little her character had to do in series one – so if you enjoyed it last time you’ll probably keep on making horrible mistakes with your life. Wow, aren’t we terrible! Still, if acting kind of bitchy is working out for Thomas…
The Fresh Blood Sausage Factory – Part 3
Here we go again, for one last time… As a commenter on one of our previous blogs about Fresh Blood summed it up, it’s been “a mixed bag”, but there is some hope for the future of Australia comedy. And we stress the word “some” because given the quantity of known or semi-known comedy personnel involved, we’re starting to wonder if this is the only option out there for comedians to stay in work.
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In A Woman’s World takes as its premise the idea that it’d be hilarious if women had historically been the dominant sex, largely because the world probably wouldn’t be a better place. With sketches about female cops harassing a guy for cheating on his girlfriend and how picking up would work with women making the moves they’re right about the “probably wouldn’t be a better place” bit but not so much about the “it’d be hilarious” bit. In one of their videos we see what porn would be like if it really did cater for women. Cut to a guy struggling to “keep it up”, except that “it” isn’t his penis but his pretence that kittens are lovely. Because that’s what women really want: kittens. And while it’s refreshing to see a sketch about gender relations in which clichéd women are parodied, we’d probably have laughed more if large numbers of women actually did prefer kittens to sex.
Speaking of clichés (and objecting to the cliché we’re about to object to is now a cliché itself) don’t you hate it when someone describes something as “like [THING] on acid”? Well, that’s how Puppets vs People was described in one promo we read: “Like The Muppets on acid”. In these sketches puppets live alongside humans quite normally, except the puppets we meet aren’t normal at all. How this is “on acid” as opposed to being a fairly standard concept of comedy, we’re not sure. Doing a typical prison scene only one of the prisoners is a puppet is one joke; in a five minute sketch you need a lot more than that.
Is Sam’s How To meant to be a parody of YouTube “How to…” videos? Or comedy sketches in the style of a “How to…” videos? Or are they examples of really well-made “How to…” videos? Okay, really well-made “How to…” videos with a sense of irony. As a parody it doesn’t work – the production values and the style of Sam’s presentation are way too professional – and as comedy sketches they’re kinda not funny enough, even if the advice is fairly shonky. But if you view them as well-made “How to…” videos with a sense of irony they’re quite a good watch. The piano one even has some suspense as you watch to find out how all the pieces are going to come together to sound like something semi-professional.
Also plundering the world of self-help videos for gags is The Write Stuff, a series of sketches featuring screenwriting gurus Noel and Carl Pennyman. Fake-tanned, balding and decked-out in 90’s tracksuits, sneakers and gold chains, these two have some misguided advice for wannabe writers. If you’re a writer or a wannabe writer you’ll be amused by gags about how screenwriters are at the top of the hierarchy on a movie set, and about the millions you can make from writing, but otherwise the irony may quickly wear thin. Like the world of Hollywood blockbusters this is satirising, this is glossy but lacking in real substance. And the quasi Tim & Eric “bad TV” approach really needs to be a lot worse if you want anyone to care these days.
The Experimental Research Institute at the University of Australia is the setting for We Live to Science Another Day, which begins with three science geeks panicking about how a wealthy benefactor has been sucked in to their worm hole. Helpfully, their Professor arrives to tell them that everything’s fine…except they end up choking him on a champagne cork. And that’s just the beginning of the complicated plotting, slapstick and over-the-top acting. For the audience it’s too much to absorb and mentally exhausting to keep up with, and while we don’t generally argue for either dumbing or slowing down in comedy, in these sketches that might be beneficial.
Another of the established names who were given the chance to make videos for Fresh Blood is Veronica Milsom, star of The Record, which consists of three sketches about record-breaking couples. Milsom is a good performer and these are well-made portraits of the three fictional couples but laughs are thin on the ground and it’s hard to avoid the feeling that after appearances in Mad As Hell, Hungry Beast, Live From Planet Earth and other shows, Veronica Milsom really didn’t need another opportunity to get herself out there.
Hipster culture is the topic of the Ultimate Fanj sketches, in which Charlie and Elias try to fit in with a group of cool, inner city types led by Tall Paul and Talla Paula. There’s an air of Fight Club about their exclusive hipster scene, which is based in a rundown inner city warehouse. Again, this is glossy and in a lot of ways well made, but light on gags – if it was slightly smarter we’d suggest the “style over substance” approach was meant to reflect the shallow hipsters Charlie and Elias face, but it really does just feel like lightweight mocking of cool dude pretensions (“handball was invented in Brooklyn in 2011”).
