Australian Tumbleweeds
The title is ironic
To make a high school debating start to this post, the word “utopia” is defined as…
an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.
…and, obviously, in the case of new ABC/Working Dog sitcom Utopia that’s not quite how things are for the main protagonists.
Tony (Rob Sitch) oversees the Nation Building Authority (NBA), a government department which manages major infrastructure projects. In the first episode we see him deal with the fallout from a logo redesign, while second-in-command Nat (Celia Pacquola) has to find room for a community garden in a major residential development. Subsequent episodes follow in a similar vein as the team – which includes Kitty Flanagan as PR woman Rhonda, Luke McGregor as Project Manager Hugh, and Toby Truslove as Marketing Guru Karsten – deal with crisis upon nation building crisis, all under the watchful eyes of the nation’s media.
Some of the themes of a previous Working Dog sitcom, the weirdly unfunny The Hollowmen, are explored again in Utopia, except it has the good sense to adopt the comedic stylings of the even older Working Dog sitcom Frontline. This means we get a sharp satire on the world of politics and PR but also a re-hash of some characters types. The ditzy receptionist, the unhelpful PA, the over-enthusiastic PR lady and the wanky marketing guy…these are very familiar from Frontline, albeit instantly recognisable and well played by the cast.
Utopia is one of those shows that will amuse its intended audience from the get-go and has the potential to run for several series or more. And if you image a state of sitcoms in which everything is perfect, those are just some of the characteristics of a new comedy series.
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…