Australian Tumbleweeds
Who’s Got the Fever for the Flavour?
The final line of the second episode of Wednesday Night Fever was “shit happens”. Sometimes it even happens on the ABC. We weren’t part of the group calling for Wednesday Night Fever to be axed after its, um, sub-par debut last week, simply because we didn’t think the mistakes that many saw in the show – the relentless crudity, the simplistic sketches, the lack of insight displayed in the impressions – actually were mistakes. This was a show aimed directly at an audience they assumed thought in cliches and giggled at swearing: why then wouldn’t you pack your show with cliches and swearing?
Oh right, they’re not funny.
Then later in the week it turned out the Wednesday Night Fever team had forgotten to password-protect the Google Group where they passed around scripts and once Crikey found out they promptly stuck a bunch of unaired sketches online. We hope you’re sitting down for this bombshell; the sketches weren’t that great. Unfortunately Crikey then went on to lambast the WNF team for their racism and sexism, which is fine except that they hadn’t aired these particular sketches so… they were crap for not airing crap sketches? But presumably without that angle there was no real reason to run a story about the unaired sketches and we’re always interested in those so well done anyway.
Meanwhile, word trickled down that even the producers felt they’d gone over the top with the swearing, so we eagerly awaited week two with baited breath. Okay, we went down the pub instead and so missed it, but we did remember to set the VCR and when we saw tweets like this our hopes soared:
Well played #WNF! Really enjoying this week. Clive's interview a highlight.
— MolkchurianCandidate (@MolksTVTalk) July 10, 2013
Could it be? Could they have turned what was pretty much the comedy equivalent of the Titanic (the ship, not the film) around in one short week?
Of course not. Oh sure, if the swearing and cheap personal swipes were what you’d hated about week one, pretty much all of that was gone in week two. Seriously, all we counted was one “shit”, one “mother-finger” and a weird censored bit during the final song where the singer sang “I’m in shape but it’s the shape of a preg-*out-of-nowhere guitar riff cutting off the rest of the line*. But we like swearing and offensiveness – well, at least when it’s funny, which it wasn’t last week: all the stuff we didn’t like about week one was, as we’d suspected all along, still loud and proud in week two.
Sammy J’s opening song was smart and sharp. Unfortunately it contained exactly one joke – when we stop the boats all our problems will be cured – and it was topical in 2008. Yes, Australian politics runs in circles: that doesn’t make old jokes funny again.
We really should know better by now, but the return of “Clive Palmer” really hammered home just how low WNF has set the bar for itself. If the funniest things you have to say about Clive Palmer are a): he’s fat and b): his speech is occasionally muddled, go home now. Both those things are true, but in Australia today he’s one of the few people with real hands-on power and if you don’t even hint at the menace there – if all you’ve got to say on the subject is “look, he’s trying to catch food in his mouth” and then make jokes about how he can’t pronounce Leonardo DiCaprio’s name SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK – you are wasting our time.
Look, Molks seemed to like this sketch so we’re not surprised we hate it, but let’s explain why some more: making fun of a fat guy because he’s fat is pretty basic stuff. Pointing out he speaks in riddles is again, pretty obvious. So then what? He’s still a very wealthy man running a chunk of an industry that’s dominated our economy and political thought for the last decade. Maybe there’s a contrast between his public appearance and his professional standing worth looking at? You know, if you wanted to make at least one joke that went beyond the screamingly obvious?
But this isn’t that show. This is a show where the jokes, such as they are, are meant to come entirely from recognition rather than surprise. Why else do a fake sports report about angry tennis dads, a topic generally considered exhausted by 2005? Margaret & David – or at least, we’re assuming it was meant to be them because for once the impersonations were off-brand – reviewing The Ashes? Wow, it’s like Review with Myles Barlow never happened. Also, didn’t they do the same “M&D review different stuff” joke on producer Rick Kalowski’s previous show Double Take? Oh yeah, they did.