Completely improvised and filmed in one take, the Written It Down sketches are the brainchild of Matt Saraceni and Dave Zwolenski (from SBS’s A Dave In the Life). The first sketch, about a coach telling off a player for their on-court protests, escalates cleverly in to a farcical and amusing tale (others have a bit more flailing going on – the karate sketch for one takes a little too long to get going). Having said that, we can’t help wondering if even this sketch might have been funnier on stage in front of a live audience. On location, for video, it somehow loses some of its sparkle.
So… what did we learn from all that? Well, clearly sketch comedy is a lot healthier that you (and we) might have thought looking at the recent television offerings. Even if a lot of these Fresh Blood entrants already have television appearances under their belts. Which, as we pointed out, suggests that the actual comedy scene in general is pretty grim if a talent quest is the best way to get out there for experienced comedians who already have a following. Or maybe it was just an easy ten grand for them? Answers on the back of a postcard.
While a lot of these sketches are average at best, the sheer variety on offer is a useful reminder that with short sketches there’s no real reason why you shouldn’t try something a little different. Back when sketch comedy series were regulars on mainstream television, they usually went out of their way to mix things up; the recent (and by recent we mean “since around 2000”) trend for themed shows (ie, The Wedge) and series based on one performer’s “twisted take on modern society” (Kinne) often means a lot of sketches that feel a little too similar to each other.
If we had to make a recommendation – and we don’t and also who cares what we think – that would probably be it. Of course the ABC should offer more work to the funny teams, but as most of the funny teams are already established yet haven’t been given shows yet we’re not entirely sure our tastes and the ABCs overlap. But trying to make sure that any sketch comedy series in the future isn’t just the same kind of thing over and over? How hard could that be?
Executive decision
For a while now the team behind ABC2’s The Roast have been producing an end of week podcast called The PodRoast, which brings together a group of the show’s writers, performers and production crew to talk about the shows they’ve made over the past five days. Mostly this is a rambling chat but occasionally there are some interesting insights.
The episode from 25 June started with an interview with The Roast’s Executive Producer Charles Firth, in which he discussed why he left The Chaser, how The Roast came about, and what his comedy ambitions are – if you have even a slight interest in these topics it’s worth a listen.
“I think the holy grail of Australian television is what you guys are doing” Firth begins, explaining how since the 90’s he’s had an ambition to create an Australian Saturday Night Live, where new comedy and production talent is brought in, given on-the-job training and experience, and is then able to go off and do other things. He then goes on to describe a “pivotal moment in the history of The Chaser”, which happened just after the first series of The Chaser’s War on Everything, where the group had an away day led by a facilitator who got them to discuss their future, specifically “What is The Chaser – a company or a team?”.
At this away day Firth argued that The Chaser should adopt the Saturday Night Live model. “I had this ambition about what The Chaser could be” he says, describing how he’d spent most of his 20’s (he was 29 at the time of the away day) working with the rest of The Chaser group on what he felt was a “shared vision”. But it turned out the rest of The Chaser were more interested in being a comedy team whose aim was to keep working together (presumably along the lines of Working Dog). “It was an unambitious choice” Firth says with some sadness.
Aside from making a successful local version of Saturday Night Live, Firth says the other “holy grail” in Australian comedy is making a successful daily news satire, something he also feels has been achieved with The Roast. “It’s the best show” he says, praising his team for the quality of their writing and production, and enthusing about how television is “a writer’s medium”.
Returning to why he left The Chaser he says he thought of the rest of the group as “arrogant dickheads who were unbearable to work with, and then I realised I was the arrogant dickhead who was unbearable to work with”, adding that “I chose to leave” and that it was the right decision for him.
There are number of things that strike us about this episode of The PodRoast. On the one hand it seems to be an honest and thoughtful reflection from Firth on his time with The Chaser and his ambitions, as well as an insight in to the origins and goals of The Roast. We’ve often wondered how and why The Roast has managed to keep going (in all its various incarnations) and clearly that’s partly down to Firth’s ambition to keep it on air.
How long it will last (and whether Firth will end us as Australia’s answer to the legendary Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels) is debatable. We think Firth’s wrong when he says it’s “the best show”, and we’ve been saying that for a long time. The quality of the writing and execution of the show is usually somewhere between average and woeful, and we say that as people who frequently watch it desperately hoping it will find its feet. Australian comedy would be enhanced by a local, successful Saturday Night Live and/or Daily Show, but this isn’t it.
Finally, it’s interesting that Firth is convinced that the company (rather than the team) approach to comedy is a winner. We’ve been very critical of The Chaser’s War On Everything and other post-Firth Chaser projects over the years, but it’s unquestionably funnier than The Roast. And in comedy, it’s the funny that matters.