By now we’ve all heard the news about even more cuts at the ABC. Didn’t we vote in a Labor government to stop this happening?
ABC has announced departmental restructures of its new Content division, spanning Scripted, Entertainment, Factual, Indigenous, Arts and Childrens across television, radio and online from July 1st.
The Content division is headed by recently-appointed Chief Content Officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, who sits separately from the News division headed by Justin Stevens.
As part of the digital transformation changes, a number of ABC executives in commissioning and production will be made redundant. Up to 120 jobs are expected to go across the broadcaster today, including in News.
Of course, “meeting changing audiences and the reality of rising costs” actually means “a great excuse for management to do whatever the fuck they like while claiming they were forced into it”. Sucks to be Andrew Probyn right now, guess a decade spent getting onside with the LNP and all they stand for was for naught.
What we’re interested in a fuckload more than writing up yet another Vale for The Weekly because that show is shit on a molecular level is how all these changes will affect the ABC’s comedy output. Well, that and getting big laughs out of lines like these:
“Entertainment, led as a separate department by Nick Hayden, will continue to serve our broad audience, delivering hits such as The Weekly, Gruen and Hard Quiz and remains a critical audience driver to the ABC.
But why stop there with the hits from the Entertainment department? What about Win the Week? No love for Question Everything? Tomorrow Tonight was a series that got two seasons! We’re already at 50% duds and that’s just off the top of our heads.
More importantly, who exactly is being driven – rather than being parked there already displaying their aged pension stickers – to the ABC to watch these turds? Gruen is almost old enough to vote; Hard Quiz is a quiz show which has succeeded largely because the ABC – despite usually doing well out of quiz shows for decades – decided not to do any quiz shows for a few years because who needs viewers when you have (goes through Rolodex for 2012)… Marieke Hardy?
And then there’s The Weekly. Let’s not get bogged down here – we still have to write that Vale eventually – but for those looking for a very specific example of why the ABC is a pale imitation of its former glory, look no further. Once, the ABC aired actual satire: Shaun Micallef, John Clarke and Brian Dawe, those decent second season episodes of The Hollowmen, very tiny snippets of The Glasshouse, and on and on – not all of it was any good (hello BackBurner) but it was there, it had a point of view, and it was trying.
The Weekly isn’t even the ghostly remains of a decent satirical program. It’s a news recap delivered in an annoying voice where having the host pull an incredulous face every 90 seconds counts as comedy. Every single joke on The Weekly is the laziest possible joke they could make, every single interview is a pointless puff piece, every single guest is funnier literally everywhere else, and everything else about the show is somehow even worse.
It’s a disgrace, only not in the fun “Ban this Sick Filth” way. Either it goes, or… well, there’s not really anything else left to threaten audiences with, is there?
Apart from axing management of course, but we’ve already established the ABC isn’t about giving viewers what they want.
Once again we return to what seems to be increasingly familiar territory: new Australian series that you’d think would be comedies, but are not. And not in the “because they’re not funny, geddit?” sense either. The Betoota Advocate Presents is a perfectly well made and successful program that just… isn’t really trying to be all that funny.
Hosted by those two guys who’re the public face of the Betoota media empire – they even make a joke about peddling merch – with new episodes weekly on Paramount+, episode one of their big step into the world of television is basically just a snarky documentary looking at the rise and fall of the Hillsong Church. Facts? Loads of them. Jokes? Well… maybe a couple here and there.
They’ve clearly put in the effort to make a decent documentary. There’s plenty of interviews and archival footage, animated inserts to fill in the gaps (they’re often smirk-worthy) and a script that covers all the bases in an informative and occasionally quippy fashion. It’s just not a comedy program – it’s a recap.
Which is a little surprising. Their website is largely comedy-focused (at least, when it’s not secretly advertising stuff). Australia hasn’t had a shortage of comedy takes on true stories and issues over the years either – even that version of Drunk History 10 tried wasn’t all bad. Couldn’t they call up John Safran for some tips? Have we all forgotten True Story with Hamish & Andy?
