Australian Tumbleweeds
Let’s go, rambling
Back in March Mumbrella and other media reported that Andrew Denton was quietly stepping away from Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder (CJZ), the company which formed when Cordell Jigsaw merged with Denton’s Zapruder’s Other Films. Yesterday, finally, there was an official (and rather long) statement from CJZ on the matter:
Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder (CJZ) today announced the formal departure of Andrew Denton from the company. Cordell Jigsaw and Zapruder’s Other Films merged eighteen months ago bringing together two of Australia’s most eclectic and successful production companies.
After seeing the two companies successfully merge, Andrew has made a personal decision to move on from his television career and pursue other creative interests. He leaves CJZ with over a dozen shows on the production slate and an exciting range of content across most networks.
“When I started Zapruder’s Other Films 13 years ago, I never imagined I’d be leaving it as CJZ, Australia’s most active, locally-owned, independent production company,” said Denton.
…or that he’d be quoted as saying something that sounded like it’d been written by a media manager with a rod up their arse, presumably…
“In that spirit of delighted astonishment, I am selling my share of the company to Nick Murray and Michael Cordell and moving on to stir my creative juices outside of television, leaving behind something of which I am immensely proud.
“Having worked with Nick and Michael over the last year, and seen the two teams come together, I’m excited for the company’s future as a place for creative people to continue to flourish. The CJZ production slate will deliver some great television in coming years and they will always be the first port of call if television beckons again.”
That’s nice.
CJZ retains a first look deal with Andrew in the event he decides to move back into television.
Ah.
Michael Cordell described Denton as one of Australia’s great creative spirits. “We’re sad to see Andrew go but his DNA will always remain embedded in CJZ. The proof of that will be a roll-out of great shows that take risks, excite and make a difference.”
We wonder what they are…?
Nick Murray says: “Andrew assembled a great team at ZOF and they are a key part of the merged CJZ team. The goal with the merger was to create a company greater than the sum of its parts and that’s proved the case.”
[STIFFLES YAWN]
Since its establishment, Zapruder’s produced an enviable slate of original Australian developed and produced shows. Andrew reinvented TV interviewing with Enough Rope and Elders, helped Australia look at advertising and marketing in a new light with The Gruen Transfer/Planet, brought The Chaser to our screens with CNNNN and Election Chaser and mentored an enduring team of new talent with 3 series of Hungry Beast.
No mention of Randling, we note…
Says Denton: “The measures of success in our industry are ratings and awards and we have racked up our share of both. I take great pleasure from the fact that, every year of the last ten, Zapruders has supplied among the most-watched, locally made, programs on the ABC.
And Randling.
“My measure of success, however, is not something that can be as easily seen from the outside. To watch talented people grow under the Zapruder banner has been a reward that outstrips the more public ones.
Like being the face of Randling.
“In an industry that can be brutal, I consider it an achievement to have provided a nurturing environment for good people and ideas. It’s great to know that tradition continues at CJZ”
Plus crap ideas like Randling.
The 2012 merger with Cordell Jigsaw saw CJZ become the most active independent creator of original formats and content in Australia. Just last week the company announced the production of Wanted, a new prime-time format with the Ten Network. Shitsville Express will soon begin screening on ABC2 and the federal election incarnation of the Gruen franchise, Gruen Nation starts soon on ABC1.
Um, didn’t they say something about great shows that take risks, excite and make a difference earlier?
“It’s been a full-on 13 years,” said Andrew. “For the next little while at least, I am going to try my hand at being Australia’s most unlikely, least-laid-back, hippie.”
In case you didn’t pick up on this, Andrew Denton is kind of uptight.
“We’ve installed web cams throughout his house and will monitor his every move with interest,” says Cordell. “Maybe there’s even a show in it.”
This is a reference to the late 1990’s radio and TV competition House From Hell, a sort of forerunner of Big Brother, which Denton devised.
Murray just breathed a sigh of relief as the Denton imposed fatwah on Earl Grey tea rides into the sunset.
In joke?
