Lorin Clarke’s Would that be funny? Growing up with John Clarke is a book about growing up with John Clarke as your father. Let’s get the suspense over with: having Clarke as a dad seems to have been exactly as awesome as you’d expect. The portrait of him here is the kind of thing you’d think was too good to be true if it wasn’t exactly how he came across in pretty much everything he did in the public eye*.
Lorin herself is an author of no little renown, and so one of the many themes running through this book – again, to get the suspense over with, it’s great and you should purchase a copy immediately – is how growing up with a master storyteller helped guide her to her current career.
And why wouldn’t it? John Clarke made telling stories and being actively engaged in the world and all it’s silliness seem like the most magical thing there is. Clarke was a man who got authentically excited about floorboards and nails: you’d be a fool not to want to get in on that action.
Beyond Clarke himself, it’s a picture of a family, complete with in jokes and references you had to be there to get. Only you don’t have to have been there, as there are plenty of short chapters that are basically listicles running through things like “Expressions we stole” and “Things at which my parents are stratospherically bad at”.
There’s also plenty of anecdotes, excerpts from Lorin Clarke’s own Fitzroy Diaries series, the backstory behind jokes from Clarke & Dawe interviews, voicemail transcripts / poetry, and so on. It’s the best kind of grab-bag.
The family portrait thing goes both ways in time, as Lorin grows up, changes schools, reinvents herself, discovers the joy of writing, studies politics in Boston and has a family of her own. We also learn about John Clarke’s own, somewhat less happy childhood and youth (don’t worry, it all works out in the end). Lorin is at pains to point out that her father shied away from reductive explanations as far as what drove him to write and perform; a “sad clown” he was not.
We could go on. There’s a lot happening here – we haven’t even mentioned Lorin’s mother, a well-known academic who wrote a book about eroticism in art, or Lorin’s sister Lucia – and if you’re even remotely interested in writing, making television, the work habits of one of Australia and New Zealand’s greatest comedy talents, being thoroughly entertained or just cosy memoirs about family life then once again it’s time to say this is great and you should purchase a copy immediately.
Because you’re here, we’re going to assume your main interest in this book is John Clarke, writer and sometime performer. You’ll be pleased to learn this is a vivid and insightful look at a very funny man, one that somehow manages to make the most likable person on Australian television – okay, not a high bar to clear, but still – even more charming and funny.
And yes, for comedy nerds there’s loads of gold here. Peter Cook gave John Clarke the idea to do the Clarke & Dawe interviews on television! That’s reason enough to buy the book right there, and that’s just something we chose at random. Throw in his influences, dealing with the ABC, snippets of his unpublished writings, the way he priced the Fred Dagg album at half the usual price because he knew a lot of his fans were kids, and this is a well worthwhile deep dive into the work of one of this region’s comedy greats.
(also, this isn’t a book that starts at the start and works it’s way through to the finish. Chapters about John Clarke’s school days are still turning up towards the end; don’t think you can just find the single solitary section on comedy and put the rest aside)
More importantly, this provides a vivid sense of what John Clarke was like as a person. The man in these pages is chatty (an understatement), fond of poking fun, caring, loyal, interested in people, not someone who tolerated fools behind the wheel, a man who once almost mailed his address book (which, as you can imagine, was a book with a lot of private contact details) to Frankston by mistake and a person whose commitment to being casual and relaxed occasionally went a little too far.
And yes, in between the consistently evocative writing and the sharply observed family portraits – there’s at least three generations under the microscope here, with marriages ranging from acrimonious to deeply loving – there’s something of an origin story here for the John Clarke that entertained the antipodes for decades.
With a sense of humor shaped by friends and family (especially, and surprisingly, his parents-in-law), and often uncertain of his abilities early on but surrounded by support, Clarke life is presented here as (amongst many, many other things) a reminder that often it’s the people around an artist who bring forth the art.
Would that be Funny? is both adoring and authentic, the kind of clear-eyed, open-hearted writing that’s a privilege to read. Whether you’re a lifelong fan of John Clarke or couldn’t pick him out of a line up, this book is a delight.
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*well, maybe not the evil property developer he played in Crackerjack
ABC is the undisputed home of exciting, new, original Australian comedy, with millions of viewers flocking to ABC and ABC iview for a fix of home-grown laughs.
In exciting news, Season 5 of Utopia has catapulted to the top of the charts to become ABC iview’s #1 non-kids program this year, as viewers lap up the exploits of the Nation Building Authority’s crack team of bureaucrats, headed up by Tony Woodford (Rob Sitch).
