Australian Tumbleweeds
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.
Hey, There’s a trailer for Border Protection Squad
We liked Ed Kavalee’s Scumbus – mildly controversial move on our part there, but what can we say? Being stupid isn’t always a bad thing – so we’re actually looking forward to this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPEL82KplX4
Your mileage may vary.
Old-fashioned charm
Considering how often we used to bang on about how shit The Chaser’s War on Everything was, it’s hard not to feel a little nostalgic for the team’s comedy days (as opposed to their consumer rights TV days) when you read Charles Firth’s recent article for The Citizen, which recounts the early history of the group. Having met at university, The Chaser team really got started almost a decade and a half ago when they brought out a satirical newspaper. This quickly achieved legendary status, but principally online – finding a print copy was difficult, especially if you didn’t live on the east coast.
But halfway through his article Firth brings us back to the present day with some musings about The Roast…
In my latest venture – The Roast (on ABC2 – 7:30pm weeknights) – our correspondents travel the world without ever leaving the comfort of the green screen. There is a charm to this that has surprised me…
The green screen is an invitation for the audience to imagine what this show could be if its correspondents were able to go anywhere. The gap between its actual resources and its ambition allows the audience a role in its success. The Roast requires the audience to fill in its (considerable) gaps with their imagination in order to enjoy it. It’s far more satisfying – and far more theatrical – than, say, Iron Man 3, where every twist and turn is replicated in such detail that no imagination is necessary. That’s not to say Iron Man 3 is bad (it is), but simply that it is not theatre – it’s spectacle…
…at least part of the enjoyment, and part of the reason why people became so evangelical about it [The Chaser newspaper], and why our readers would continue to turn up to our parties despite their increasing frequency and rising entry price, was because of the theatre surrounding it.
The audience was imagining the mythical drunken brainstorm that led to the front page where we published John Howard’s personal phone number, when in fact, the decision to do so was made at the last minute and was largely because we couldn’t think of anything else to put on the cover…
It was the theatre rather than the actual subscriber numbers that kept The Chaser growing. The Chaser was appealing to read because it invited the readers to use their imagination to fill in the gaps. You could just imagine how amazing it would be to be one of The Chaser editors. Constantly drunk, constantly witty, constantly partying, and rarely even turning up at the office. It was a wonderfully attractive conceit, even if it was completely untrue.
Thus, if I have any advice for the editors of The Citizen, it is this: allow your readers the space to imagine what you want to be. Don’t let reality get in the way of your ambition. Let the readers fill in that gap. That way, it’s much more satisfying for them, and it’s much cheaper for you.
…which is all very well, but doesn’t really justify the continued existence of The Roast:
- The Roast is not charming, because of its use of green screen or otherwise. It’s a poorly-written topical comedy that even YouTube turns its nose up at (check the stats, they’re not very impressive).
- “Old school” TV technology like green screen isn’t automatically more charming the CGI-heavy approach used in action films like Iron Man 3. It may remind us of charming old TV comedies like The Goodies, but a large part of the charm of old TV comedies like The Goodies was their scripts were full of original ideas and lots of good gags –or certainly more original ideas and good gags than you get in The Roast.
- The idea that the audience fills in the comedy details with their imaginations is true, but applies mainly to radio comedy. In TV comedy visuals are kinda important. One way in which The Roast could add some comedy details, and be funnier, is if they included some gags going on in the background. Or some gags with a bit more complexity than they’re currently managing.
- There are two main reasons why the thing everyone knows about The Chaser newspaper is that they published John Howard’s phone number: 1) it was deliciously dangerous, and 2) it presumably caused a man who was disliked by the paper’s readership a lot of bother. Can you imagine The Roast doing anything like that? They can barely work themselves up in to being satirical…which is a bit of a problem if you’re a topical comedy.
Obviously most of the team from The Roast are barely out of university and perhaps when they’ve got as much experience under the belt as The Chaser they’ll be producing shows of the quality of, say, The Hamster Wheel, but the only way they’ll get there is if they spend a bit more time off-off-Broadway. The Chaser team didn’t just turn up on the ABC one day, they struggled to survive as a newspaper and gradually did more and more radio and TV. They built up experience and learnt what did and didn’t work. The best we can hope for The Roast team and the comedy they produce is that the show’s axed and they’re forced to learn the hard way.