Okay, snark aside, Andrew Denton has been a significant figure in Australian comedy and television, and this announcement suggests that he’s moving in to a sort of retirement. Most likely he’ll join the likes of Ita Buttrose and pop up from time to time, writing articles or appearing on things or dabbling in this ‘n’ that. At 53 he’s hardly an old man, and if he wants to make a come-back he will. What we probably won’t get is any more Denton-led TV projects, which given his recent history is fine by us.
The utter failure of Randling to do anything other than fill up a lot of airtime must surely have played a part in this decision. Denton’s made a lot of bland television before, but nothing that’s miss-fired as spectacularly as that. Say what you like about Enough Rope or Gruen, but they did what they needed to do: rate.
What will be missed is Denton’s proclivity to nurture future stars. He gave The Chaser and lots of others a leg-up, and even made three series of a show which gave people with potential a chance (Hungry Beast). That kind of thing is very rare in television, and few people in a position to get new talent on air seem interested in sticking their neck out to do so.
Overall, though, it’s hard to move away from the view that for all the fawning devotion Denton got from the industry, and anyone else who wanted to look cool, he’s a person whose success was as much built on hype as it was on making good shows. Legendary series like Blah Blah Blah and The Money or the Gun are hard to assess favourably with modern eyes as they were so much of their moment. And shows like David Tench Tonight were so unsuccessful it’s hard to believe they came from the same person.
What we’ll miss about Denton is that he at least came up in a time when TV would take risks, real risks, and thus he has a spirit of genuine risk-taking about him. What’s sad is that in his vale media release CJZ talks a lot about how it will keep taking risks, but in a way that suggests that the riskiest thing they plan to do is claim they’ll take some risks. The one thing you can say about Andrew Denton is that if he says he’ll take a risk, he probably will.
Look, It’s A Comedy Series Claiming To Be Topical Yet Its Title References A Movie Made in 1977
Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – we feel a twinge of sympathy for those ‘real’ journalists who have to cover the world (okay, small planetoid) of Australian television comedy. Because when the best you can do for an opener to your story is this, you know you’ve been given a tough row to hoe:
No politician is safe from comedian Paul McCarthy, who has sharpened up his Tony Abbott impersonation for the ABC’s new satirical comedy show Wednesday Night Fever.
Personally, we would have gone with this as being more representative of the required tone:
Darkness falls across the land / The midnight hour is close at hand / Creatures crawl in search of blood / To terrorize y’all’s neighbourhood / And whosoever shall be found / Without the soul for getting down / Must stand and face the hounds of hell / And rot inside a corpse’s shell.
Because seriously, much as we don’t like to judge without seeing, this does not look promising. Oh sure, this sounds fine:
Wednesday Night Fever combines political impersonations, satirical characters and musical comedy, based on the week’s political and cultural events, both nationally and internationally.The half-hour program is filmed before a live studio audience and is hosted by Sammy J.
But this does not:
”This show is delightfully, unashamedly, balls-out old-school in its approach, in that it’s a studio-based sketch show with pre-recorded skits as well and some musical comedy thrown in,” McMillan says.
”There’s not one element that will be particularly unfamiliar to audiences, but the hope is [that] as an ensemble, it’s going to kick some ass.”
Joining McMillan is a selection of carefully chosen comic performers including McCarthy, Dave Eastgate, Heath Franklin, Anne Edmonds, Robin Goldsworthy, Lisa Adam and Amanda Bishop, aka ”Jooooolia”, the star of Rick’s previous comedy hit.
What was the last show that took a similar “balls-out old-school” approach? Oh right, Live From Planet Earth. And whereas Ben Elton had once upon a time been involved in classic comedy such as The Young Ones and Blackadder, producer Rick Kalowski is best known –
[Oh, okay, quick sidebar: we have zero problem with this article saying that Kalowski is “the man behind the controversial cult comedy At Home with Julia“, because clearly that’s both true and his most recent project. But it does seem a little misleading to only mention that part of his resume when, as a sitcom, it’s not as relevant to the sketch approach this show is taking as some of the other shows he’s worked on. You know, he was the head writer on both Comedy Inc. and Double Take, and as sketch shows they’re probably worth a mention here.]