Season 2 of Kitty Flanagan’s award-winning comedy Fisk, available exclusively on ABC iview, was ABC’s most-watched comedy in 2022, and in 2023 it remains one of the most popular shows on iview, as the probate lawyer in the brown suit, Helen Tudor-Fisk, continues to garner a legion of fans across the country.
While launching last week, the feel-good comedy Mother and Son, starring audience favourites Denise Scott and Matt Okine, is proving an early hit, picking up a new generation of fans and notching up a total audience of over 1.2 million people watching the first episode*.
ABC Head of Screen Content Jennifer Collins says “The ABC has a long and proud history of supporting Australian comedy and nurturing comedic talent both on screen and behind the scenes. We’re thrilled to see our audiences enjoying our first-class, diverse comedy offering.”
ABC Head of Comedy Todd Abbott says “It’s always great to see home-grown comedy kicking goals, and we’re super proud that laughs are leading the way in showing people the on-demand delights of ABC iview.”
From the hilarious wild times in Gold Diggers and the madcap comedy of Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café, to the beautifully executed comedy-drama In Limbo, ABC is the home of Australian comedy.
Let’s just take a moment to let that sink in. “ABC is the undisputed home of exciting, new, original Australian comedy”. New? Original? Exciting? Maybe not words we’d use to describe Utopia, a show now into its fifth season. Maybe they mean the reboot of Mother and Son? Referring to In Limbo as a comedy is definitely new.
We’re not going to go to town on this. Nit-picking gets dull fast – though it is interesting that the ABC Head of Content would rather refer to comedy in an official press release as “diverse” over “funny” – and after the last few years any kind of recognition that ABC audiences want to watch comedy is a good thing.
But if a line-up that we’d definitely call “mid” (two winners in Fisk and Comedy Cafe, one solid mainstay in Utopia, and two fizzles in Gold Diggers and In Limbo) can pull in “millions of viewers”, imagine how well they’d do with a line up that was legitimately crowd-pleasing?
It’s not a secret that audiences love local comedy. The only time in recent memory the ABC was able to field an evening’s entertainment that could seriously challenge the commercial networks – that’d be Wednesday nights, though the glory days there are well over a decade ago – it was based on comedy. Not news or current affairs, not sport, not “hard-hitting local drama”. Comedy.
And yet for a generation at least, the ABC has treated comedy like an annoying obligation. It’s a big steaming pile of vegetables they’ve had to eat before they can get to the part where they take home a bunch of awards for a grim drama nobody watched and a news expose nobody gives a shit about. They’re serious broadcasters: comedy is just that little bit beneath them.
Of course, the justification for all that boring crap is that the ABC is meant to be filling the gaps left by the commercial networks. Fun fact: the commercial networks (10 aside) aren’t making comedy, and nobody’s making sitcoms. Making comedy is what the ABC should be doing. A bunch of reboots and revivals and “beautifully executed comedy-dramas” is a dereliction of duty.
After all, they really seem to like it when comedy brings in the viewers.
This week WTFAQ made its debut on the ABC. Not that it felt anything like a debut, as it’s really just the latest version of the kind of lightweight infotainment series the ABC has been flogging since at least Hungry Beast. Every time it returns we tune in to see if this time it’s actually a comedy. Every time we come away disappointed.
In the same week – well, within a seven-day period – we also learnt that Mark Humphries and the backstage dancers that helped put together his satirical segments on 730 were finishing up. We say “finishing up” because in his carefully worded statement Humphries did not go into any detail whatsoever as to why he was finishing up.
After five years, tonight’s sketch will be our last at 7.30. Thank god for that, I hear some of you say. To everyone else, thank you for watching and for supporting both our work and my pivot to a beard. pic.twitter.com/EeugOqYFIK
The smart money is on budget cuts, mostly because it’s always budget cuts.
Thing is, the ABC’s budget is, to a large extent at least, something that is spent on the whim of management. This isn’t a case of “fuck, we have to keep Kyle Sandilands around, the advertisers love him and he brings in 99% of our income”. The ABC gets money from the government to do various ABC things, but as far as programming is concerned management can turn everything after the news into an all-snail watching channel – and who knows? Maybe they have. It’s not like anyone under 60 is watching.
