Australian Tumbleweeds
What A Difference a Year Makes
So today we woke up to this:
[Chris] Lilley has been nominated for a Silver Logie as Most Outstanding Actor for his performance as the snobby cashed-up bogan schoolgirl in Ja’mie King.
It is sweet redemption for Lilley who was devastated when the ABC made a huge gaffe by failing to put in a submission for his Angry Boys two years ago.
“Sweet redemption”? Let’s just wait and see if he wins before we start flashing our boobs around. And considering the “gaffe” around Angry Boys was – if, as they say, the rumours are true – more about the ABC hurriedly washing their hands of a proven ratings flop than an innocent mistake, it shall be interesting to see if the in-house promotional effort required to get Lilley over the line is forthcoming. Especially considering the Silver Logie is a peer-voted category, thus ruling out his teenage tumblr fanbase.
Wait, you do all know the Logies are – to some extent or another – at the mercy of network publicists, right? TV Week needs television more than television needs TV Week: the awards aren’t outright fixed… we think… but publicists have their ways of making sure they get the result they want at least some of the time. Sure, Andy Lee could have been nominated for a Gold Logie over 2012 winner Hamish Blake because he’s awesome and 2013 was his year. Or it could have been because the Nine publicists decided he was the horse they were going to back this year. Which seems more likely to you?
And don’t think we haven’t noticed that the Logies continue to have nothing but contempt for comedy, what with all the actual comedy programs dumped in the “Popular Light Entertainment Program” and peer-voted “Most Outstanding Light Entertainment Program” categories. As previously and repeatedly stated by us, this seems like a fairly obvious attempt to disguise the fact that the commercial networks don’t actually make any comedy (Hamish & Andy’s travel shows aside): can’t have a category where the commercial networks can’t win now, can we?
The upshot of all this is that somehow comedy has managed to become, like any drama more complex than Home & Away, “elitist viewing” on Australian television. Despite occasional attempts to claim otherwise, the Logies are a populist award aimed at “popular” shows on the commercial networks: that means bland mainstream dramas and rubbish reality television. Seriously, even in the peer-voted “Most Outstanding Light Entertainment Program” category somehow talent show The Voice gets a look in. Much as it must be nice to win a Logie, against this kind of competition it’s hardly something to be proud of.
Repeat as necessary
Remember Life Support, SBS’s spoof lifestyle program from about a decade ago? It was never a ratings blockbuster, more a cult hit, but it’s currently getting a repeat run on Monday nights on SBS2 so we’ve been reacquainting ourselves with it.
Inspired by the plethora of early evening magazine shows on commercial TV in the ‘90s, Life Support was fronted by a small team of experts – “modern woman” Sigourney (Rachel Coopes), general practitioner and financial guru Dr Rudi (Simon Van Der Stap), tradie Todd (Brendan Cowell) and anarchist/rebel-type Penne (Abbie Cornish) – who between them gave advice on cooking, DIY, craft, pet care, finances, health and a variety of other topics.
Each segment was a detailed parody of the sort of story you’d see on the likes of Better Homes and Gardens, right down to the camera angles and the adult contemporary music stings, which was played perfectly straight by the cast. Rachel Coopes as Sigourney had a grim determination to cheerfully tackle whichever pointless craft project the producers threw at her, while Brendan Cowell’s Todd was an amalgam of every actor who’d ever picked up a hammer and tried to look appropriately blokey in front of a camera.
These perverted re-imaginings of Noni Hazelhurst and John Jarrett often presented the darker and more satirical segments, such as suggesting ways to exploit refugees or showing how you can cover up the black eye your partner has given you with make-up. Meanwhile Dr Rudi was giving advice to drug dealers on how to cut coke and keep your customers happy, and Penne was showing you how to knock off your neighbours’ telly and get away with it. Full Frontal this was not.
A few years later this sort of comedy would have caused OUTRAGE in the Murdoch tabloids, but in those mid-Howard era days of 2001-2003 no one really cared. Comedies like this were so obviously for an audience of annoyed youngsters who hated the government that it was largely left alone. Even John Safran’s 3AW ecstasy tablets prank, made around the same time and also aired on SBS, didn’t cause much concern (outside the confines of the 3AW studios).