On the plus side… well, the Assange sketch was something that didn’t completely embarrass our nation as a whole, as for once the boob jokes actually tied in with the character. Though if you go back and watch it, there’s a McDonald bag slap-bang in the middle of the frame during one of the interview bits that probably violates the ABC’s rules on product placement. But then Downton Abbott returned – yes, of the five segments in week two, three featured reoccurring characters. Buckle in for the next few weeks, it’s going to be the same bumpy ride over and over and over again.
Having Julia Gillard sing “Moves Like Jagger” – a song from mid-2011, which might as well be 1856 by pop culture standards – really just rammed home the way this show feels like something made by 45 year olds for 12 year olds. Except that 12 year olds a): don’t watch the ABC, b): have better things to do than watch TV at 9.30 at night and c): have better taste. And a line where Gillard complains that all Tim does is sit in the shed “not proposing” – zing! Take that, unmarried couples!
But there’ll be plenty of time later on to discuss Wednesday Night Fever‘s steady strand of mildly creepy cultural conservatism later. If it’s lasted this long – and the executive producer is set to become his own boss as the new ABC Head of Comedy – obviously it’s not going anywhere in a hurry. Sure, the ratings might be shaky–
ABC News was strong at 905,000 for ABC1. 7:30 was 664,000, Adam Hills Tonight was 649,000, Qi was 637,000, Seasons was 405,000 but Wednesday Night Fever fell to 324,000 in its second outing.
-but we all know how little the ABC cares about such things. Did we mention Tractor Monkeys is coming back later this year?
We did?
Oh.
Sorry about that.
Hamish & Andy Are Dead
Well, not literally dead as far as we know, though we wouldn’t exactly be surprised to hear that one of their hilarious overseas stunts had ended with some shady character pulling a gun and both of the wacky funsters taking a dirt nap. Imagine the outpouring of grief that would follow – state funeral for both, numerous articles in the tabloids about “The Death of Comedy” (the ABC doesn’t count, obviously), Megan Gale thinking “if only I’d stuck around Andy a little longer, people would still know who I am”. Seriously, wasn’t he meant to be the lucky one going out with her? And yet, as soon as they broke up her media profile went to zero. How odd.
No, we mean any sense of forward momentum in their comedy careers is dead. Oh sure, last night’s premiere of Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year Asia was good solid stuff (and topped the ratings too). The guys are skilled professionals, they know what works with their loveable knockabout personas, and they’re doing a good job of spacing out their material so it doesn’t get too stale. Well, not if you actually watch other non-comedy television shows in between. Or so we guess.
And seriously, how could we possibly complain about an Australian comedy show being the ratings hit of a Monday night, the biggest night (ratings-wise) of the week? We can’t. We’re not. This is irrefutable proof that, given decent comedy, Australians will watch in vast numbers. Hey guys, who’s excited for the debut of Slide Show? And don’t forget, the second series of Housos is coming soon to SBS. And the blanket of failure once again tucks itself in over the comedy landscape.
But Hamish & Andy have been treading water creatively for so long now that it’s time to face facts. Or at least, our opinion that we’re presenting as a fact: they’re never going to be allowed to do anything different on commercial television. Why would they? This stuff they’re doing now is gold! Sure, it’s the same gold they’ve been serving up for the last few Gap Years (apart from that first talk show version that no-one mentions any more), but there’s clearly no reason this format can’t run and run. Well, apart from the fact they’re already doubling up on countries… India’s part of Asia, right? [gets smacked in the face by a sign reading THE SUBCONTINENT].
Clearly as long as they space this stuff out there’s a fair few years left in the idea yet. Unless one or the other of them suddenly turns into a fat sweaty businessman type, in which case their overseas jaunts will stop looking like young dudes having fun and more like old losers on a sexual tourism trip trying to stay one step ahead of the law. And it’s fun, lightweight television that plays to the guys’ considerable strengths. When you think about how many just as talented and funny guys in Australia never found a format that worked for them, Gap Year is all the more impressive.