But this means when “budget cuts” are thrown around as the reason why, oh, just for example, the ABC now no longer runs any satire at all-
-that’s right, it’s all gone in the bin in the last year or so. Sammy J? Gone. Mad as Hell? Gone. Mark Humphries? We’re going to assume you didn’t just skip directly to this paragraph. It’s almost as if ABC management really, really really didn’t want to run any comedy (we could stop right there really) that was making fun of the government, but they were too gutless to act while the LNP was in power. But now that Labor is sitting in the big chair and presumably the ABC audience don’t want their heroes being mocked? Fuck you satirical comedy.
Anyway, when the ABC says they’ve cut something due to budget cuts, what they mean is that they decided something else was more important because they’re the ones who decide where the budget is spent. It’s not some harsh judgment imposed on them by forces beyond their control; the federal government isn’t telling them they can only spend 5% of the budget on comedy (70% being reserved for “dramas about a murder in a sleepy small town where things are not what they seem”).
Yes, they can’t afford to be everything to everyone. But even if they had unlimited money, you know they’d be blaming “technical limitations” or “bandwidth constraints” to explain why they weren’t creating the kind of shows they didn’t want to touch.
So when you cast your gaze across the ABC line-up and see a grand total of zero sharp-witted news satires taking deadly aim at our lords and masters – or just whatever it was Mark Humphries was doing – but the return yet again of “let’s answer viewer questions with stunts!” for another six or so weeks, remember: this is how the ABC chooses to spend their limited budget.
They could be paying funny people who can see how the country is being run to make jokes about how we’re being screwed over in pretty much every direction you care to look. Instead, they’re paying people to wonder if tomato sauce is more hygienic in a cupboard or in a fridge.
Is the cost-of-living crisis the result of massive commercial monopolies our governments actively encourage because they’ve been captured whole by big business? Fuck knows, we’re too busy trying to find out if having your baby trapped under a car gives you super-strength.
Then again, if we really want answers maybe WTFAQ could tackle the question “why doesn’t the ABC have any satirical programs in 2023?”
Cameras roll on ABC’s sexy new comedy White Fever.
ABC and Screen Australia are delighted to announce that filming is underway in Melbourne on White Fever, the new Australian comedy from rising star Ra Chapman.
Jane (Ra Chapman) is a cocky Korean-Australian adoptee with a love of hairy white guys – the hairier and whiter the better. When her friends call her out for having “white fever”, she sets out on a journey to try and reprogram her libido but instead instigates the process of finding out who she really is.
From hens’ nights to country weddings, moon crystals, “gotcha” days and a boxing ring, it’s a K-Pop-infused, action-packed, wild ride filled with revelations, surprises and a large helping of Asian pop culture.
Creator, writer and star of White Fever Ra Chapman says “I’m so excited for audiences to meet Jane, and experience the unceremonious roller-coaster journey she goes on. I hope this fun and cheeky comedy not only makes you laugh but also makes you see yourself and the people you love, and lust after, in a totally new light!”
Starring alongside Ra is a terrific line-up of Australian comedic talent, including Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians, Joy Ride), Roz Hammond (Shaun Micallef’sMad as Hell, Bay of Fires), Greg Stone (Jack Irish, Miss Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries), Katie Robertson (Rosehaven, Five Bedrooms), Cassandra Sorrell (North Shore), Harvey Zielinski (Deadloch) and Jillian Nguyen (One Night, Barons).
ABC Head of Comedy Todd Abbott says “Everyone loves a romcom, but this one, from the phenomenal talent that is Ra Chapman, is so much more than just that. It’s sharp, smart, funny, fresh and plunges us deep into a unique world. Hearing this sensational cast read the scripts around the table made us laugh, cry and rethink so much of what we take for granted. I can’t wait to see it burst into life on screen and share it with audiences.”
CEO of Screen Australia Graeme Mason says “White Fever is a refreshing and authentic take on the everyday romcom. With its clever script, candid insights, exceptional cast and creative team — this bold and hilarious series provides a meaningful exploration of identity and relationships. Without a doubt, Ra Chapman and White Fever will strike a chord with Australian audiences, leaving them wanting more.”
Developed by Ra Chapman and Katherine Fry. Written by Ra Chapman, Michele Lee, Harvey Zielinski, Clare Atkins and directed by Aidee Walker, White Fever will film in and around Melbourne over the next five weeks and will air on ABC TV and ABC iview in 2024.
White Fever also appears to be partly based on ideas in creator/writer/star Ra Chapman’s 2022 play K-BOX, about a Korean-Australian adoptee. Reviewing a performance at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, The Guardian described K-BOX as flitting between “between rapid-fire humour and tense family drama”. The play later won the Patrick White Playwrights Award.