Spit roast hog
If you gave a video camera to a student revue and asked them to make a news parody The Roast is probably what you’d get. Indeed, if you look at the biographies of the show’s cast and writers it’s notable that many of them are barely out of university. Not that this automatically makes them or the show bad – inexperienced writers can’t be expected to produce a good program – what we question is why a show which was a proven dud in its earliest incarnation as WTF! (2010), and then as a web series (2011), made it to TV for a first series (2012) and is now back yet again. For 150 episodes.
The Roast sets itself up as a long-running news show which reports from around the country (and the world) on the issues of the day. Its team of reporters play it relatively straight (unlike in news parodies such as Mad As Hell and Brass Eye which got laughs by making their reporters “characters”) meaning that on The Roast the stories have to do the heavy comedic lifting. The Roast has also chosen to keep it very topical, focusing on real world headlines rather than current affairs. In the hands of a more experienced team these restrictions wouldn’t be such a problem, but it’s hard to avoid wondering whether a bit more freedom in the format might have given the team at The Roast a better chance of getting laughs.
The best episode of The Roast that we have seen was a “from the archives” special parodying period reports of the disappearance of Harold Holt and the introduction of Random Breath Testing. Here, the writers and cast could get a decent amount of laughs from old-style clothes and modes of TV production and presentation. Whereas in a story about a contemporary issue they have to find a way of making that issue funny.
Often, The Roast’s formula is to take an aspect of a topical issue to the extreme and hope for laughs. When Myer boss Bernie Brooks said a levy to fund disability care would mean less people spent money shopping, The Roast did a sketch about a new government levy to help big department stores. They also sent one of their reporters around stealing money from people on behalf of the retail giant. While the basic satirical ideas for this were fine – you could imagine Mad As Hell doing something similar – Mad As Hell would also have done it a lot better. The reason for this is tone – Mad As Hell’s angrier, rantier approach is a lot funnier than The Roast‘s reporter David Ferrier playing it alternately straight and cheeky.
Great topical comedies like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Mad As Hell and Clarke & Dawe are fuelled by anger. One of the many problems with The Roast is that there just doesn’t seem to be any drive or passion behind it. And that’s the death knell for a topical comedy, because if there’s no passion or rage behind the material why make it topical? Why not just broadcast 10 minutes of dinner party sketches? Or Justin Bieber gags? Or dead air?
The Final Kountdown
Wow, good thing we didn’t bother reviewing The Kath & Kim Kountdown:
Clip special The Kath and Kim Kountdown has been dumped from Seven’s Sunday night line-up after just one outing.
Could Australia’s legendary goodwill towards the foxy morons finally have run out? Or perhaps someone should have told the programming team at Seven that Kath & Kimderella was, er, not that great and there hasn’t even been a new episode of the TV series in over five years.
Much as we enjoyed the first series, that was a decade ago and they’ve been treading water since then: stick a fork in them, they’re done.
Destroying The Gruen
And in comedy news, Helen Razer’s written a long article on how the twitter hashtag #destroythejoint has betrayed feminism. We’re mentioning this why now? It’s not like anyone really sees Razer as a comedian these days – probably not even herself, as her last (that we know of) stab at hilarity here was last updated August 2012. Remember The Sponsored Lady? Seems to only have been a thing for two months. Guess we wasted our time reviewing it. Here’s hoping her current article has more of an impact.
Like pretty much everything Razer writes, it’s over-long and self-obsessed (like you can talk – ed), but the short version is that Helen grew up (yes, it starts with her childhood) being aware that feminism could easily be co-opted by marketing (insert reference to “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby”), but had hoped that #destroythejoint could avoid this fate, what with being at least a little bit about being funny.
Here comes the sad music: It’s stopped being funny, it’s been co-opted by marketing, and it’s now a waste of time.
Destroy the Joint had turned from an organisation that fought sexism with a mocking wit to one that did nothing but reproduce miserable sexism. For both the advertising industry and the patriarchy.