– for a bunch of sketch shows that were a): very similar and b): weren’t very good. And rather than “carefully chosen comic performers”, we’d go with “the same old faces you’ve never really enjoyed in anything previously”. Sammy J is a great choice for host, especially as he was the only one to escape the wreck of the sketch version of Good News Week with his dignity intact, and filming semi-live weekly means you’re going to need proven, reliable performers. But that’s pretty much the only positives from this line up that we can see here.
Look at Mad as Hell, which was basically the same show as this only, you know, made for people whose lips don’t move when they read. Ooh, burn. Deal with it: this show has Paul McCarthy on board as an impersonator, and no-one’s ever felt the need to describe his performances as anything other than, uh, broad. Not that being broad is bad if you have the writing to back it up. We eagerly look forward to the day when he gets that level of support.
Mad as Hell – and Newstopia before it – had largely the same requirements for casting as Wednesday Night Fever: solid performers, able to be funny, can work fast in a near-live situation. But instead of rummaging through the bins for a collection of faces recognisable for their sterling work in shows rejected by God and man, Micallef and company hired new faces (or faces new to comedy), with a handful of known comedy performers mixed in.
For example, Newstopia featured Kat Stewart and Nicolas Bell: Wednesday Night Live features almost half the cast (McCarthy, Bishop, Goldsworthy) of Double Take, that largely forgotten and short-lived commercial sketch series produced by – stop the press – Rick Kalowski. Aside from them we have Dave Eastgate, who’s been in pretty much every single Jungleboys comedy effort (you know, he’s that guy who does the thing), and Heath Franklin, AKA the guy who told Chopper Read he wouldn’t cut his lunch by doing live performances pretending to be him then started touring his “hilarious” “Chopper” character around Australia for years. Will he bring back Chopper once ratings start to flag? Can’t wait to find out! Oh wait, we mean the exact opposite of that.
This is exactly the kind of show that hasn’t worked in Australia for as long as we can remember. Remember, oh, let’s say The Sideshow? Let Loose Live? The Hamish & Andy Show? The final series of Good News Week? Live From Planet Earth? That’s not to say the format can’t work – it’s also exactly the same as the much-loved-around-here Late Show: it’s just that for it to work, it needs to be creatively driven by the on-air talent, who also have to be a well-honed team with real on-air chemistry together.
If you believe this is such a team, feel free to try and back up your reasoning. We’re really hoping half the show is going to feature most of the cast laughing at how crap McCarthy’s impressions are, a la Rob Sitch’s efforts on The Late Show. Has anyone ever laughed at an Australian impression since then? Again, answers on a postcard.
Still, it’s not all bad news. Seems Wednesday Night Live will not only feature a regular sketch titled “Downton Abbott”, but a house band:
the hilariously named metal outfit Boner Contention.
Fuck it, we give up.
The Mass Debate
(Yes, we did steal the title for this post from an old Gillies Report sketch. How us. Anyway…)
Last Sunday night we tuned in to Triple J for the first episode of Tom Ballard’s Debate Night, which is temporarily replacing Sunday Night Safran for the next six weeks (if you missed it you can listen to it on the show’s webpage). Debate Night is a series of short debates between two comedians on topics such as “That Kanye West is a Douchebag” and “That Atheists Are More Annoying Than Religious People”. Ballard hosts the show and introduces the debaters while his Triple J breakfast show co-host Alex Dyson pops up occasionally to ask people in the audience what they think, but otherwise it’s a shorter and more light-hearted take on school debates. There’s even a bell to tell the speakers when to start and stop.
First up in episode 1 were Zoe Norton Lodge (who’s written for The Checkout) and Scott Dooley (who’s been on Triple J and Nova) debating the douchebaggery of Kanye West. Norton Lodge seemed to have the easier task, and got plenty of laughs by simply listing the ways in which West has been a douchebag, while “Dools” opted for the time-honoured debating strategy of reinterpreting his side of the argument, positing that Kayne West cannot logically be a douchebag because his behaviour has gone beyond that of a mere douchebag. Faced with this clever-clever stroke of linguistic pedantry Norton Lodge’s argument appeared to be sunk, but she carried on and in the end the audience preferred her to Dools (just). Conclusion: going too far down the intellectual path wasn’t necessarily going to work for this crowd.