But whether the sort of humour typical of the theatre will translate to a TV comedy is another matter. David Williamson’s Dog’s Head Bay, once described as “the worst piece of television in the history of Australia”, suggests not.
Either way, White Fever seems to be giving off vague Colin From Accounts vibes. Sitting firmly in the recent Australian tradition of making shows that look like sitcoms but turn out to be mildly depressing dramas. Can it buck the trend and make us laugh a lot? We hope so.
The launch last week of the new podcast From The Hideout was a nice surprise. Featuring Tony Martin (The Late Show, Get This, Sizzletown), legendary Channel 9 voiceover man Pete Smith, and Djovan Caro (Lessons with Luis, The Backside of Television), From The Hideout is a loose chat between three men who share a similar set of interests.
But clocking in it at just 37 minutes, this isn’t one of those “three mates around a mic talking about their hobbies” podcasts, which rambles on and on. Smith, Martin, and Caro are experienced broadcasters and storytellers and know how to keep things interesting and succinct. And when they don’t, the show’s producers, Caro and Alex Amster employ a few judicious edits to break things up… Which allows you to enjoy a sting of the show’s chilled-out, jazz club-esque theme music, written by Mitch McTaggart (The Backside of Television).
It’s the kind of discipline and care and attention we wish more podcasters had. You don’t need to keep everything you recorded in. You really don’t. But if there are three people who know that very well, it’s Smith, Martin, and Caro. They may be from completely different generations but they’re all film and TV nerds, and they understand that editing is important.
All three also had boyhood ambitions to get into broadcasting, and in this first episode, they talk about how they each started out.
Back in the late 50s, Smith wanted to get into radio and television and shared this ambition with schoolfriend and fellow Channel 9 alumnus Philip Brady. This led to the pair kind of inventing the podcast as teenagers when they recorded themselves at home presenting a show called Brodie’s Hideout. Their method of distributing the show, there being no Apple Podcasts or Spotify at the time, involved them posting each episode to friends and broadcasting live via doorbell wire to neighbours.
Other formative experiences the trio discuss include a radio play produced as a school project by Martin, and Caro’s teenage attempts to remake the Matrix films using home video recording equipment.
If you’re in any way a film or TV nerd, like messing around with recording equipment or just enjoy a real-life story well told by funny people, give From The Hideout a go.
There’s a certain kind of cheap thrill you get when something you had low expectations for somehow manages to be even worse. Good news: being a hater sometimes pays off. And while nobody was expecting the Mother and Son reboot to be anything more than exactly what the words “Mother and Son reboot” promise, the first episode somehow managed to deliver so much less than that.
Just to be clear, it’s perfectly possible to imagine somebody coming away from this episode thinking “that wasn’t too bad”. They would be wrong, and you’ve just wasted five seconds imaging some pointless nightmare creature that never should have existed. But, just for the sake of balance, we’ll admit that Denise Scott fans were well served. Visually it looked like an inoffensive lightweight drama. If you like Matt Okine’s work, seek professional help.
For everyone else, this was a pointless insult at best and 27 minutes of absolutely nothing at worst. It was an attempt to bring a sitcom created at a time when comedy was 110% about being funny into an era where actually trying to make an audience laugh is little more than an optional extra. We came to see a mother and son go at each other hammer and tongs: what we got was two people who occasionally found themselves in the same room.
Maybe the words “executive produced by Matt Okine” should have been warning enough. Okine – who also stars, because Australia no longer has sitcom writers, only performers who think they can write – plays Arthur as his typical stunted manchild character. You might think that would work here. It does not.
It doesn’t work because… well, there are a lot of reasons really. But okay: let’s accept that Okine was always going to play Arthur, and that Okine’s well-established limitations as a writer and performer aren’t automatically fatal – basically, that there could be a good version of Mother and Son featuring Okine as Arthur. Then this this version of the show is still shithouse, because there’s no stakes.
The tone of the first episode makes it clear that if Arthur’s mum would get off his back, he’d happily live with her. There’s no sense that he’s trapped, nothing to suggest he even wants other options aside from an ex he half-heartedly tries to win back. This version of Arthur is just an aimless drifter with dreams of a successful website; he also has a roomate who just happens to be his mum.