Sure, it was the sort of comedy you could describe as “undergraduate”, but with a writer’s room populated by the likes of John Eastway (The Norman Gunston Show, Denton, Australian You’re Standing In It), Kevin Brumpton (CNNNN, The Jesters) and Angus Fitzsimmons (CNNNN, The Joy of Sets) there was a level of quality about this show. As we recall, Life Support did get a bit repetitive towards the end of its run – try as hard as you like, but there’s only so many ways you can parody a lifestyle show segment – but we were kinda surprised by how well this has stood the test of time.
Vale The Moodys
For whatever reason, one of the big, big fears Australian comedy has had over the last decade or so is that of going big. Not for the wide brown land any broad stereotypes or exaggerated characteristics, oh no: we like our comedy restrained to the point where it’s almost impossible to tell that it actually is a comedy. And nowhere is this more plain to see than The Moodys, a series that takes a collection of characters that would struggle to make it to the final cut in a below-par Australian movie and says “hey, lets hang out with these guys for three hours and see what happens”.
To be fair, taken in isolation The Moodys has… well, not “much to recommend it”, but it’s hardly a dead loss either. Some of the cast are strong and the Jungleboys team know how to give a show that “commercial-fresh” polish. For example, the slo-mo shots that set the tone at the start of the final wedding episode are effective mood-setters – they’re not funny, mind you, but they’re a good set up for the funny stuff to follow… wait, there’s no funny stuff to follow? Bugger.
Cheap shots aside – of course there’s funny stuff to follow, but “the wedding’s on a Tuesday” is the punchline to a joke, not a statement that needs another two or three sentences to pound into the ground – there’s… wait, we haven’t finished with the cheap shots.
“Roger, I’m not sure why you’re here” is the kind of line that writers think is both smart and funny (“hey, there’s no plot reason why his character should still be in this show, but by pointing it out we turn this problem into a joke!”), but by episode eight of a series where Roger has had no reason to be involved aside from being played by one of the production team, it’s just a sign of incompetence. Either find a real in-story reason for him to still be in the show, or get rid of him. This show isn’t that fantastic that it can afford to be carrying dead wood.
The funniest thing about The Moodys has been the various attempts by both ABC publicity and the press to convince us that the Moody family are a zany bunch of knockabout larrikins – well, more that they’re “crazy” and “riotous”, but you get the drift. Perhaps if you subsist on a meagre diet of historical murder mysteries and programs where politicians dodge the most basic of questions then sure, the extended Moody family might seem a little “out there”. But as a comedy? It’s barely funnier than your average episode of House Husbands.
Everything over the last eight episodes has been pitched at such a low volume that the overall impression is of a show actually scared to try for a big laugh in case it fails. These aren’t wacky comedy characters: they’re barely exaggerated versions of the chumps you find around any family barbecue. Then if a critic realises this is pretty thin gruel, they try to sell that blandness as a strong point: it’s a show “driven by characters who make us squirm in recognition”, you say? Here’s an idea: when The Simpsons had Homer laughing at a lame comedy while saying “it’s funny because it’s true”, it wasn’t a ringing endorsement of that style of laff-getting.
Yes, there are moments where The Moodys tries to go broad. Disposing of business documents in a woodchipper: not unfunny. Oh look, the wedding celebrant won’t go off to the hospital to conduct the wedding unless she gets a ride in a hot air balloon; oddly unfunny but it turns out to be a major plot point, so the trouble is that the follow-up twist feels weirdly contrived. Patrick Brammall and Darren Gilshenan can actually give comedic performances that add something to a scene; everyone else, back to drama school for you.
But the real problem with The Moodys is that while observational comedy can work when someone really, really really good is doing the observation, otherwise all you’re left with is a vague feeling you’ve left the kettle on. Worse, it’s a show deliberately pulling its punches: it would not be at all difficult to play the characters broader to make them funnier, or to make the situations more outlandish so they could provide some actual laughs too. It’s obviously way too much to expect this kind of “start off normal then let the insanity mount” comedy be handled with the skill and comedy of Fawlty Towers or Seinfeld, but those are shows that exist now and there’s nothing wrong with learning from them.