We weren’t expecting the second coming of Brass Eye or anything, but we did hold out hope that this would contain more comedy than just a few snarky comments here and there and a loose attitude that’s happy to play up the quirky side of the topic.
Again, and clearly we can’t say this often enough because this is still a show worth checking out if you’re interested in the subject matter, this is a perfectly decent slice of documentary programming. Even better, there’s just enough attitude to make it more than just a retrospective news report that goes on a little too long. It’s just not a comedy.
At a guess, we’d assume that the Betoota crew realised that four solidly funny mockumentary takes on big issues was more work than they wanted to put in (or required more talent than they had on hand). Comedy, let’s not forget, is hard work: recapping the recent past in an entertaining way is a lower bar to clear.
Also, the final episode of The Betoota Advocate Presents – there’ll be four in all – is supposedly about the Fine Cotton affair. Those interested in some kind of comedy compare & contrast might want to revisit this beforehand:
Ok, so Utopia is back for a record-breaking (not really – ed) fifth season. It’s been almost a decade since season one first aired – surely after a tumultuous decade in politics this particular satire has morphed into something all but unrecognisable?
Yeah, nah, it’s business as usual once again. You can’t really fault Working Dog for having an “if it ain’t broke” attitude to Utopia – it’s a well-oiled comedy machine, and they’ve said elsewhere that once they realised they could say everything they wanted to say with the format, the urge to move onto something new fizzled out. But do they still have anything worth saying on the subject of infrastructure planning?
That depends: did they ever? Utopia is a window back in time to a period where the so-called smart thinking was that both sides of politics were basically the same – self-promoters and media obsessives who had no ideological goals beyond clinging to power. Let’s think back over the last five years or so: does that really seem like an accurate description of the halls of power to you?
All the political schemes in Utopia are lightweight comedy boondoggles. At worst, there’s some generic pork barrelling going on; nobody’s taking aim at Robodebt here. It’s political satire for people who see themselves as being above politics, people who complain about where “their tax dollars are going” because the idea that poor and disadvantaged people might possibly need help is fine so long as it doesn’t stop the government from funneling cash into private schools and negative gearing.
Fortunately, going by the first episode back the big appeal this season is going to be watching Working Dog take on pressing issues like “what’s the deal with these new refrigerators?” and “why can’t I make jokes around the office like I used to?”. Both valid questions for the over-60s, and it’s not like the ABC audience is going to snap back “Ok boomer”.
(imagine a series identical to Utopia, but from the perspective of a): Jim and Rhonda, the game-playing go-getters just trying to get the good news out there, or b): any one of the constantly perplexed assistants and offsiders, lumbered with a weirdly intransigent boss who Just Doesn’t Get It)
But the main plot of week one – what’s the deal with these never ending roadworks – doesn’t seem to serve up the kind of pithy conclusion we used to see with Utopia. The comedy used to come from Rob Sitch’s Tony pointing out that what seems to be a flaw in the system is actually a feature. There’s always someone who profits from things being how they are, and they’re usually hard at work to keep it that way. (you’re talking about Working Dog, right? – ed)
The point of Tony’s quest this episode was more to underline the way that spin has soaked down to the roots of any big government activity or project. Everyone he met recited the same talking points and then going to the media only forced the organisation to double down on those talking points. Being one big circle – or ring road, if you like – was the point; it just wasn’t quite as satisfying as that classic scene where Tony pointed out to a bunch of defense chiefs that the whole point of our defense policy is to defend ourselves from our biggest trading partner.
Hey, they can’t all be winners. Having a reliable, competent, well-made sitcom back on our screens is cause for celebration even if things have been a little repetitious since at least season three. If there’s anything to complain about, it’s that Working Dog have proven themselves to be masters of reinvention over the decades. Having them stick with Utopia for so long just makes us sad thinking about the two or three other brilliant sitcoms we might have had from them instead.
There was only ever one of two ways Deadloch could go. One way had us excited; the other… yeah, not so much. So what exactly have Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan served up with their big budget Amazon murder mystery series? And why aren’t we super excited about what’s to come?