It’s not just her that thinks this: she’s also got “34-year-old Sydney-based marketing strategist” and former administrator of a Destroy the Joint Facebook page Aaron Darc backing her up. So a self-styled internet funny lady and a marketing guru think #destroythejoint needs to be funnier and better handled marketing-wise? Quelle surprise.
Just to engage with the substance of the article for a moment: Marketing using a social movement to market a product? That’s what capitalism does (cue Kyle Reese voice: “That’s all it does!!“). We’re hardly experts, but we dimly recall William Gibson saying that grunge – remember that, 90s fans? – was the last bohemia that had a chance to develop before it was co-opted by marketing. That was pre-internet and 20 years ago: come up with a social movement today and it’ll be harnessed to some kind of marketing push by, um, later that day.
The reason we even bring this article up – considering Razer and professional comedy are pretty much strangers these days and yes, we do know that if the writer starts talking about themselves in the first sentence of an article about an issue that involves at least half the population we really shouldn’t act surprised if the whole thing is basically “WHY ISN’T THIS SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOLLOWING MY BRIGHT AND SHINING LEAD” – is that this is a prime example of the kind of thinking that leads to thinking that The Gruen Whatever is a worthwhile effort. Fight marketing with marketing! That way, marketing wins.
What if #destroythejoint had followed Razer’s wishes and remained a “mocking wit”-based takedown of misogyny in the media and Australian life? For one thing, it would still be exploited by marketers; yes, it’s easier for marketers to exploit you when your online movement is entirely built around stoking OUTRAGE (it’s pretty much the only marketing tool the ABC used for its comedy programs for a few years there), but if your movement involves drawing attention to things*, it can be used as a marketing tool to expand the reach of those things whether you’re laughing or crying at them.
Wait, doesn’t this mean that all comedy is actually supporting the things they’re making fun of? Duh, no. But comedy making fun of advertising is supporting advertising pretty much all the time. That’s because advertising is about getting people to pay attention to you. Of course, there’s such a thing as negative attention, which is what #destroyingthejoint wants to apply. But you can’t really apply that to an ad, because as the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Especially when misogyny (at least, in the mild “women are sex objects and household providers” form many ads use) actually still appeals to some consumers. That “What’s wrong with being sexy?” line from Spinal Tap was funny for more than one reason, after all.
Gruen doesn’t work because it tries – well, it pretends to try – to fight marketing with marketing. “These lies are bad lies,” says the panel, “they should have lied like this”. In contrast, The Checkout (no matter what you might think of it as a comedy) at least works on this level, by fighting marketing with facts. “Marketing says this burger looks good” says someone against a wacky backdrop, “reality says this burger looks bad.” Marketing can’t get around that, because that’s the kind of issue marketing is designed to avoid.
[Which may be the reason why googling “lawsuit against The Gruen Transfer” turns up no examples of anyone important getting annoyed while “lawsuit against The Checkout” gives you this.]
We are in no way saying that misogyny doesn’t exist in the Australian media. It’s all over the place and it’s a disgrace. But it’s something marketers can use, because for the most part it doesn’t relate to the product they’re marketing. No-one (Men’s Rights Activists and some politicians aside) is selling “misogyny” as their product: they use misogyny to get your attention because what they really want is your attention.
But surely comedy is powerful enough to defeat even the most evil forms of marketing? Well, considering the most evil forms of marketing usually involve comedy, maybe not. Good comedy should open our eyes to the truth; marketing wants to open our eyes to whatever it is they’re selling to us. Basically, comedy fails when the message becomes more important than getting a laugh. “These examples of sexism in the media are hilarious” works as an approach to comedy. “These examples of sexism in the media are horrible” does not**.
Then you’re just back to fighting marketing with marketing and unless there’s a deeper truth on your side – one that goes beyond “this ad or person is sexist”, because as we’ve pointed out, that’s probably what the marketers want you to think as sadly not everyone agrees that “being sexist” is a bad thing – marketing will win. As regular Gruen watchers know all too well.
And no, we’re not saying “ignore it and it’ll go away”. We actually kind of agree with Razer here: there’s no simple solution to the problem of entrenched misogyny and retweeting a joke on twitter isn’t going to change anything. But we’re not a social activism blog, we’re a blog about comedy. And selling this kind of social activism as comedy doesn’t work as either social activism OR as comedy.