But that age thing is a worry. Unlike Mick Molloy and Tony Martin (whose success with their radio show Martin / Molloy was the 90s version of Hamish & Andy’s hit radio show, ratings wise at least), whose act was basically ageless (both of them are pretty much doing the same stuff now comedy-wise that they ever did), H&A’s act requires them to be young dumb guys piss-farting about. So there’s a clear cut-off point there, and it’s getting closer every day. Plus the kind of ratings success they’re having really only leaves one direction to go, and it’s not up. Traditionally being a massive hit with the general public is what happens to comedians right before the public get completely sick of them: as Alan Cumming said in Josie & The Pussycats, (quoting Cypress Hill): “Save your money man. Save your money.”
Okay, maybe he didn’t quote that exact line, but the point remains: this party is about to come to an end, and a few tiny side-projects aside (mostly Hamish acting), the madcap larrikins have no plan B. Maybe they don’t need one. Radio will always take them back, and unlike Tony Martin they don’t seem like guys who’d rock the boat too hard with management. But considering the stature ratings-wise they have in world of Australian television comedy, ducking over the the ABC to do some kind of scripted comedy would be doing us all a favour. And hey, bring Ryan Shelton with you. Whatever happened to that guy anyway?
Come and Have a Go If You Think You’re Hard Enough
Well, this is pretty much the funniest thing we’ve seen all week:
TEN has announced a new live panel chat show, This Week Live featuring Dave Thornton, Tommy Little, Tom Gleeson and Meshel Laurie.
Including special guests, live crosses and sketches, the show will look at the week’s news in front of a live audience in TEN’s Melbourne studios.
Not because it sounds funny, of course. No no no no no. It just sounds like yet another misfire in Australian television’s seemingly never-ending quest to make a show as cheaply as possible by hiring a collection of allegedly “funny” people and getting them to talk shit for as long as they can. No, the funny bit is this:
The show will air Wednesdays at 9:30pm, the same timeslot where TEN had great success The Panel produced by Working Dog.
Guess what else airs at 9.30pm on a Wednesday? Here’s a clue: it’s even more shithouse than we thought.
Ten has been pushing to break the ABC’s ownership of the Wednesday night comedy slot for years now. And why not? It’s not like they have any chance of taking down Seven or Nine. First they pushed Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation to Wednesdays at 8.30, then Offspring, then Shaun Micallef’s Mr & Mrs Murder – at a time when he was on the ABC that night at 8pm too, so they clearly care more about winning the night than pissing off the talent.
Presumably the execs at Ten waited until, oh, maybe five minutes tops into the very first episode of Wednesday Night Fever before thinking “yeah, we can totally do better than this shit” and ringing around to see if anyone had any ideas. And they’re almost certainly right, because six more weeks of what we got on the ABC Wednesday night is six solid weeks where viewers will be looking for something else to watch. Say goodbye to any rusted-on viewers that 9.30pm slot might have had, ABC; whatever you try next is going to have to start from scratch.
Meanwhile, Tom Gleeson is going around saying “ I can say whatever I want, and then a million people hear it.” So he must be expecting a whole lot of rubberneckers coming to gawk at this particular train wreck. But for once, this is a win-win situation for viewers: both shows look awful, so if one beats the other we’re not going to have lost anything. Hurrah!
Oh, unless you’re worried that the more shit Australian comedy we get on our screens, the more likely it is that audiences will turn away from local comedy forever. Then this news – like pretty much all the news when it comes to Australian television comedy in 2013 – is nothing but yet another slice of premium arse.
Night Fever, Night Fee-vaa
Back when people cared about such things, there were two schools of thought on how and why the Australian comedy boom of the late 1980s took place. The first school said that, thanks to an expanding culture of live performance both in university revues and dedicated venues, pretty much everyone with an interest in comedy was able to develop their talents to the fullest. Then when television came calling it found a vast group of highly trained people able to create material that connected with viewers, creating an expanding market for comedy that resulted in a string of shows that captured the general public’s attention, such as The Comedy Company, The Big Gig, Fast Forward and the various D-Generation series.