There’s clearly a lot of effort from a lot of talented people on display here, but unfortunately much of their talent lies in creating a kind of soft rom-com with a couple of mildly oddball supporting characters. You want to make that lightweight “classy” stuff, go make an Australian film and see how well you do at the box office. If you’re on television and you’re making something labelled comedy, here’s a suggestion: put making people laugh at the top of your list.
Bella! Bella!
Stand-up on TV doesn’t always work out. This is not to say that stand-up must never be broadcast – ordinary folks in the suburbs who can’t get to an inner city comedy club should get a chance to see stand-up on TV, right? It’s more that seeing stand-up in its natural home, an inner city comedy club, is the way to see it.
Stand-up comedy is written to be played live to a small group of people who’ve all had a couple, and stand-up routines are designed to play out over 5 minutes, or 10 minutes, or 20 minutes, or an hour. Many stand-ups pride themselves on developing narrative arcs in their routines, back-referencing to a gag they told 10 minutes earlier, exploring a theme in different ways, and then bringing it home with a great punchline. But when the TV people come along they don’t want to broadcast a 20 minute set, they want 2 minutes of funny before they cut to an ad break, or to something else; apparently those people in the suburbs get bored watching the same person talk for more than 3 minutes.
Louis CK, Stewart Lee, Ben Elton and others have got around the difficulties of presenting their stand-up on TV by introducing sitcom and sketch elements in to their series Louis, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle and The Man From Auntie.* At the opposite end of the spectrum was the late 90’s ABC series Smallest Room In The House, which filmed stand-up shows written for festivals “as live” in a studio decked-out to look like a comedy club. We remember it being good.
Less successful have been the shows where a crew turned up to a comedy club, filmed all the acts, then cut their routines to ribbons and edited the funniest ribbons together. The result was often a disjointed, context-free, unfunny mess, made worse by pointless cutaways to the comedians backstage drinking beers and mucking around together, and boring interviews with the stand-ups.
So it’s with some surprise that we’ve warmed to Stand Up @ Bella Union, a stand-up show which follows this approach. In the first episode there was a lot of fast editing and a lot of time given to showing snippets of Chas Licciardello interviewing Matt Okine, but in the second and third episodes the editor took a more relaxed approach, with each of the four or five comedians on the bill getting several 3-5 minute routines in the show and with less time spent on Licciardello’s interviews. The show is all the better for it.
It’s not that the interviews have been bad, it’s more that the stand-up’s good enough to hold its own. Indeed it would be interesting to see longer extracts from each routine as there are some promising, relatively-unknown comedians in the show who are as funny as the higher profile acts like Okine and Nazeem Hussein. And let’s face it, seeing new comedians on TV who are actually funny is pretty rare. So we want to see as much of them being funny as we possibly can.
* If you only know Ben Elton from Live From Planet Earth you’ll have to trust us when we say The Man From Auntie was good. In fact following the Live From Planet Earth debacle we got out our videos of The Man From Auntie (well, it was made in 1994) and we can confirm it holds up. Oh Ben Elton, where did it all go wrong? You were so funny once…
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival Starts This Week!
… yeah, we’re not going to be covering it.
It’s fairly obvious from the content of this blog that live comedy is not our thing. Then again, we shouldn’t assume that anything here is “fairly obvious”: it’s also fairly obvious that this blog is written by a team of people (we’ve even had guest posters), and yet we occasionally hear about one comedian or another convinced they’ve tracked down the singular “person” behind this blog. So, in the spirit of spelling everything out, here goes: we’re not all that interested in live comedy.
Sure, maybe we should be. Lord knows we get enough people telling us about this or that great stand-up (or YouTube comedian) we really need to take a look at if we’re going to take the real pulse of Australian comedy. But we have to draw the line somewhere when it comes to comedy coverage – no, we’re not going to drive three hours to check out your open-mic night – and our line is this: once you get on television, that’s when we’ll take a look.