It’s probably appropriate Razer was the one who brought it up, come to think of it.
*Basically, #destroythejoint was and is a method of marketing that attempts to over-write the original message with “this is sexist”. Razer thinks that comedy was a more effective way of doing that than outrage, because comedy is harder for marketing to co-opt. We disagree; ads are trying to get ‘in on the joke’ all the time.
**The difference being, when the joke stops being funny you have to move on, which is a bit tricky for a social movement supposedly naming and shaming society’s creeps over an important and on-going issue.
Hung Out To Dry
Considering our recent griping about Tractor Monkeys, it seems only right to start our review of Dirty Laundry Live with this: the ABC have taken exactly the right approach with this show. It’s on at 9.30pm on a Thursday night on ABC2, which is pretty much the textbook definition of “out of the way”, it’s shown live which means they can make changes week to week depending on what works and what doesn’t, and they’ve given it a reasonably long run (16 episodes), so it’ll have plenty of time to bed down.
On the other hand, this kind of thing rarely bodes well:
The public broadcaster confirmed it had engaged classifiers, editorial policy advisers and lawyers to make sure the hosts don’t get too litigious in their accusations.
Dirty Laundry has been granted an MA classification and it has to meet that rating. That means there needs to be a certain level of coarse language and naughtiness or they will get into trouble for being too prudish.
Or, you know, they could just try to be funny. And anyway, considering that outside of news programs the ABC doesn’t exactly “do” live television any more, presumably those extra lawyers have just been hired to bring the staffing levels up to, say, what Nine has for The Footy Show. And we all know how edgy that is these days.
The obvious snarkiness about having Sophie Monk on as a “celebrity guest” aside, things got off to a solid start – oh right, the show itself: Host Lawrence Mooney and a cast of semi-famous faces and comedians sit around a big desk to talk about the celebrity gossip of the week. It’s a solid comedy topic, and more importantly, it’s not one that’s currently being mined to death on the ABC *cough Daily Show knock-offs cough*. On the other hand yes, it’s another panel show. One that initially gave off strong Glasshouse vibes, which… yeah, we’ve got nothing good to say about that.
With two introductions to the panel and two introductions to the show either side of Mooney’s opening monologue (yeah, those Kristen Stewart vampire facial gags worked a treat) we’re four minutes into the show before the show actually starts. Chalk it up to first week nerves, alongside the “can I say FUCK?” “You can say fuck as much as you like, but you can’t talk about suicide.” bits. Oh, and then there’s a quiz. Joy. Fortunately they seem to just be using the quiz to kickstart discussions, which is exactly the right way to use a quiz on a comedy panel show.
Further on the plus side, these aren’t the usual TV panelists. It’s amazing just how refreshing it is to see some different comedians on television (especially when they turn out to be funny), and even though there were a few garbled moments here – there wasn’t a whole lot of chemistry between the panelists, who occasionally seemed to be shouting into the void rather than interacting with each other – the fact that we don’t already know every word that’s going to come out of their mouths is a big big plus for a television show in 2013. Even Sophie Monk, about whom we’ve previously had zero interest, came off here as someone moderately interesting. Or at least human, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of our more popular comedy panel show regulars.
It’s hard to underestimate just how far you can get on television by being entertainingly shambolic. Lord knows Australian television has underestimated it over the last decade or so – though after Live From Planet Earth, some of that reluctance is understandable. Sure, watching panelists passing around a porn movie called ‘Back Door Teen Mom’ may not be the kind of thing you’d plan to tune in to watch, but watching it happen on a live show is at least as interesting as anything else you may have seen on ABC after 8.30pm this year.
There were plenty of rough edges on this opening episode, but Mooney is a rock-solid comedy performer who’ll settle in as host and Brooke Satchwell (who’ll be a regular panelist over the sixteen episodes) came off as pretty sharp as well. Luke McGregor’s comedy interview was a highlight, and not just because it made Josh Thomas seem kind of likable; is it too soon to say “breakout star”? Probably. We’ll stick with “love your work” for now.