The second school said that it was mostly due to the format: a bunch of sketches, some filmed before an audience, some filmed outside, maybe with a framing device to hold it together. That’s the school that gave us Skithouse, Comedy Inc, Comedy Inc: The Late Shift, Totally Full Frontal, Big Bite, Double Take, Flipside, The Sideshow, The Wedge, Let Loose Live, The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting and The Comedy Sale. Guess which school Wednesday Night Fever comes from?
The thing that’s easy to forget looking backwards at the comedy boom from today is that those comedians were largely trying to adapt comedy skills they’d honed elsewhere to the needs of television. They were already funny: they just had to figure out the best way to be funny on television. Obviously some formats have a better track run than others, and if you’re doing sketches it’s a really big help to have a format where you don’t have to end every sketch on a strong punchline. But it’s telling that all the really great and successful comedy shows on Australian television – your Micallef P(r)ogram(me)s, your Frontlines, even at a pinch your Summer Heights Highs – have come about when talented people have been able to shape the format to whatever suits their particular comedy talents the best.
Of course, it helps to have some comedy talents in the first place.
Look, we could tell pretty much right out the gate what they were trying for with this show, mostly because that cold open of “this show is proudly brought to you by…” is exactly the way a lot of those old D-Generation specials for Channel Seven opened back in the late 1980s. And as avowed long-time fans of that particular, throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks format, we didn’t really have any big problems with them re-using that format.
[we’re guessing we’re going to be pretty much alone there, mind you. Much as comedy fans like to hail the late 80s as a golden age, there are just as many people (if not more) who consider comparing a show to Fast Forward to be a fatal insult. Those kind of people should be ignored: just because a format is old doesn’t mean it can’t still work in the right hands]
Our disappointment with Wednesday Night Fever began with the very first one of those jokes, when Wikipedia was cited as being wildly inaccurate. Which isn’t just a cheap joke, it’s an untrue joke: pretty much every study we could find in five minutes of looking rated Wikipedia as about as good as any other source of information on the net. And this was the very first joke on the show. A joke that relied on a cheap gag based on an inaccurate view that was current around 2007. When Get This was making Wikipedia jokes. That were actually funny.
This was a problem that ran on through the night. The format was cheap and cheerful, but great! We like that in a comedy! Then Sammy J made a joke about just wanting all the political turmoil over so we could have a Parliament that got things done. Except that anyone who was actually paying attention to politics in this country – actual politics, not just the view you got from half-watching Channel Seven news – knew that the Gillard government actually did get a fair amount done over the last three years. But that was just in the real world, and making jokes about that place is hard.
Then Paul McCarthy came out and did a Rudd impression that was just a checklist of things we already knew about Rudd. He uses painful “youth” slang? Check. He’s sweary? Check. He talks about consultation then tells people to piss off? Check. Shouldn’t an impersonation have you thinking “I never noticed that but that’s so true”, not “thanks for telling me something I already knew”?
You could see the back-of-the-cardie-is-sweary joke about the “reconciliation” between Rudd and Gillard – oh yeah, “Gillard” was in the audience – coming a mile off, but that kind of thing is hardly a problem if the end joke is good. And for a few moments the idea of having (fake) Rudd and Gillard together on stage was almost kind of exciting. Where’s this going to go? Well, they swore at each other a bit – fuck, does Wednesday Night Fever love the swears – and that was it. “What’s Mandarin for ‘get fucked’” Gillard said. And Rudd knew what it was! And said it! That was a thing that just happened on Australian television in 2013.
“Celebrity Whores” was where the lightbulb went off over our heads. It was a sketch that set its’ sights on a target audience that was, er… ill-informed? And proud of it? Ruby Rose looks like a boy? Shane Warne saying to Kim Kardasian “didn’t I do you once in a car park in Vegas”? Kardasian pronouncing Kanye as “Cunt-ae”? These are not jokes you make if you have the slightest interest in opening your audiences’ eyes to anything. These are jokes you make if you want to confirm their prejudices. Their nasty, small-minded, offensive, idiotic prejudices.