Behind door number one, Deadloch was going to be a all-in parody of prestige noir, that over-exposed genre that’s increasingly come to dominate television around the world. You know what we mean: there’s a murder in a very scenic small town (cold location preferable), turns out it’s just the tip of the mysterious iceberg, our heroic detective and a sidekick (so they have someone to talk to) investigate while also struggling with personal issues and meanwhile the body count keeps rising.
Behind door number two, Deadloch was going to be… well, basically just another prestige noir mystery, only with comedy characters. To be fair, Amazon isn’t going to sink big money into eight hour-long episodes that were taking the piss out of a genre that dominates drama the world over, whatever the Kates’ comedy credentials. And so it has proven to be.
There are a few fresh angles. For one, it’s extremely LGBTIQ+. One detective is gay, the other is basically an ocker caricature but a woman – we’re talking Ted Bullpit, lady cop, so strap yourselves in. Pretty much the only male character who isn’t a fuckwit is played by Tom Ballard, so at a guess he’s gay too. Meanwhile, all the murder victims are (extremely) straight white males, as in one’s a rootrat footy coach, another’s his dipshit brother and a third (possible) victim is named Rod Dixon, though this (them being male, not the ex-Mayor being named Rod) does prove essential to the plot.
Considering the sexism and barely concealed misogyny that often runs through a genre based largely on young women being found dead and then “avenged” by middle aged men, there’s definitely room for a new take here.
Meanwhile, the welcome to country at the start of the local cultural festival turns out to be an acknowledgement of country, as the speaker reminds everyone that the entire town of Deadloch isn’t exactly “welcome” – after all, a small town cultural festival is no world’s oldest culture. Again, it’s good to see a local production that’s taking place (culturally at least) in 21st century Australia.
And when it’s trying to be a straight (sorry) murder mystery it often works fairly well. The small Tasmanian town where it’s set looks good and there’s plenty of subplots: the first body is found right before a big cultural festival so of course the Mayor wants it brushed over, there’s a possible drug link and loads of dark secrets, after the first episode the media starts shit-stirring and the town itself is clearly divided between the stale pale male old guard and the lesbian choir singing “I Touch Myself”. There’s a solid lead in senior sergeant Dulcie Collins (Kate Box), and not every single character is a complete fuckwit.
That last one’s important to stress because it turns out that quite a few characters are fuckwits. Which is a bit of a problem. Consider an episode of Wallander, only every second character Wallander meets is played by Hale & Pace bunging on an act: welcome to Deadloch.
While in theory it’s certainly possible to imagine a wide range of comedy characters living in a small town – and Deadloch does feature one sleazy mansplaining type and one overeager newbie, so there is some variety – the Kates seem to have decided to narrow much of the population of Deadloch down to “painful cartoon Aussie cliche”.
When blow-in detective Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) and pretty much everyone directly connected to the first murder victim has seemingly staggered out of a Barry McKenzie revival, you’d better like your comedy broader than a bush pig’s behind or something.
Redcliffe is in fact so much of an annoying hammy abrasive cliche that you’d be forgiven for thinking she’s secretly a brilliant detective bunging on an act to get those around her to let down their guard. You’d be wrong.
In contrast, Collins is super straight-laced and serious. Obviously what we have here is the beginning of a beautiful double act where they start out at odds with each other but eventually each wears the other down and we get a true meeting of the minds. That’s great for solving a string of murders; comedy wise we’re not exactly dealing with French & Saunders here.
The big problem is that tonally Deadloch is way all over the place. The soundtrack is playing it serious and the visuals are straight out of the prestige playbook, but it also has a scene where the local footy team kick footies at the hearse carrying their dead coach as a salute. Some characters seem like plausible people (that’d be the local teens); most of the rest are stock comedy figures of the “dickhead” variety (some bogan, some hippie). It’s harsh, but someone’s got to say it: Rosehaven featured more nuanced characters.