Maggie is slightly more interesting, both as a character and because Scott is actually funny. But again, aside from a kitchen fire (that we don’t see), there’s not a lot here to suggest she really needs Arthur around. And without the central idea that we have two people stuck with each other – people who in many ways make each other worse but can’t survive without each other – there’s no comedy.
Oh sure, there’s a bit of banter. Maggie pulls a few stunts here and there. But without audiences bringing some preconceived idea of what “Mother and Son” is about to proceedings, this is just an oddly aimless lightweight drama. It’s a show about trying to put mum in a nursing home so the kids can sell the house before deciding “nah, we can make even more money if we wait until the guy next door dies”.
The only way this approach makes any sense is as an attempt to bring one of Australia’s best sitcoms into the era of stuff like… well, stuff that Matt Okine makes for starters. Inner city hangout shows where bland characters exchange “realistic” dialogue. The goal isn’t so much laughter as keeping you just engaged enough that you don’t change the channel. These aren’t shows you watch, they’re shows you have on in the background.
The original Mother and Son was made by people who knew that for the premise of the show to work, there had to be an edge to it. Desperation and need; they’re not always essential to comedy, but they don’t hurt either. The original often had people asking if Maggie had dementia, which was a little dark even then and today is the kind of area the ABC isn’t going anywhere near. Suffice to say, that’s not a question you’ll come away asking here.
Though you might have cause to wonder about your own mental health if you come back next week.
Gold Diggers is over, and its anti-heroines Gertrude and Marigold Brewer have got somewhat towards their goal of marrying rich and living the easy life. But was it worth telling us their story of trying to find wealthy husbands over eight episodes? Given that the show’s schtick of talking like it’s 2023 even though it’s 1853 was getting boring in episode one, maybe not.
The basic joke of Gold Diggers – and a major problem with the show was that there pretty much was only one basic joke – was that Gertie and Goldie speak like a couple of TikTokers who think they’re intelligent feminists but are actually pretty clueless. Once you get past that, it’s a low-stakes Netflix-esque drama with the occasional sight gag, odd character, or funny line. If you’re seeking big laughs, maybe catch up on Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café, which does high-concept sitcoms featuring big courtroom scenes way better, albeit with an emphasis on “anything can happen” rather than an attempt to comment on contemporary culture, as Gold Diggers kind of tries to.
Which brings us to why this show was set in the 1850s when the target is now, where social media influencers telling women to put all their energy into bagging rich husbands have supposedly been blowing up recently. There’s presumably a bit more to it than that the title, Gold Diggers, is quite a good pun for a show set during the Gold Rush, but we’re not entirely convinced. Is there anything in the show which was funnier because it was set in the 1850s? Or would setting it in the present day be too reminiscent of recent-ish ABC comedies which make similar commentary on social media influencers, like 2019’s Content.
Another issue is that the Brewer sisters spend way too long in a town which doesn’t have a pool of rich potential husbands. Apart from the one guy, who’s already married to an old frenemy of theirs from the big smoke. So, they must hope that either one of the miners will strike it rich or some cashed-up dude will roll into town. Which kind of doesn’t happen.
What does happen, romantically, to the sisters is the opposite of their original intent – they fall in love with non-rich people. This is a nice twist if you’re invested in the plot and find the whole marrying-for-money thing a bit sad or distasteful. But not great if you were hoping that their hooking up with rich folk would result in big laughs.
Overall, Gold Diggers failed as a comedy. The historical setting didn’t generate a lot of laughs, their gold-digging and romantic adventures didn’t generate a lot of laughs and making them both obnoxious social media influencer types didn’t generate a lot laughs. So, what was the point? And why on earth did it need to be eight episodes long?
A few people today have noticed something we picked up on yesterday: Channel Ten’s pulled the plug on tonight’s comedy line-up. No Thank God You’re Here, no The Inspired Unemployed. And why? The sudden realisation that Australian comedy is in a death spiral and they were only prolonging the agony? Worse: they don’t want it to interfere with the sport.
BUMPED
We’re talking, of course, of the big World Cup (is that right)… match? Between Australia and… England? Not the UK? Look, we barely give a fuck about sport at the best of times. When we’re told it’s our patriotic duty to watch a ball get kicked around? Open up a cell door because we’re turning traitor.
But we also can’t deny that the last game was a massive ratings smash. We didn’t think there were four million television sets left in the country, let alone four million free-to-air viewers. So it’s hardly surprising that the other commercial networks (Nine has also pulled tonight’s episode of The Block) are getting the hell out of its way. No point sending your best troops over the top directly into enemy machine gun fire and all that.