We’re grading on a curve here because it’s the first episode of a show that’s doing its growing up in public. So while there’s plenty of room for improvement, we’re going to assume they’re at least going to try and address the show’s problems (which are mostly to do with structure anyway; they just need to find more elegant ways to move between topics). Otherwise we’re going to give Dirty Laundry Live our highest possible rating for an Australian comedy panel show: it’s worth a look.
Over the Hill
The strangest clip doing the rounds over the last few days hasn’t been this:
http://youtu.be/D29C6S9eSo4
Though that accent does have us scratching our heads so hard it looks like we’re wearing red nail polish. No, it’s been the oddly unavailable online promo for the third series of Adam Hills’ talk show, now just known as Adam Hills Tonight. The strange part is that it features a hefty clip from this:
http://youtu.be/hUsDWRgLKEM
We’ve discussed this elsewhere – short version, it’s hardly edgy, brave or funny for Hills to have a go at the appearance of a woman twice his age under the guise of defending an internationally successful and famous musician – but for the ABC to use it as promotion for Hills’ new show is a handy reminder that Hills isn’t really the lovely guy he plays on television. He is, in fact, someone who promotes himself as a “nice guy” but feels it’s part of his job to insult an old lady. And Joan Rivers, she’s totally a serious threat to someone who, well, take it away Wikipedia:
Adele is the first female in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have three singles in the top 10 at the same time as a lead artist, and the first female artist to have two albums in the top five of the Billboard 200 and two singles in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously.21 is the longest running number one album by a female solo artist on the UK and US Albums Chart. In 2011 and 2012, Billboard named Adele Artist of the Year. In 2012, Adele was listed at number five on VH1′s 100 Greatest Women In Music, and the American magazine Time named Adele one of the most influential people in the world. In 2013, she received an Academy Award as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for her song “Skyfall“, written for Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond film.
Phew, lucky Hills stood up for her. Inexperienced newcomers really need a protector in today’s media landscape.
Anyway, it’s hardly like Hills goes around stabbing kittens in the opening episode of his remarkably resilient talk show. Rather, once you get past the new opening and new set he does the same old talk show business he’s been doing to no real success for the last two years. Same nothing jokes, same chat with the punters, same sense that life’s passing you by.
Yes you, up the back. “No real success? But it’s back for a third year! Nothing gets a third year at the ABC these days!” And yet last year we were reading this:
After years of much success on the middle night of the week, Aunty has flopped hard this year as viewers have deserted its relatively fresh Wednesday lineup. Their tentpole programme, Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight, has completely underwhelmed, even in comparison to its first season last year.
On the comparable night in 2011, Gordon Street pulled 760,000 viewers – a massive difference to the 508,000 viewers it attracted last night. Comparisons to long-running programme Spicks and Specks significantly out-shadow current figures for the timeslot and underline how far ABC1 has fallen post-8:00pm.
Clearly the ABC wants to stay in the Adam Hills business, even when the general public just aren’t all that fussed. Actually, that’s not true: people clearly like Hills a whole lot, they just don’t like him as a talk show host.
That said, when your very first segment is your (actually pretty funny) sidekick struggling with learning how to get into the world of baton-twirling, either you’re not a fan of starting big or you figure you can do pretty much whatever takes your fancy. Which would get two thumbs up from us if it ever really seemed like Hills is interested in anything beyond a fairly forgettable chat show. An opening show featuring as guests Denise Scott and Father Bob (both solid talent, make no mistake), does feel somewhat as if decent ratings are not the highest priority. Even if there are plenty of attractive women in the audience for the numerous audience segments. Just don’t cut to any hefty dudes!
We were hardly fans of Enough Rope (drain your guests salty tears, Denton!), but it did provide a solid example of how to make a decent talk show when A-grade guests aren’t walking in the door – “A-grade guests”, by our definition, are those interesting or famous types that people are interested in no matter who they’re talking to. Ditching the usual surface talk show waffle, Denton (and researchers) pushed it a little further, and though the seedy, tabloid-esque results weren’t our cup of tea it certainly did pull in the crowds. We’re saying, if famous people aren’t beating down your door, just go with regular people who have interesting stories… or jerk some tears out of B-list celebs, we’re cool with that. What we don’t want is just the same old chit from the same old chatters.