To get technical for a moment, the reason why prestige noir mysteries don’t usually take place in a town full of broad comedy stereotypes is that those stereotypes distract from the mystery – you know, the thing that is the point of a prestige noir mystery. The supporting characters in these shows are there almost entirely to impart information: anything beyond the barest characterisation – which is also there to impart information (“he seems shifty, bet he’s lying”) – is slowing things down. So having the comedy come from these dipshits messes with the mystery side of things; stop fucking around and do your job.
Looked at another way, turns out there’s a good reason why almost every single long running murder mystery franchise features a quirky, memorable lead surround by bland nobodies. Deadloch instead has a bland nobody as its lead, which may seem harsh when she’s the best thing in the series but when your main character trait is “going by the book” that’s the hand you’ve been dealt.
At the end of the day – or just at the end of the first three episodes; maybe by episode five everyone’ll be piling out of clown cars or something – Deadloch isn’t really a comedy. It’s a serious murder mystery that has comedy characters scattered throughout. If you’re looking for laughs first and foremost, this isn’t what you’re looking for.
And not just because a lot of the time it’s just not that funny.
Prime Video Announces Comedy Series The Office Is Headed Down Under for a New, Franchise-First, Female-led Australian Original
Welcome to the funny, awkward, and occasionally meaningful The Office Australia
SYDNEY—May, 31 2023—First there was the UK’s David Brent, then came the U.S.’ Michael Scott. Now, middle management has a new archetype in Aussie Hannah Howard. Prime Video, BBC Studios Australia and New Zealand, and Bunya Entertainment today announcedThe Office Australia, a new Australian comedy series from the global hit juggernaut franchise The Office, with its first-ever female lead in the iconic role, comedian and actor Felicity Ward(Wakefield, The Inbetweeners 2). The Office Australia will exclusively launch in 2024 on Prime Video globally (excluding the U.S.) in more than 240 countries and territories and will be available in the Prime membership. Prime members across the globe enjoy savings, convenience, and entertainment, all in a single membership.
In The Office Australia, Hannah Howard is the managing director of packaging company Flinley Craddick.When she gets news from Head Office that they will be shutting down her branch and making everyone work from home, she goes into survival mode, making promises she can’t keep in order to keep her “work family” together. The staff of Flinley Craddick indulge her and must endure Hannah’s outlandish plots as they work toward the impossible targets that have been set for them.
It was over 20 years ago that the world was introduced to the wonderfully bleak mockumentary world of The Office, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. While many aspects of the workplace have changed since then, especially post 2020, the physical office is a timeless precinct for comedy, and one that will never tire an audience as long as the characters are authentic, familiar, faced with relatable dilemmas, and, most importantly, entertaining and hilarious. This universal appeal has seen the BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning cult comedy remade for audiences around the world, including France, Canada, Chile, Israel, India, the Middle East, and Poland, where a third series has just been announced. This Australian version will be its 13th adaptation.
Ricky Gervais, co-creator, co-writer, and star of The Office, said, “I’m very excited about Australia remaking my little show from the turn of the century. Office politics have changed a bit in 20 years, so can’t wait to see how they navigate a modern-day David Brent.”
Production on the eight-part Australian Amazon Original series will commence in Sydney, Australia in June, with filming to take place over eight weeks. In addition to Felicity Ward’s Hannah Howard, The Office Australia stars Edith Poor (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Power of the Dog),Steen Raskopoulos (The Duchess, Feel Good), Shari Sebbens (The Sapphires, Thor: Love and Thunder),Josh Thomson (How to Please a Woman, Young Rock), Jonny Brugh (Thor: Love and Thunder, What We Do in the Shadows), Pallavi Sharda (The Twelve),Susan Ling Young (Reckoning, Hungry Ghosts), Raj Labade, Lucy Schmit, and Firass Dirani (Underbelly,House Husbands).
The OfficeAustralia continues Prime Video’s investment in distinctive and bold local comedy series production, following the recent launch ofClass of ’07 and with Deadloch launching on Prime Video this Friday, June 2.