As we’re not exactly fans of jokes that intentionally set out to flatter stupid people, much of the rest of the first episode of Wednesday Night Fever was not to our taste. The astonishingly mis-judged “Justice” character – yeah, the idea that someone would wrongly complain about workplace bullying is hilarious, because that happens all the time – was kind of interesting, in so far as it felt like a way to do Mad as Hell character Vomitoria Catchment completely wrong. And the “Quentin Tarantino” character in the Clive Palmer promo sketch reminded us a heck of a lot of Peter Moon, which wasn’t a bad thing right up until we started wishing we were actually watching Peter Moon. And we like Peter Moon.
Fellow diners suggested to us that this weeks show was going to have to be at least slightly re-written at the last minute thanks to the recent upheaval in Canberra, so perhaps the wonky Rudd impression could be forgiven. Then again, the final musical number from Gillard seemed fairly polished, so maybe these guys can turn stuff around in a short period of time. Which would be even more depressing, as that song’s big punchline was “my dream’s soaked in ALP”. A joke about piss, thank you very much.
It would be lazy criticism to attack this show for being broad or old-fashioned. In a lot of ways it is, but that’s a clear stylistic decision made by the creators, who’ve set out to make a show that harks back to the “golden age” of Australian comedy. You can dislike the show for that -we don’t, feel free to disagree – but it’s not a failing of the show itself: it’d be like complaining that Who Wants to be a Millionaire isn’t more like Deal or No Deal.
It’d also be lazy to take a swipe at the cast, most of whom weren’t really given a whole lot of time to shine. Paul McCarthy and Amanda Bishop wheeled out impersonations they’d done previously elsewhere with much the same result: as they were hired to do those impressions, clearly the result we got was what was intended. Everyone else was tasked with playing it broad and blunt, and they hit the mark. Just like he did on the probably-better-than-this-if-we-think-about-it sketch version of Good News Week, Sammy J came off best, and hopefully his role will expand in coming weeks – he’s too good to keep in a straight man host role.
Where the wheels totally came off this blunt nothing of a show was in the writing, which never failed to sniff out an opportunity to make cheap, obvious shots at cheap, obvious targets. Making a joke that Ruby Rose looks like a boy? In 2013? What the fuck was that all about? Justice has a “mother” who’s a man? Wow, those crazy feminists, right guys? And why was Julie Bishop stumbling around blindly in the utterly baffling and seemingly endless “Downton Abbott”? Oh right, she’s entirely defined by the “fact” she has a bung eye. The promos for this show said nothing was sacred. Seems that meant having Julia Gillard sing “I was asked if Tim was gay – have you ever seen Thérèse?” Jesus wept.
Time and time and time again the jokes in this show – the ones not based on insults or swearing – were lazy and obvious. Let’s look at just one: having Rudd say “I love abortions. Just love ’em” as an attempt to win over the women’s vote. There’s no joke there. Oh, it seems like there’s one about Rudd wanting to win back women after giving Gillard the arse, but when you look closer (or just think about it for a second) that joke vanishes because it was never really there – not without more of a build-up, not without more context, not without a set-up to make it a punchline. No, the joke there was simple: they wanted to have the current Prime Minister of Australia saying “I love abortions”. Comedy, ladies and gentlemen.
Too often the jokes on this show flattered the audience’s ignorance. Too many times the jokes on this show felt like they’d been in a drawer since 2009 (Shane Warne is still a sex pest? Ruby Rose still has short hair? Pulp Fiction is still a thing?). Nothing here was surprising. Nothing here even tried to be surprising. Yes, it was a show built largely on impressions. But when your impression of Kyle Sandilands is “look, he’s got chickens stuck on his hands BECAUSE HE LIKES FOOD BECAUSE HE’S FAT”, you need to do better.