To be honest, we’re not even all that excited about filmed stand-up sets broadcast on television. Stand-up is a live act designed to be performed in front of a crowd that is reacting to it: filming it for broadcast is a great way to record material that might otherwise be lost, but it certainly loses something in the translation. Some comedians figure out ways to make up for that loss: when we start getting the Australian equivalent of Louie or Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, give us a ring.
This is in no way a dismissal of all the good work going on out there in stand-up land. It’s just acknowledging the fact that stand-up comedy is largely a niche act for a niche audience. As one of the things we self-important wanker types at Team Tumbleweeds are interested in is comedy’s place in Australian culture – that’s why we crap on about reviewers so much, as in some ways those guys are trying to nail down where a comedian fits in our culture (Chris Lilley is hilarious and exposes fault-lines in Australian culture; Shaun Micallef is a little too “smart” for mainstream acceptance; Andrew Denton is a genius; Dave Hughes is a knockabout everyman; you get the idea) – and stand-up’s place is way out on the fringe.
Of course, the fringe is a good place to be if you want to try out new and different stuff. Again, because this entire post is about making ourselves clear so we don’t spend the next few weeks fending off questions about our lack of MICF coverage as if we’re the only blog in Australia dealing with comedy, we’re not having a go at stand-up. Covering it is just not what we do.
Now, slagging off dodgy comedy gala reviews (“slightly un-PC” – Jesus wept) – that’s another story.
The Future Of Comedy Will Cost You Plenty
Now that their target has been reached, we can now safely direct your attention to the crowdfunding campaign to support A Rational Fear in their efforts to “commission a 10-week season of digital comedy to fill the void of political satire in this country.” Does anyone really think there’s a “void of political satire in this country”? We’re getting 20 episodes of Mad as Hell this year, plus the weekly antics of Clarke & Dawe and the usual Chaser hijinks on top of that; if anything else, we’d say “political satire” was suffering a bit of a glut at the moment. But hey, at least they’re trying: you can donate for the next day or so here.
Also basking in the glow of managing to get people to pay up front for something that doesn’t exist yet is Catherine Deveny, who somehow has managed to get people to cough up A$10,000 to pay for “a short YouTube film called The Atheist Alphabet. It’s an A to Z of atheism that answers all the Frequently Asked Questions about atheism.” Does anyone have any frequently asked questions about atheism past “how can you be an atheist and still say ‘Oh My God’?”.
But wait! As is typical of Deveny’s work in general, it’s not really about anything more than Deveny herself: “The film will be 20 minutes or so, uploaded to YouTube. It follows me from waking in the morning to going to sleep as I travel through my beautiful Melbourne on my trusty bicycle with my dog Archie in the basket.” So… no graphics, no diagrams, no primary sources, no interviews with experts? Well, presumably her dog doesn’t believe in God so maybe Archie can bark into the mic a few times.
(at least it sounds better than this, which sounds not very good at all. Considering the online behaviour of both the participants, we’re fairly sure that just by mentioning the fact we don’t think it sounds like much fun qualifies us as “trolls” – if anyone reading this does end up going, let us know if we get a mention)
The usual line people roll out when it comes to crowd-funding is “hey, if people want to give money, go for it”. The problem with that stance is that once you have direct sources of funding everything that isn’t directly funded is suddenly under the pump. “If people really wanted to see your show, they’d pay money for it themselves” becomes the cry from some of the more manic corners of the room. And because this also seems to make sense, if you’re not careful you end up in the situation we currently find ourselves in with regard to transport, schools, hospitals and the like: those who can afford the good stuff get the good stuff, those who can’t have to make do with crap.
Putting aside for a moment that these “level playing fields” are never level – public transport has to account for every cent spent while private transport (cars) gets roads built everywhere at a massive subsidy, private schools can inflate their educational results by keeping disadvantaged kids out, etc etc – the other big problem with this approach is that you only end up getting the kind of comedy people are willing to pay for. If it turns out that angry political types have loads of cash to spend on “political satire”, that’s what we’ll get. Comedy that points out that rich people are often self-obsessed wankers and the internet is full of smug dickheads? Good luck getting funding for that.