“We are thrilled to be bringing one of the biggest comedy franchises ever made to Prime Video customers in Australia and around the world,” said Sarah Christie, senior development executive Prime Video Australia. “It is an honour to continue the international comedy legacy of The Officelocally while introducing new, quintessentially Australian characters. We can’t wait for audiences to meet Hannah Howard, the first female boss The Office format has explored.”
“The Office has connected with audiences around the world because everyone recognises their own David Brent, and now it’s Australia’s turn,” said Kylie Washington, general manager and creative director, production, BBC Studios ANZ. “We figured the world is ready for a lovable, flawed, lady boss, ruling over her packaging empire in The Office Australia. This is the first scripted project from BBC Studios ANZ, and I’m excited to partner with Bunya Entertainment and Prime Video to reimagine such an iconic show with some very Aussie characters.”
Sophia Zachariou, producer and co-managing director, Bunya Entertainment, said, “To me, Wernham Hogg’s David Brent was a leading light in comedy. The Office UK made the mockumentary form available to a wide audience, and that was its sheer brilliance. I can only hope that global audiences find our Aussie take on The Office as funny, self-deprecating, and believable as those that have gone before it.”
The Office Australia is co-produced by BBC Studios ANZ, Bunya Entertainment, and Amazon Studios, and is based on a BBC Studios format. The Office Australia is executive produced by Julie De Fina(Aftertaste), Jackie van Beek (The Breaker Upperers, What We Do in the Shadows, Wellington Paranormal), and Kylie Washington, with lead producers Sophia Zachariou (The Moth Effect, The Chaser’s War on Everything, Gruen, The Checkout), Linda Micsko (The Letdown, Laid), and Greer Simpkin (Mystery Road, In Limbo). Van Beek serves as lead set-up director with De Fina as head writer.Christiaan Van Vuuren(Bondi Hipsters, A Sunburnt Christmas, Dom and Adrian) and Jesse Griffin(Educators) will also direct on the series.
Well, that’s yet another giant leap forward for Australian comedy. Can a remake of Mind Your Language Down Under be far away?
The web series Monologue shows what happens behind the scenes in the fictional world of Monologue, “Australia’s sixth most influential pop-culture publication”. And in the wake of the recent collapses of Vice and Buzzfeed, on which Monologue is partly based, it feels extremely topical. But is it funny?
In theory, it should be. The young, hip team in the Monologue office lurch from crisis to crisis, desperate to get clicks on their latest stories, whilst editor and co-owner Monique (Mad As Hell’s Emily Taheny) talks up Monologue as a publication that “empowers women”. How a predictable mix of clickbait stories about Chris Hemsworth’s body, romance, and fashion is supposed to empower women is not explained.
Monique has all the characteristics of your worst-ever bosses rolled into one: part headless chicken, part narcissistic bully. Her mortal enemy is Monologue’s co-owner Max (Utopia’s Mike Mcleish), the guy in charge of the finances, who doesn’t care what the publication endorses or whether all the stories are written by bots, as long as the money keeps rolling in.
This should make for an excellent comic rivalry between these two characters, except it doesn’t really. The bot episode, in which Monologue’s writers compete with a bot to write the most-clicked-on articles, has few laughs. Although the bot comes up with the headline The World’s Sexiest North Korean Beaches, which is pretty funny.
Part of the problem is that the action in Monologue moves very fast. Almost too fast to keep up with. It’s like the creators actually wanted to make longer episodes (the runtime for each episode is about eight minutes) and couldn’t work out how to truncate the plot. That then leads to a secondary problem, which is apart from Monique and Max, it’s hard to get a grip on who the rest of the characters are.
All we really have time to learn, even after six episodes, is that editor Lilly (Hot Department: Dark Web’s Honor Wolff) is anxious, assistant BB (All My Friends Are Racist’s Davey Thompson) is gay, writer Imogen (Alice Foulcher) is a feminist, and graphic designer Clark (Wednesday Night Fever’s Robin Goldsworthy) is a bit of an idiot.
As for the action, most of that is aiming to be satirical. There are episodes where Monique is, variously, obsessed with making content for Monologue’s TikTok account and launching a podcast, without really knowing what either of them is.