Indeed, in the third topic up for debate (“That Everyone Should Just Piss Off Because Australia’s Full”), Zoe Coombs Marr got heaps of laughs by taking the piss out of some of the debating clichés, such as defining words in the topic that didn’t really need defining (i.e. “everyone”). She followed this with an attempt to argue the case against asylum seekers by applying rigorous logic to the less rigorous logic of the people who write comments on Andrew Bolt’s blog…which makes what she did sound about as hilarious as a slab of concrete, but trust us it was funny.
Despite the mix of styles and approaches, and the varying quality of the debates and debaters (we’ve cherry-picked the better moments in our commentary above), Debate Night worked quite well. Being radio it has to rely on words alone, which automatically gives the participants far less scope to engage in the sort of self-indulgent theatrics which made World Series Debating (and the shows that tried to ape it) slow-moving and wankerish. And being on late night Triple J it had (and was able) to be faster-paced, edgier and more anarchic than ABC Sydney’s Thank God It’s Friday…which was a relief.
The cynics in us might argue that Debate Night is a cheap format on which to hang some laughs, but as with a lot of generic comedy concepts if it turns out to be funny and/or interesting that hardly matters. And while this isn’t comedy gold, so far it’s better than a lot of other stuff out there.
Nom Nom Nom
So we finally got around to checking out SBS’s “new” “news” “comedy” show The Feed, and we have one question: what the hell happened to Marc Fennell’s hair? The once curly-haired youth seems to have filled a toilet bowel with straightener and given himself an atomic swirly going by the flat, glossy, unsettling, frozen sculpture now atop his head. Guess even on SBS “curly hair” and “serious news anchor” don’t mix. Just ask Charlie Pickering.
As for the rest of the show… well, Fennell was on Hungry Beast so we probably shouldn’t be surprised that the whole damn thing is just another, slightly shorter in time but equally lengthy in feel, take on that show’s format. Smart arse interviews! Bet-you-didn’t-know-this takes on topics everyone is already fully up to speed on (seriously kids: smoking is bad for you)! Crap off the internet! Quotes from random people talking crap on the internet! Computer graphics!
Presumably if you care more about “content” than what that content actually is then this kind of show – which is, let us be perfectly clear, nothing more or less than a televised version of one of those light entertainment / slightly newsy websites that run the gamut from The Atlantic to Vice – is THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION: a bunch of crap they can source from elsewhere with a layer of snark sprayed over it to differentiate it from, well, the place they sourced it from in the first place. Which is why we care, because for “snark” read “comedy”.
So is it funny? No. It gives off the illusion of comedy – much like it gives off the illusion of everything else, which is why all the quotation marks – but at best all you’re getting here is snark. Comedy contains snark, of course (you’ve got to have an opinion on something before you can make fun of it), but real comedy requires either people who are effortlessly funny – good luck finding one of those on Australian television – or people willing and able to put in the work to come up with funny material.
As a nightly show with a skeleton staff, The Feed almost certainly doesn’t have the resources to generate actual comedy. At least, that’s what we hope: it’d be pretty depressing to think what we’re seeing is the result of people actively trying for laugh-out-loud material. It’s just “yoof news”, that strangely persistent yet never actually successful idea that all the young people really want out of life is to watch news treated like a joke.
As for these shows actually coming up with a joke? Now, that’d be news.
We need to talk about Kevin
From if.com.au comes this…
Angry actor returns fire at critic
Tue 11/06/2013 09:15:19
Actors who get lousy reviews usually ignore them or suffer in silence- but not Kevin Harrington.
The veteran actor was so incensed by a review by News Ltd.’s Leigh Paatsch of the DVD of Cliffy, he vented on Facebook.
The ABC telemovie features Harrington as Cliff Young, who became an unlikely hero at the age of 61 when he won the 875km endurance race from Sydney to Melbourne.