“But you don’t have to watch it.” What, you think if people can turn up to a television network and say “we’ve got a show for you and you don’t have to spend a cent on it”, the networks aren’t going to pay attention? You do realise The Roast gets a run on ABC2 because The Comedy Channel decided to fund 150 episodes of it? It’s hardly the first time this has happened either: both Stupid Stupid Man and :30 Seconds appeared on the ABC after airing on pay TV. Sure, if you’re nobody – or crap – undercutting your rivals price-wise won’t make much difference. But if you don’t completely suck, crowdfunding could make just enough of a difference to put you on the air.
So colour us massively unsurprised that these two efforts – one aimed at the beating heart of inner-city self-righteousness, the other promising to make fun of all those politicians the internet gets so riled up about – met their targets with time to spare. They’re exactly the type of thing that gets crowd-funded – not because they promise to be all that funny, but because they appeal to people who have money.
Whether they’re the type of thing the rest of us want to actually watch remains to be seen.
Will Channel Ten Turn To Comedy To Restore Their Flagging Fortunes?
Well, probably not. But first, the flagging fortunes:
The host of Ten’s evening panel show The Project, Charlie Pickering, is stepping down and will finish up next month.
“The Project has been an incredible ride,” the 36-year-old said in a statement.
“As a stand-up comedian I have never planned to do one thing for five years, let alone five days a week. At the end of last year it was clear to me that I needed to find new challenges.
“Our show has been able to provide a voice to many in our community who go unnoticed. And of that I am immensely proud,” Pickering said.
Ten has confirmed that Pickering will not be replaced, and only Carrie Bickmore and comedian Peter Helliar will carry the show forward.
… for the next few months until the show is quietly put down, we’re guessing. But we’ve been wrong before.
As you’d expect from Michael Idato, there’s a bit more than the usual bitchiness going on in that article – seriously, what’s up with this bit:
When it began, in July, 2009, The 7pm Project was a patchwork of entertainment news, comedy and, inexplicably, a commercial star vehicle for the MTV presenter Ruby Rose.
Remember original panellist James Mathison? What, no hate for him despite his rapid demotion from on-air panellist to “entertainment reporter”? What is it with Sydney people hating Ruby Rose? News flash Sydney-based national media: the rest of Australia couldn’t give a shit.
Anyway, Idato is on the money with this:
His loss, coming so quickly after Hughes, will be deeply felt by the show.
Aahh, that’s right. Hughsie bailed on Ten at the end of last year in what felt like pretty much exactly what he said it was: a man taking a break because he was burnt out and wanted to focus on live performance. But with Pickering – not exactly a man known for his live work, despite regular cash-in appearances at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival – also heading for the door (presumably with a hearty cry of “without Hughsie this show is fucked”), perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at Ten’s wider situation.
Short version: they’re screwed.
Puberty Blues was one of Ten’s most anticipated series returns in 2014 but it has failed to live up to expectations.
It is one of a string of failures for Ten with So You Think You Can Dance, Secrets & Lies and The Biggest Loser: Challenge all battling to crack 400,000 viewers.
And suddenly what in better circumstances might have just been a natural turnover of staff burnt out after close to five years of nightly television suddenly looks more like people getting the hell away from an overstuffed crapsack that just fell off the back of the sewage truck. At the moment Ten has the stink of failure about it and pretty much everything they try is vanishing with nary a trace.
Sound familiar? Okay, probably not, considering we’re talking about 25-odd years ago. By the late 80s the never-all-that-successful Network Ten was struggling in the ratings pretty much across the board. In desperation, they turned to Ian McFadyen’s Media Arts company to create a one hour weekly comedy show – well, actually the desperation came when they put the end result (The Comedy Company, natch) on up against Nine’s ratings juggernaut 60 Minutes. Then in a shock twist it promptly hammered the much-vaunted news program in the ratings, swiftly pulling in a massive audience and becoming one of the foundations of the television comedy boom that ran well into the 90s.