There are also episodes which echo real events. Remember when Richard Wilkins reported that Jeff Goldblum had died? Monologue has an episode where Clark publishes a story saying Dan Aykroyd is dead, then has a hard time making it stand up. There’s also an episode which harks back to when Christopher Pyne and Greg Hunt liked porn tweets. The Monologue team discovers that a politician who campaigns on conservative family values has liked a tweet posted by @SploogeTittie247. Then Monique has a Twitter crisis of her own, which exposes her as the hypocrite she is.
In some ways, Monologue is like a modern-day Frontline, with its digs at media hypocrisy. But unlike Frontline, it doesn’t have fleshed-out characters, deft plotting, and good belly laughs. It’s also one of those shows that thinks that satire is just recreating something real that happened. It isn’t.
The only stand-out of this series is Emily Taheny, who’s great as Monique. But Monique and the other characters need room to breathe. The kind of room you only get in half an hour.
In Limbo is the ABC’s latest dramedy, and in classic dramedy fashion it’s about a topic so hilarious you don’t even need to write jokes to get laughs: a husband and father kills himself and nobody knows why. Comedy gold!
To be fair (why? – ed), that isn’t really the comedy part. Oh no, the comedy part is that the dead guy is still hanging around as a ghost and only his best mate can see (and hear) him. This is a chestnut so old it’s grown into a tree and the roots are getting into the plumbing so the whole thing’ll have to be taken out. But hey, cliches are cliches for a reason.
In Limbo begins with Charlie (Ryan Coor) being a bit of a sad sack, despite the wise-cracking presence of his best mate Nate (Bob Morely). What could possibly have put him in such a sombre mood? Oh wait, he’s going to a funeral – and it’s Nate’s funeral! Whuuuuuuuuuut.
Seriously, it’s always a bit odd watching a series where the opening scene or scenes build to a big reveal that all the promotional material gave away the first chance it could. Obviously some people are going to tune in knowing absolutely nothing (and In Limbo doesn’t drag it out either), but it does set up a weird dissonance between what we know and what the series assumes we know.
Anyway, Charlie is a bit of a gloomy gus even before that, as we flashback to ten days ago when Nate still had a body and Charlie didn’t have anybody thanks to a now-distant bad divorce he’s not even remotely over. Nate and his wife Freya (Emma Harvie) have set him up on a date, it all goes well, he returns to Nate’s place to spread the good news and something seems to be jammed up against the front door. Uh oh.
Way, way too often in this country we get dramedies where it feels like the film makers wanted to tackle a “tough” subject (suicide, grief, depression, and so on) but realised that unless they figured out a way to make it entertaining nobody would actually watch their creation. In Limbo isn’t quite that bad, largely because Nate is an authentically funny and likable presence. But you’re not going to be splitting your sides either.
There’s a tendency amongst local critics to praise series simply because they’re trying to be both dramatic and funny:
Yet, as with the opening sequence, this is deceptive, because while In Limbo has the pace and tone of a sitcom, it can also pack a potent emotional punch. It’s a serious study wrapped in bright and shiny packaging.
We’d like to think what’s more important is whether a): they’re doing a good job of it, and b): is this a topic that really needs the whole “you’ll laugh, you’ll cry” approach – after all, what’s so bad about treating a serious subject seriously once in a while?
The idea with In Limbo is that beneath the wacky banter between the two male leads there lurks a world of pain. Charlie won’t face up to whatever it is that caused the end of his marriage: Nate killed himself for reasons unknown (the fact his ghost won’t explain points to the “ghost” merely being a projection of Charlie’s, but honestly who cares?). Not an automatically shit idea.
It’s in getting the balance right that the difficulty lurks. Often it’s like “this is the funny scene” followed by “this is the dramatic scene”, and when there’s a transition mid scene it’s signposted pretty heavily. Charlie is usually the sad one; Ryan is the upbeat one (except when he isn’t). It makes sense for the characters but in the context of the show tends to force their scenes into a dynamic that’d work better in a more straightforward comedy. Especially with a whole bunch of subplots about family and the funeral and Nate’s nutty “break on through to the other side (the afterlife)” schemes and Charlie’s burgeoning love life also on the go.