And the rest of the evening’s events were… well, having Tripod rock out reminded us all that hey, where’s that Tripod sitcom they’ve been deserving for the last decade or so? Not to mention that the ABC know their audience of inner-city types and this show is pointed straight at their heart. The question remains: where’s the laughs? US talk show are packed with boffo yuks, or at least the occasional scripted bit. UK talk shows mean well but largely get by on the quality of their guests. But this?
To be fair, it’s clear the ABC needs a talk show: Australian television currently doesn’t have one and the commercial networks clearly can’t be arsed. Two years on though, and it’s kind of obvious that Adam Hills Tonight isn’t getting the job done. The guests are the same old same old before, during and after the interview, the comedy is featherweight at best – Hills just doesn’t do sketches, though he does seem to like hanging out with the audience as much as possible, which is great for the audience but not so much for the home viewer – and overall the end product is solidly, firmly, determinedly safe. It’s a show with all the signs of being a good time, but the closer you look the less there is to see.
Maybe we were too harsh on Hills’ rant against Joan Rivers. Whatever its dubious underpinnings, at least it showed some life and energy. But don’t worry, it seems the ABC will be running Hills’ full unedited chat with Sir Michael Parkinson as a half hour special! And next week, they’ll be going through Hills’ trash hoping to find a sheet of notepaper with “Hills <3 ABC” written on it over and over and over again. They could get a ten-part series out of that.
Vale Tractor Monkeys
Sorry we’re a bit late with this one, but we’ll be honest: it took us a few days to realise Tractor Monkeys was over. From its nonsensical title to its tried and rejected host to its no-star cast of unexciting personalities to its blatant use of old footage to pad out banter that would have been rejected by AD/BC as “too stilted”, it was not a show that will live on in our hearts or minds or the part of our memory where we keep lists of shows to use as negative comparisons. Randling, your crown is safe.
Of course, not all that is the fault of the show itself. Since Spicks and Specks a): became the ABC’s biggest and most reliable comedy hit and then was b): dumped, the pressure has been on to find a replacement. Having learned with Randling that getting a million viewers a week isn’t simply a matter of sticking a random bunch of comedians behind a couple of desks, a strange combination of panic and disinterest seems to have settled in over at the ABC. They want to find the next S&S and fast, so forget about putting a low-key panel show together and letting it develop, and yet they don’t seem to want to spend any real money or put any serious effort into creating something that, you know, people might want to watch.
Part of the problem is that the ABC doesn’t seem to realise that even when television is free people want value for money. Tractor Monkeys might have worked at, say, 6.30pm on a Sunday night, where looking cheap and involving little more than people mucking around inbetween old clips seems like a good deal. But prime time on a Wednesday night? No. Noooo. People want to watch real entertainment then – you know, like high-stakes cooking contests or talent quests.
Another part of the problem is that the ABC doesn’t seem to realise that panel shows only work when the guests are, as the French say, not la massif shithouse. UK panel shows might seem equally thrown together, but their guests are usually people who are also off making television shows or having smash hit stand-up careers. The equivalent here, much as it pains us to say it, would be doing a panel show featuring Dave Hughes and Wil Anderson, not Dave O’Neil and Someone You’ve Never Heard Of. Get Chris Lilley to turn up and you’ve got your ratings hit; a musician most people know nothing about and they’re not even playing music on the show… not so much.
Panel shows can create stars, but it usually takes at least a few episodes and the freedom to mess around and see what works. If the ABC was serious about finding a real replacement for Spicks and Specks, they would have done the exact opposite of Tractor Monkeys: either get serious with the talent and bring on board people viewers want to watch (lets not forget, even The Panel featured the Working Dog guys, who at the time had a lot of goodwill from their radio work and The Late Show), or put together something featuring talented nobodies, place it out of the spotlight and give it the time to develop into something special. Which was how they got Spicks and Specks in the first place.
It’s easy to say that the big names don’t want to do panel shows. It’s just as easy to say that today’s ABC doesn’t have the resources to put together a panel show outside of prime time. And that’s fine. But if that’s the case, don’t waste our time with half-arsed crap like Tractor Monkeys. If even we can tell it’s not going to work, what are they paying the programmers at the ABC for?