There’s six more weeks of this, and as it’s recorded week to week there’s plenty of opportunity for it to improve. At this stage we don’t think it will improve, because it seems clear to us that the writing and producing staff made exactly the kind of show they wanted to make. And as one of the producers behind Wednesday Night Fever has already been hired to be the new Head of Comedy at the ABC, this is clearly the direction the ABC want to take their narrative comedy in the future. Wednesday Night Fever is the future of comedy at the ABC. The future.
We’re not sure how much more of this we can take.
At Last, The Twentysomething Review
When was the last time the ABC commissioned a sitcom directed at old people? Oh God, was it Mother & Son in the 1980s? Yet here we stand, only midway into 2013, and already we’ve had a pair of sitcoms fired directly at the strongly beating hearts of da yoof: First was Please Like Me, followed by the long-time-a’coming second series of Twentysomething. It’s almost as if the ABC is suddenly worried the kids are thinking about shunting it off into a home.
Historically, sitcoms usually require two elements: comedy characters and a comedic situation. Australian television clearly can’t handle two distinct comedy elements at the one time, so recent shows have placed their emphasis on just one. Please Like Me certainly had a situation – Josh Thomas realised he was gay, changing his life and that of his chums – but it didn’t features characters that were in any way memorable. Even after watching all six episodes it’s close to impossible to nail-down any of the characters’ without using the word “bland”; insipid yet somehow powerfully sexually attractive man-children may very well exist in the real world, but as the heart of a comedy they’re not exactly side-splitters.
Twentysomething has the reverse problem, which is really much less of a problem because the show as a whole is much better than Please Like Me: it really does have a strong comedy character placed front and center in the form of the very self-centered Jess (Jess Harris). She’s only nearly a complete monster – her interaction with her ex (Hamish Blake) prove that she can make a real connection with someone – but she uses her fake husband / real sidekick Josh (Josh Schmidt) shamelessly (he has just enough air-time to reveal they share a general contempt for humanity, but friend-wise he’s clearly doing most of the heavy lifting) and events in general have to focus on her or she tunes out.
It’s when it comes to finding situations to put her in that Twentysomething struggles. Based on our viewing of the first episode, this second series seems to be repeating the first situation-wise – that is, Jess and Josh try out a variety of jobs – but as set-ups go it wasn’t all that great the last time they did it. Changing the location every episode (they started the show with their homecoming then they checked out uni; week two has Jess building site working for her father, Glenn Robbins) doesn’t allow the show to really dig into a setting, and the writing isn’t pointed enough to breathe life into a setting given only a few scenes to work with.
So once again we have a show almost completely reliant on one element. If you don’t find Jess funny, there’s next to nothing else in this show for you. Fortunately for us, we do; your mileage may vary. But while there’s a bunch of semi-regular supporting characters in this series, none of them make much of an impression. Even Josh’s character could almost work if he never spoke at all and was just constantly run over by Jess’ self-obsessions.
Again, Jess is a great comedy character and we laughed a number of times (okay, it was a single digit number, but still) at the skilful way she made everything around her all about her. But one really strong character does not a successful sitcom make, unless it’s a five minute interstitial like Audrey’s Kitchen. Still, the second episode certainly looks promising, in that Robbins should make a decent comic foil for her and putting her on a building site seems like a situation with comic potential. So, you know, fingers crossed.
It’s arguable that a little less of Jess would work a whole lot better. Giving her a cast of equally well-defined supporting characters to play off against would hardly be a bad thing; even sitcoms generally remembered as being built around one character usually had a strong supporting cast for context. But that might have to wait for Harris’ next TV series (yeah, we know, in Australia you get one series and you run it into the ground, but we’re dreamers over here): for now, at least Twentysomething is a sitcom about da yoof that doesn’t portray everyone under 35 as spineless ineffectual sadsacks whose main skill in life is gazing off into the middle distance looking slightly miffed while an awkward pause drags on. And on. And on.
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.