So… could Ten try something like that again? Probably not: back in the 80s there was a thriving live comedy scene that television could plunder at will. These days if you’re even halfway competent you’re being snapped up to quickly burn out on panel shows or you’re heading overseas where funny people can actually find work being funny. The Comedy Company worked in part because it was a bunch of new faces (for television) who were really good (thanks to years of working off-screen); that’s not a combo that’s readily available now.
Considering we were outlining the reasons why we don’t think scripted comedy is coming back to the commercial networks any time soon barely a week ago, we’re hardly going to be saying “Ten totes needs to get a comedy show on the air, stat”. Which is a shame, because at this stage they could easily do worse.
Of course, knowing our luck if they did try a comedy it’d just be a beefed up version of the usual panel show crap – or worse, they’d re-resuscitate Good News Week. A decent comedy effort could revive their fortunes, we’re in no doubt of that. We just don’t think they have the guts – or the vision, or the ability to see beyond the usual suspects – to go all in and put on-air something funny and topical and engaged with society that people could get excited about.
You know, the exact opposite of The Project.
Plonk yourself on the couch and check out some branded comedy
How easy it is to get into an argument about the lack of sitcoms on commercial TV with one of Australia’s most respected TV writers… Meanwhile, the TV writer in question reports that Eleven will begin airing five-part web sitcom Plonk tonight.
Plonk began life as branded content funded by tourism body Destination NSW, and since its launch it’s been doing well on YouTube. Written by and featuring Nathan Earl and Josh Tyler, it stars Chris Taylor as Up-Himself-Chaser-Boy-Chris-Taylor as he and a miss-matched film crew travel around New South Wales making a wine show.
For branded content Plonk is relatively light-touch – there are cameos from wine makers, lots of wineries get a name check, and there are some gorgeously-inviting shots of tourist destinations – but the emphasis is on the comedy. The comedy itself is standard sitcom fare (cartoonish-characters, funny lines, a touch of slapstick) but with a Frontline feel (realistic shooting style and performances). It’s not super hilarious but is quite enjoyable.
One thing worth noting is the pace; with each episode lasting less than 15 minutes there’s no time for the sort of long pauses and moving bits that can cause 25-30 minute sitcoms to drag. And it’s interesting to ponder whether the decision to keep it pacey was to prevent notoriously fickle YouTubers from switching to a cat video. On broadcast TV you can kinda get away with a few slow and boring bits because viewers are less likely to switch off, but there’s no such luxury on YouTube. And that’s a good thing as far as we’re concerned because as a general rule comedy shouldn’t drag – even those gags which are funny because they drag get unfunny pretty quickly.
So, while we’re not exactly thrilled with the idea of sitcoms and other forms of comedy being funded purely to spruik a good or service, we think Plonk has quite a few good things going for it and we think you should check it out.
Knox Knox Knoxing on Heaven’s Door
Respected entertainment reporter – yes, there really are such things – David Knox wonders why we don’t make sitcoms in Australia. He wonders this a lot. He wondered it in November 2013:
Will anybody ever take the kind of risk necessary to achieve one, or are our writers simply not interested?
Then it turned out he’d already wondered it elsewhere a day earlier:
If it wasn’t for our public broadcasters we really wouldn’t see much in the way of local comedy on Free to Air. Commercial networks have given comedy a wide berth of late, preferring to shuffle the laughs into panel shows rather than scripted content. Comedy isn’t even a Logie category anymore.
He wondered it in March 2014:
Aside from the ABC, when was the last time you saw a locally-produced scripted comedy on Australian television?
I’m not talking panel shows or travel specials with comedians, but honest-to-goodness scripted jokes with actors?
He was even talking about it back in 2008:
if Tim Worner thinks comedy is on the rise then he must have heard a different joke.
2008 was the unfunniest year for comedy in ages. There was no Kath & Kim, The Chaser, Summer Heights High or Thank God You’re Here. While it’s true Seven has since snaffled the latter from TEN, what has it decided on the unfunny Out of the Question? And is This is Your Laugh due to resume production? What precisely is the immediate future for new Kath & Kim?