On the plus side of the ledger, Coor and Morely make for a strong double act. Each does well navigating the many demands of a script that requires them to go from zanky pranksters to devastated mourners and back again. There’s enough chemistry there to smooth over a lot of the potholes; if there’s a reason to keep watching, it’s them.
And yet, would this have been a better series if it had allowed them to focus on one side of things with only occasional glimpses of the other? Yeah, probably.
In Limbo‘s big problem is that it falls between two stools (so it’s… in limbo? – ed). A stronger focus on either side of the story would have made for a better series. A serious drama about grief and the constraints of modern masculinity with the occasional funny moment would have been more powerful; a comedy about a guy and his ghost mate with the occasional moment of insight into the pain they’re both feeling would have been funnier and more memorable.
The result is a series that’s… oh wait, we already did the “in limbo” gag.
We’re two episodes into series 11 of Have You Been Paying Attention? but is there anything left to say about why Have You Been Paying Attention? is still a great show?
On the surface, maybe not. Tom Gleisner’s still taking the piss out of Sam Pang, and Sam Pang’s still taking the piss out of Tom Gleisner. It’s still the case that in the second half of the show, there’s a special round that’s maybe a bit topical (last week it was Euro Revision, this week it was Identify These International Versions of Well Known Reality TV Formats). And in the end, someone, it doesn’t really matter who, answers the most questions correctly and wins the Perspex trophy.
On the other hand, Have You Been Paying Attention? is as funny as it’s ever been after 11 series and that’s pretty remarkable. Not only do few comedies on Australian television rack up 11 series but of those that do, almost none of them are as funny as when they started. So, what’s Have You Been Paying Attention?’s secret?
The first important element is the format: host asks panel questions about stuff in the news. Here the viewer can join in by answering the question or just watch the panel do it. Whether you’re after an interactive experience or you just want to laugh at the panel’s deliberately wrong answers – or both – you’re catered for.
The second important element is the team’s commitment to making every possible element of the show as funny and entertaining as possible. The host? He’s funny. The people answering the questions? They’re funny. The rounds of questions? They have a funny name and/or a funny introduction. The actual questions asked? Some of them are funny. The answers given to those questions? Most of them are funny too. But what if you care about the answer to the question? Well, don’t worry, they get to that quickly.
This brings us to the third important element: Have You Been Paying Attention? is fast. Not so fast that you can’t keep up, but pacey enough so that there’s little opportunity for the panellists to drag out their funny answers into, say, self-indulgent monologues. Imagine if Have You Been Paying Attention? had a slower pace. Imagine if it was more of a loose, rambling sort of show. Would it keep your attention? Possibly not. Sometimes this kind of thing can work – plenty of very good podcasts are in this style – but if you’re watching TV, this doesn’t necessarily work, and after a few minutes, you’ll probably switch over to something else.
Tone and style are important in comedy, and the tone and style of Have You Been Paying Attention? has been carefully crafted over the years, meaning that, for example, the team knows when and when not to be serious. Remember those audience members playing along at home? They get the real answer to the question fairly swiftly. Meanwhile, here’s a mid-segment ad for the show’s sponsor Mitsubishi, the kind of thing that would normally be a laugh-free zone… Except host Tom Gleisner has gate-crashed it wearing a floral bathing cap, because that’s funny and why wouldn’t you want to squeeze in even more funny moments?
Okay, this is going to be a tough one. How do we review an Australian sitcom that’s actually funny?
Yeah, sure, Fisk was pretty good too, but c’mon. Fisk didn’t have an episode where a crippling addiction to playing a drumming arcade game really badly was resolved by having someone who’d shrunk themselves down to child size secretly hiding inside the game. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t.
Meanwhile, Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe had a whole lot of weird stuff, and then some more weird stuff on top of that. Which is good! Aunty Donna are extremely good at just the right kind of weird stuff, in that even when things gets weird there’s still clearly a joke in there somewhere that isn’t just “this shit is weird, right?” Good weird shit: tick.