In Saturday’s Daily Telegraph and Herald-Sun Paatsch dismissed it as a “dreadful telemovie that turns the ripping true story of the late ultra-marathon legend Cliff Young into a crap-tastic cartoon. How the ABC ever ponied up a commitment to this dim-witted affair beggars belief.”
Paatsch advised readers who want the “real tale- much of which was ignored or changed by this TV calamity,” to read Julietta Jameson’s book Cliffy: The Cliff Young Story.
His verdict: “1 star, run the other way.”
Harrington, whose credits include the movies Red Hill, Australian Rules, The Honourable Wally Norman and The Dish and TV series Underbelly, Winners & Losers, SeaChange, Blue Heelers and Neighbours, wasn’t going to let that pass, blasting Paatsch on his Facebook page.
The actor queried the critic’s tastes, contrasting the sole star for Cliffy with the 3.5 stars he awarded Fast & Furious 6. He told IF, “A critic is useful if he or she has some academic or practical knowledge of that which they are criticising. The public become enlightened as to the artistic merit of the piece because the critic has the qualifications to steer them towards superior quality work. [The Australian’s] Graeme Blundell is one of these critics. Alternatively a critic may represent Everyman tastes and can therefore steer his constituency towards the popular. [Paatsch] has proven himself hopelessly inadequate according to both criteria.”
Harrington’s Facebook friends were quick to offer their support, with some making uncomplimentary remarks about Paatsch. Judging by some of the comments, film critics are about as popular as politicians.
Ouch!
Even though this story wasn’t about comedy we were intrigued when we read it. Even more so when our best efforts to find Paatsch’s review on www.news.com.au and www.newstext.com.au resulted in nothing (has it been removed from those sites?). Also out of bounds for us is Kevin Harrington’s Facebook page. Oh, and we haven’t seen Cliffy either. But…
Is it just us or does the Australian industry prove itself to be unbearably petulant by reacting to bad reviews in this way? (And Kevin Harrington’s Facebook venting is far from the only example of this sort of thing.) Isn’t it best for all concerned – industry and audiences – that a range of critical voices gets a platform? At least then when someone says a film or television show is good there’s a chance they’ll be believed.
Put another way, do we actually want endless newspaper and magazine reviews praising locally-made films and TV shows to the skies when anyone with any sense can see that quite a few are less than perfect?
(don’t answer that – plenty of creative types have made it perfectly clear over the years that they see reviewers as being their publicity arm “for the good of the local industry”. As if the local industry benefits when the public no longer trusts reviewers to tell the truth about shoddy local product. As if the general public can’t tell when they’re being treated like chumps.)
Graham Blundell’s review is well written and says lots of nice things about Harrington’s performance, but if another reviewer can make a reasonable argument for Cliffy being “crap-tastic” (and Leigh Paatsch has enough experience as a reviewer to do so) then it’s reasonable enough to let that review be published. The public can then chose which reviewer to read and/or agree with.
Negative reviews of something you’ve been personally involved in may be difficult to read, but the solution’s simple: don’t read them. They’re not aimed at you anyway. Reviews and reviewers serve the public – not the industry. Or at least they should.
The Big Debate
In Sydney? Free next Wednesday night? Why not pop down to the Belvoir Theatre and check this out:
Want to be part of the audience for a free comedy show? triple j’s Debate Night is a new radio program, hosted by Tom Ballard. Featuring a bunch of comedians arguing about a range of topics, ranging from: Is Kanye West a douchebag? to That Generation Y is the best generation to Do Music Festivals Suck? and plenty more!
Host: Tom Ballard
Debaters: Scott Dooley, Zoe Coombs Marr, Rhys Nicholson, Chris Taylor, Zoe Norton-Lodge, Michael Workman, Michael Hing
When: Wednesday June 12th – doors open 6pm
Where: Belvoir Theatre, 25 Belvoir St Surry Hills
The first 20 people to email us their name and address will score a double pass to this awesome new comedy show. Hurry!
tickets@token.com.au
The show will be pre-recorded to be aired on triple j on Sunday Nights
Okay, so you’ve probably missed out on one of the 20 free tickets (maybe you can sneak in ‘round the back instead?)… Personally, we’ll be waiting for the broadcast, because a scripted comedy show on radio is a real rarity these days and Triple J haven’t bothered to make one since 2010’s The Blow Parade.