(if he thought 2008 was the unfunniest year for comedy in ages, he must have just loved 2009-2014)
Do we support his push? Of course – we love comedy around these parts. Do we also think it’s a case of wasting effort that could be better spent elsewhere? Well, uh… not that we’d say it to his face or anything, but… you know, his heart’s in the right place, but…
All, the hell with it: the sitcom is dead dead dead on commercial television and has been so in living memory. The last successful sitcom on commercial television was Kath & Kim, which Seven bought from the ABC when it was well past its use-by date. And before that? Do we really have to go back as far as Hey, Dad..!? Because let’s not forget, back in the day sitcoms like Hey, Dad..!, and Newlyweds, and Brass Monkeys, and All Together Now, were considered to be, how you say, “fucking shithouse”.
That’s the thing that really puzzles us here. The only good sitcom of the so-called “golden age” of Australian sitcoms was Mother & Son, and where was that aired? The ABC. Which still airs sitcoms to this day. Problem solved! Man, that was a short article. Where’d we park the car?
Oh right, Knox is talking about multicamera sitcoms – Friends, Seinfeld, that kind of thing. You know, the kind of sitcom the ABC doesn’t make. Even the US doesn’t make all that many of them any more, and they make dozens of sitcoms a year. The UK has moved away from that format too, though not entirely. Mrs Brown’s Boys, anyone? Is that the kind of show our commercial networks should be making?
Knox has forgotten more about television than we’ll ever know, so we’re only putting this stuff in to remind ourselves: Australian commercial networks don’t make sitcoms because it’s cheaper to make hour-long dramas with a bit of comedy stirred in (well, not cheaper but it doesn’t cost twice as much so they get more programming for less money). Dramas are also easier to sell overseas – most Australian comedy sales have been of formats, not finished shows. Good luck competing with American sitcoms anyway because while drama is universal, comedy is often extremely specific. Though wasn’t Hey, Dad..! a big hit in Germany? Must have been the dubbing.
Comedy has always been a cheap product on commercial television. That’s why it clings on there today in the form of panel shows and travelogues. But you simply can’t film a sitcom on the cheap here today – well, you could, but that would mean you’d be relying on the writing rather than the “all-star” cast and production design to get people watching. And as anyone who’s watched even a second of Australian drama over the last decade knows, commercial television does not make quality scripting a high priority.
It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be making a stink about something that’s been the case for the last twenty years like it’s suddenly become A Big Deal. After all, sitcoms on commercial television here have always been a): rare, and b): shit. Seriously, look at the list of classic scripted comedies he cites:
Mother and Son, Fast Forward, Kath and Kim, Frontline, The D Generation, The Paul Hogan Show, Summer Heights High, The Comedy Company, The Naked Vicar Show, The Mavis Bramston Show.
Aside from Summer Heights High – which was made by Chris Lilley, who’s still making shows for the ABC so listing him in an article about how networks aren’t supporting comedy is a little iffy (same goes for Frontline and The D Generation) – we’re pretty much all talking shows at least 20 years old that aren’t even sitcoms. The Mavis Bramston Show? Next he’ll be complaining that Australia doesn’t make enough shows in black & white. Which is frighteningly easy to imagine:
Aside from the ABC, when was the last time you saw a locally-produced black & white programme on Australian television?
I’m not talking late night old movies or repeats of US sitcoms that are forty years old, but honest-to-goodness Australian television shows filmed in the format Australians loved for thirty years – black & white?
Oh well, at least he’s out there trying. Sure, instead of trying to drum up more work for the usual unfunny suspects by pretending there’s a massive unmet demand for the kind of show you know Dave O’Neil would find a way to get hired on Knox could always agitate for better comedy, but… naaaah.
Long story short: sitcoms still get made in this country. In fact, we actually make a fair amount of them these days compared to the drought of a decade or so ago. So when Knox says:
Collectively, it’s an industry disgrace and it’s letting us all down.
We have to wonder what the holy heck he’s on about.
Now, making Hey, Dad..! in the first place – there’s your industry disgrace…