For example, while it wasn’t the best part of episode two – the fake trial one, which had an over-abundance of “best parts” and then threw a few more “best parts” in just for the hell of it – the subplot where Mark had to explain to various authority figures exactly what he was doing in a primary school playground was pretty funny, because it wasn’t played as being funny at all.
Tonal shifts are hardly a rare way to get laughs – for one, they’re a standard part of Aunty Donna’s other work – but it’s always nice to see a comedy standard done really, really well.
It’s been interesting how Aunty Donna have… let’s say “balanced” their traditional weird shit honed over a decade of online sketches and live performances with the demands of creating something the ABC would put to air on their main channel. They’ve thrown in everything and the kitchen sink, while still keeping it all in a very large box that casual viewers could get a grip on.
Sure, there’s been some elements that – if they get a second series – we might expect to see fine-tuned a little. Looked at one way, the supporting cast have been a little under-used; looked at another way, did The Goodies even have a supporting cast?
It did also feel a little like they made six episodes, took a good hard look at them, and then shuffled them into a screening order where the best episodes were at the start of the run. This is not a bad thing – it’s not like there were any episodes that came close to being bad, and you always want to grab people early – but it did mean the energy levels and inventiveness felt a little down towards the end.
So yeah, by the end it was only 95% better than every other scripted comedy on the ABC that isn’t Fisk. Bad news everybody, guess that Mother & Son reboot is going to be the sitcom that redefines Australian comedy for the post-Covid era.
Fingers crossed that also features a lengthy conspiracy theory on why Australian currency features a whale sucking on a fat one.
Hannah Gadsby’s Something Special, now on Netflix, is the feel-good follow-up to Nanette and Douglas. Where Nanette covered heavy topics like sexual assault, and Douglas was about Gadsby coming to terms with their autism, Something Special is lighter and more optimistic. Except this is Hannah Gadsby, so even with the joyful opening line “I got married!”, there’s going to be a twist.
In Something Special, Gadsby gradually reveals how they proposed to now-wife Jenney Shamash. And let’s just say it wasn’t the sort of proposal seemingly common in the cis-hetero world, or in romantic comedies.
Gadsby, we discover, doesn’t like romantic comedies. Something which proves a little awkward when they meet Richard Curtis, writer of such classics of the genre as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. Why, he asks, don’t they like romantic comedies? It’s the sound of the kissing, Gadsby replies. Which is funny, and true, yet not necessarily the sort of thought that a non-autistic person would have.
Gadsby’s autism, and how it makes it difficult for them to navigate the world, is a major theme of Something Special. When Jodie Foster gives Gadsby a birthday present, Gadsby responds in a way that they later realise is a bit rude. Similarly, playing Guess Who with Jenney turns out to be a nightmare, as Gadsby comprehends faces differently to neuro-normative people, and can’t understand what a smile is.
Making self-deprecating jokes about their bumblings through the world seems to contract Gadsby’s famous statement in Nanette about doing these kinds of jokes:
I have built a career out of self-deprecating humour and I don’t want to do that anymore. Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it come from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility, it’s humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak, and I simply will not do that anymore, not to myself or anybody who identifies with me. If that means that my comedy career is over, then, so be it.
Except, the act of doing another show after Nanette contradicted that too. And does it even matter?
The important thing is that Gadsby’s firmly in charge of the jokes they’re doing about themselves. Gadsby isn’t a fool or an idiot, they’re a person with autism doing their best in a world they find a bit strange – and they’re triumphing. Sometimes.
The denouement of Something Special, in which Gadsby acts in a loving but seemingly brutal way, results in the best possible outcome: marriage to Jenney. Equally special is Gadsby’s acknowledgement of how important, loving and needed Jenney is.
After Nanette, in which Gadsby painted a bleak picture of the world – especially bleak if you bought that they were quitting comedy – Something Special is a lovely breath of fresh air. And a reminder that autism isn’t a problem, or a curse, but something very special indeed.