Not that this scripted, arguments-based comedy show will necessarily be that funny. Ever listened to ABC Sydney’s Thank God It’s Friday (we mention it in passing here)? That follows roughly the same format as a comedy debate show – comedians gets asked to talk on a topic, they go away and write a couple of minutes of material, then read it out on air to ensuing hilarity – and it’s mostly shithouse.
One of the problems you get with shows like this is that unless each comedian’s several minutes of material is utter genius the show can sink into the ground. Generally speaking, there’s not a lot of scope for hilarious interactions in a debate. A planned interjection can seem lame, and a spontaneous one can really stuff it up for the person who’s meant to be speaking. Part of the problem is that the participants tend not to have worked together much – sometimes they’ve never met – and because they don’t have much chemistry there’s not much hope of them bouncing off each other in amusing ways. Then there’s the problem Mike Moore faced in that episode of Frontline, where he appear on World Series Debating and the host did all his jokes before he could.
Some of the debaters scheduled to appear on this show we like, and they all have experience either on shows like this (Thank God It’s Friday, The Unbelievable Truth) or as stand-ups. This show could be an amusing Sunday night muck-around that turns out to be surprisingly good, or simply a cheap airtime-filler that doesn’t even particularly harm the small numbers of people who happen to tune in for it. Good luck to those involved, obviously, but it’s a shame someone can’t think of a more innovative way to make a scripted radio comedy than to re-hash the comedy debates concept. And making those comedy debates about “youth” topics like Kanye West doesn’t necessarily make them a good idea in 2013, or for Triple J.
Well, the Hell With This
Press release time! Wait, is it April Fools already?
GET READY FOR ANOTHER HIT OF NOSTALGIA; TRACTOR MONKEYS IS BACK!
ABC TV Entertainment has just begun pre production on the second series of the comedy quiz show that puts the funny filter on the iconic and best loved pop cultural gems of recent decades.
Comedian Merrick Watts will once again be in the host seat with regular team captains Dave O’Neil and Monty Dimond joining him for the eight part series.
Each week a different crop of Australia’s smartest comedians and entertainers will join the Tractor Monkeys regulars for thought and laugh provoking encounters about the twists and turns of being us!
Each themed episode will be a call back to when milk was delivered to the school yard, Summer holidays lasted forever, mix tapes were the new playlist and technological advances like playing pong blew our minds.
Head of ABC Entertainment Jennifer Collins says, “The first series scratched the surface of the moments that defined what it was to grow up in Australia. Merrick, Dave and Monty will put us back in touch with the music, the TV shows, those first celebrity crushes and the best and worst of our fashions.”
Tractor Monkeys will record in its Sydney studio, if you want to be part of the audience please go to: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/tractormonkeys/
The much-anticipated return of Spicks & Specks will kick off 2014.
Jennifer Collins said “It’s an exciting way to launch next year. Casting for the new team will begin later this year. We plan to welcome back some of your favourites as well as testing the musical knowledge of some new and surprising guests.”
Not so much reading between the lines as just plain reading the press release, we can gather the following:
A): They didn’t get their shit together in time to bring back Spicks & Specks for 2013;
B): This left a gaping hole in the schedule;
C): ????
D): Tractor Monkeys is back!
If there wasn’t a new ABC Head of Comedy already on his way – and gee, won’t he be stoked to see the present the departing regime have left him – this would be the kind of bullshit move that should lead directly to sacking whoever the hell is currently in charge.
Lest we forget, no-one liked Tractor Monkeys. Not even regular Australian TV critics, and they like everything. It wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t car crash television, it wasn’t insanely misguided – it wasn’t anything. Let alone anything even remotely resembling something worth a second of your time. And now it’s back!
Your ABC at work, Australia. Jesus grumpy stumbling Christ, it’s almost enough to make you vote for the coalition.
Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can’t, Review
If you’re of a particular political bent, chances are you’ve been waiting for The Guardian to set up their Australian branch for a while now, what with Fairfax staggering around like a drunk at a child’s birthday party when it comes to providing a non-Rupert Murdoch perspective on things. Even we’ve been excited: in the UK The Guardian has Charlie Brooker as their humour columnist and he’s generally considered to be fairly competent at it. So naturally their Australian branch would be going after A-grade comedy writers, right? And so we waited.
And waited.
And now it’s here! And it’s hiring all the people sacked from Fairfax for being crap. Ha ha ha, this is what happens when you expect good things. If you read Andrew Bolt you’d know that.
To be fair, only Catherine Deveny was sacked from Fairfax for being crap – well, sacked for making sex tweets about a minor according to the official version, sacked for being too much for the old men at Fairfax to handle according to her and feel free to decide which version has more basis in reality ’cause we’re saying nothin’ – because while Helen Razer was dumped by The Age as a columnist in the 90s she’s been back writing reviews and opinions for them over the last decade. But she was dumped by the ABC in 2008:
In the September 15 episode of Media Watch, presenter Jonathan Holmes charged Razer with “patronising” Berkoff during the live interview on September 7. Less than a minute into the exchange, things became tense when Razer addressed Berkoff as “dear”. He told her he had trouble understanding her accent. Razer then called the playwright a “curmudgeon” and a “pugilist”, before abruptly terminating the interview.
Anyway, that’s all in the past, as they both now have regular gigs in the new left-wing voice of Australia. Razer is the local TV critic:
I’ve been meaning to have a word to my local Labor branch about the quality of their newsletter for some time. “Dear Comrade”, it begins; a salutation that now seems every bit as apt to me as “Yo, Bitch”. Comrade? I am no longer a comrade but lapsed rank-and-file who would rather stay at home and yell at the television that endure another moment spent in hopeless love with a vanished past.
And Deveny seems to be the food critic:
Perhaps it’s genetic. Mum tells a story of driving home late from work one night in the 70s after a long day and deciding to treat herself with a Choc Mint Drumstick on the drive home. It was a perfect summer night, no one on the road and she sang along with the Bee Gees, window wound down, Drumstick in hand, elbow hanging out the window. Luxury. Suddenly she heard through a megaphone: “Two hands on the steering wheel lady, this is the police.” Which it was. She got such a fright she dropped her ice cream on the road. Did it teach her a lesson? She just bought another one. STICKING IT TO THE MAN! YEAH
And The Guardian AU’s comedy? Oh look, it’s the team from The Roast. What, Rodney Rude wasn’t answering the phone?
We bring this up not to point out that despite the new venue these two are operating firmly according to type – Razer’s very first word is a reference to herself, Deveny is “STICKING IT TO THE MAN!” – nor to suggest that opinionated women by their very nature are going to have a rough ride in the Australian media. Nope, today we just want to talk about a sadly familiar wider trend: hiring people not for their expertise in a subject matter, but because they’re meant to be amusing.
We’ve written before on this “just add comedy” approach and why we don’t like it – see pretty much every post we’ve ever made about The Gruen Transfer and its offspring. Basically, if you’re going to be funny JUST BE FUNNY. And if you’re going to discuss a topic then said topic deserves to be treated with respect, not just as a launching point for a bunch of shithouse gags.
Put another way, people who are meant to be actually amusing write humour columns. They don’t need a wider hook to lure people in: they’re funny, and that’s enough. Unless they’re not funny, which is every single Australian humour columnist because it’s hard work writing 800 funny words a week and if you really are funny it’s much easier writing jokes for television. Or advertising.
On the other side, if you’re actually interested in television (we are) or food (kind of), then you want to read someone who knows what they’re talking about. Razer at least has a history of reviewing live shows – reviewing in a snarky, self-obsessed, look at me fashion yes, but she occasionally provides some insight into why something is or isn’t working that you couldn’t get just from reading the poster.
Deveny, on the other hand, seems to treat every single paid writing gig she gets as an opportunity to foist a bunch of her half-arsed stand-up material on her readership. At least when she was writing about television she had a history of writing for television that on the surface justified her employment; as for food, presumably she eats it. Like every single other human being on the planet.