What is slightly interesting about this is that the ABC is standing firm. Good news for fans of Hard Quiz, Gruen and Gold Diggers! God knows they deserve some, what with their crap taste in television.
There’s a couple of possible reasons for this:
A): The ABC hate sport and Australia. Bloody typical.
B): The ABC want to give television audiences some real choice. It’d be nice to believe this, but having seen the rest of the ABC’s line-up across the year it doesn’t seem like “choice” is something they’re all that keen on delivering.
C): The ABC think it doesn’t really matter, because their main audience now is all on iView and will get caught up on tonight’s programming later if they’re too busy watching the Matildas live. And sure, this is definitely possible, though the idea of actually going out of your way to log onto iView to watch Hard Quiz is pretty depressing.
D): The ABC think it doesn’t really matter, because they know that their viewers ain’t going nowhere. In their minds the ABC audience is so firmly rusted-on that not only do they barely acknowledge the existence of commercial television, they don’t really care what they watch so long as that little ABC logo is in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
The reason why none of these possible reasons makes complete sense is because Wednesday night is meant to be the one night when the ABC really does compete with the commercial networks on their own terms. It’s comedy night! And while the days when the ABC would actually win the ratings thanks to a bunch of legitimately popular and crowd-pleasing programs are long gone, the stench of their blatant audience-chasing remains.
Pranks! They’re the lowest form of comedy and we all know it. They’re the kind of thing your unfunny mate tries to get you to watch during half time at the footy, and you’ve only got yourself to blame because what are you doing at the footy in the first place. But we’ve laughed at fart jokes before: maybe The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical Jokers) won’t be a prank played on us?
We won’t leave you in suspense: the first episode wasn’t shit. It wasn’t classic comedy either, but you know… pranks. The secret sauce here is that the pranks were mostly being played on each other, a la Hamish & Andy when they were actually funny. Mates winding each other up = funny, The Chaser running up behind a politician waving a big prop = not so much. Sorted.
It’s a bit of a weird one to be airing in prime time on Australian television in 2023, in that it’s just a bunch of prank stuff that you’ll probably have forgotten before the end credits. Unless of course you’re the kind of person who hangs around the school yard / office kitchen asking people if they saw this amazing show you watched last night and if they’re silly enough to say no you then proceed to re-enact it (badly) for them. Isn’t this kind of thing why we invented the internet? So we could phase these people out of our lives?
(of course, the internet – mostly Instagram and TikTok – is where The Inspired Unemployed come from. Gotta get the kids back into the habit of watching commercial television somehow)
With four cast members, and with a format that requires each one of them to go through each prank scenario, decent ideas are a must. Spending eight minutes on a dud is the last thing you want. Fortunately, episode one featured a couple of decent comedy set-ups that were flexible enough to provide some variety in how things went. Strong basics: tick.
The four guys are just generic guys, with no real on-air personalities beyond “top blokes”. At this stage there’s no strong “oh shit, the blonde one hates this kind of stuff” side to things. On the other hand, nobody seems like a bastard either: they’re just mates trying to throw each other under a bus. So the character side of things… let’s say neutral for now.
As far as the actual pranks go, as you’d expect we’re talking hit and miss – but with more hits than misses. At worst they’re just kind of there (the balloon blowing-up one) or too over-the-top to be plausible to the regular people present (the “anal gazing” bit). But when they get a good thing going, they’re usually able to build on it to create a decent run of laughs (the phone break-up bit).
This kind of series is a bit hard to judge because while it’s good at what it’s trying to do, what it’s trying to do is be extremely disposable television. Ten is currently going all-in with local comedy – they’re currently showing four Australian comedy series a week, which no network has managed in a very long time (even the ABC’s Wednesday line-up usually tops out at three). While none of them are aiming all that high – it’s all panel shows, quiz shows, and prank shows – they’re all watchable at the very least. Which isn’t something that can be said about all current Australian comedy.
It’ll be interesting to see where (Impractical) Jokers goes from here, as episode one was almost entirely about the guys messing with each other – until the final “punishment” bit, where a wedding had to put up with a mildly offensive speech. It’s a lot harder to get successful laughs out of playing pranks on the unsuspecting public, mostly because 99 times out of a 100 there’s nowhere to go – you do the prank, they react, it’s over.
Remember when Kinne used to go out on the street and do stupid stuff trying to get passers-by to react? There’s a reason why your answer was “nope”.