By the way, The Checkout wrapped up its first series last night. Much as we usually hate that kind of thing we didn’t mind it for the most part, because when it tried to be funny it usually was and when it wasn’t trying it had real information to impart. We’re still going to file it under consumer affairs rather than comedy – there’s a comedy show to be made about consumer issues, but it probably wouldn’t have long segments explaining how extended warranties are a rort – but the comedy material was a lot stronger than many of the ‘straight’ local comedies we’ve seen of late.
Our point is, if you’re going to do two things you need to be good at both. To take a non-Checkout example, Clive James’ television reviews were both bang-on regarding the shows he was discussing and funny in their own right. And if you’re not good at two things, you should stick to just the one: if you’re reviewing television (or food), figure out how television (or food) works, figure out how to explain that intelligently to your readership, then JUST DO THAT. Don’t do a half-arsed job then think if you talk about yourself a lot it won’t matter because it’s not a “real” review anyway.
Because just quietly, no-one gives a fuck about you.
The New News
Submitted without comment.
Wednesday Night Fever cast
set for late night comedy antics
Premieres Wednesday July 3 at 9:30pm on ABC1
7×30’
ABC TV today announced that Wednesday Night Fever – its new, late night, weekly comedy series from the makers of controversial hit At Home with Julia – will premiere on Wednesday, July 3 at 9:30pm on ABC1.
Hosted by rising comedian and first-time frontman Sammy J, and featuring tasteful metal outfit Boner Contention as house band, Wednesday Night Fever’s ensemble cast includes some of Australia’s best comic performers and impersonators including: Amanda Bishop (At Home with Julia); Paul McCarthy (Comedy Inc. – The Late Shift, At Home with Julia); Genevieve Morris (Comedy Inc. – The Late Shift); Dave Eastgate (A Moody Christmas, Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting); Heath Franklin (‘Chopper’ of The Ronnie Johns Half Hour); Melbourne Comedy Festival sensation Anne Edmonds; music theatre star Lisa Adam and Robin Goldsworthy (At Home with Julia, Paper Giants).
Airing over seven weeks, the 30 minute weekly program will feature an array of topical impersonations, satirical characters, musical comedy and special guests – all in front of a live studio audience.
Jennifer Collins, ABC TV’s Head of Entertainment, said “It’s a stellar cast with the smart and witty Sammy J at the helm. The series will be a playground for these great comedic talents. We’re thrilled to have satirical sketch comedy in prime time, delivering a unique take on the latest news from around the world and here at home.”
Creator/Producer Rick Kalowski said, “I’m relieved to finally have a host and cast after it fell apart with Rolf Harris and The Comanchero bikie gang”.
Wednesday Night Fever is a Quail Television and ABC TV co-production for ABC1. Quail Television Executive Producers are Rick Kalowski and Greg Quail. ABC Executive Producer is Sophia Zachariou.
“We’re thrilled to have satirical sketch comedy in prime time”. So no-one at the ABC actually watches Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell then?
Okay, we do have a comment: Sammy J is good, some of the other cast members are not. Well, not bad-at-their-job bad – they’re just people who’ve been associated with so many duds at this stage that they really need an extended break (the old “you’ve got to leave before you can make a comeback” theory) to avoid that feeling that we’re just seeing the same old faces. And as that’s the feeling that’s killed at birth pretty much every single ABC panel show of the last five years, that’s not a good thing.
This is a problem that’s hardly ever addressed: after so many lean years Australia’s professional comedy talent pool, for whatever reason, is largely tainted with the stench of failure. Again, it’s not a slight on them as comedians, as often the problem with the failed shows wasn’t their fault. But it remains a fact: there are comedy performers out there whose names are associated with failure, who are firmly linked in the public’s mind with unfunny shows that tried too hard or not hard enough, who actively turn viewers away from trying something new by reminding them of shows they didn’t enjoy.
Whether seven episodes is enough to turn around those perceptions remains, like everything else about this show, to be seen.