Australian Tumbleweeds
Vale Santo, Sam & Ed
Dirty Laundry Live, a new panel show about celebrity gossip hosted by Lawrence Mooney and Brooke Satchwell, starts in a couple of weeks. “Get ready to embrace the shame of our obsession with celebrity and fame” says the official webpage, perhaps hinting that this show will not so much skewer celebrity gossip as celebrate it. So, kinda like pretty much every other look at celebrity gossip ever. Probably. We really should wait to see the show before passing judgement.
Yet Dirty Laundry Live does sound a little more “breakfast radio” than we’d hoped. Which is a shame, because there’s a way of taking a light-hearted look at the less serious stories in the media whilst keeping your tongue firmly in your cheek. And that way isn’t always to follow the media’s line and go after the subjects of silly celebrity stories – highlighting the stupid things journalists and commenters say is far funnier.
The Santo, Sam & Ed podcast, now taking a break after 24 episodes, usually gets it right. It may look like they’re just finding bizarre clips and playing them to death for cacks (“This is my sausage moment”, “Qatari cash”), but what they’re really taking the piss out of is the level of insight and commentary we get from people in the spotlight these days, or about people in the spotlight. That and they’re taking endless delight in crowbarring Clive Palmer/fat jokes in wherever possible. And very good Clive Palmer/fat jokes they are too.
It’s a shame Santo, Sam & Ed are taking a break, but Ed’s been in LA for several months and only been calling in via Skype for part of the show, and now Sam’s off to Eurovision, and as fun as it might be to have the Santo, Rob & Tom podcast maybe the Working Dog team have something in the pipeline? We’re to “stay tuned”, apparently.
Connect the Dots and Win a Prize
Okay, so we know there’s going to be a new head of ABC comedy – one Mr Rick Kalowski – and for once there’s a solid track record of work we can examine to give us an idea of where things might be heading. Time to draw some wild and almost certainly inaccurate conclusions from the little we do know as a way to pass the time until something actually interesting happens with Australian comedy. Deal? Deal.
First up, getting Kalowski, AKA the brains behind Comedy Inc: The Late Shift and Double Take amongst others, to run ABC comedy is a fairly large admission that the last few years of ABC comedy haven’t worked as well as anyone would have liked. Who would have thought in 2011 that the guy behind At Home With Julia would take over ABC comedy? And that the Chosen One, AKA Andrew “hit factory” Denton, would all but retire from public life after having been responsible for the ABC’s biggest ratings failure in years?
That said, Kalowski’s rise is also an admission of just how low the standards have dropped in Australian comedy: let’s not forget, Big Bite and Double Take were… hmm, let’s put this tactfully for once. They were rarely watchable? Barely watchable? Fairly flushable?
If Andrew Denton had been given the gig, at least then there’d be a few career-slash-ratings highpoints to gesture at to suggest he might be able to deliver the occasional moment of brilliance, or at least surprise; giving it to Kalowski suggests that the most important thing in Australian comedy today is the ability to show up on time and provide a reliable if generic product that does what it says on the label without scaring the horses by trying anything surprising or new.
Still, just because someone single-handedly kept Paul McCarthy in work for over a decade doesn’t mean they don’t have what it takes to run ABC comedy. Well, apart from the “spotting new talent” side of things, but as he worked with Jungleboys’ sidekick Phil Lloyd on At Home With Julia it’s fairly safe to assume that Jungleboys will continue to provide 80% of the ABC’s “new comedy” needs. And maybe 20% of the laughs.
But back to that whole “clean slate” idea. What we can deduce from Kalowski’s prior efforts is that when he sets out to make a comedy, he at least tries to make a comedy. Which is not something you could say about recent ABC efforts like Please Like Me and Laid and… well, you know the list. It’s not like we ever shut up about them.
The one massive shining light coming out of Kalowski taking on the ABC comedy chief role – and remember, this is the guy who was head writer for two years on Comedy Inc: The Late Shift, a show that survived almost entirely due to it being counted as a drama as far as Channel Nine’s Australian content quotas* were concerned – is that he may put paid to the practice of ABC comedy being used as a dumping ground for shit “quirky” dramas that manage to appeal to neither comedy fans or drama buffs. Which, in our opinion, would be enough of a plus to let him off the hook even if he decided to go around firebombing war memorials in his spare time.
The downside is that while his past work has largely made a solid effort to engage with mainstream Australian society – which, in news to at least a couple of people at the ABC, is A GOOD THING – the level at which that engagement has taken place can most charitably be described as “fairly low”. Help us out, wikipedia:
A skit which was a parody of “Thomas the Tank Engine” was called, “Ernest the Engine“. This would mainly consists of 3 characters, Ernest the Engine Car, Stevie the Steam Train, and Gale the Guards Compartment who originally made their speaking and lead roles. The main component of this skit is Stevie’s stuttering at inappropriate moments, resulting in words that sound like swearing.
Hilarious.
But while ABC comedy in generally has generally been pretty poor over the last few years, one area where it can hold its head up is political satire. When The Chaser or Mad as Hell or Clarke & Dawe go after politicians, it has been on the basis of their ideas, not their vocal tone or choice of swimwear. Kalowski’s previous efforts can not, on the whole, make that same claim.
From what we’ve heard, Kalowski’s appointment doesn’t take place until September, which just happens to be when the next Federal election (and presumably if the polls are correct, a change in government) is due. Kalowski’s already gone on record (and that link’s worth clicking if you’re after some insight into Kalowski’s approach to the media) as being no fan of Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd TV reporters, and no-one’s suggesting for a second that he’s going to drag the ABC comedy department over to the right to pander to our new leaders. We’ve already got an ad agency (Jungleboys) making sketch comedies and sitcoms over and above the various advertising-worshiping Gruen series: the only way things could get more pro-business is if they gave Q&A over to The Sydney Institute.
What we are suggesting is that it might be a good idea to pay close attention and see if the current crop of intelligent political comedies – which generally tend to lean to the left, largely because the right currently have no policies past “stop the boats!” and the usual screwing over of the poor – are downplayed in favour of the kind of shows Kalowski’s been involved with in the past, which have tended more towards mocking politicans’ personal quirks and surface issues rather than the core things our leaders actually stand for.
Put another way, we don’t give a fuck about Gillard’s accent or Abbott’s speedos, and if the ABC starts serving up jokes about that kind of crap rather than jokes about their attitudes and policies we’d be feeling more than a little short-changed.
*Commercial networks have to show a certain amount of Australian-made drama each year as part of their license. Seven and Ten managed this easily due to their nightly half hour soaps; Nine, which had neither local soaps nor successful prime-time dramas, relied on NZ imports and the cheaply made late night Comedy Inc (which, as scripted comedy, counted as “drama”) for much of the early 00’s to make it over the line. It’s no coincidence that Comedy Inc walked out the door at almost exactly the same time as Underbelly walked in.
The reality of the situation
Take a look at the cast of Celebrity Splash, alongside the usual reality TV role-call of presenters, actors, sportspeople and Brynne Edelsten are four figures from the world of comedy:
- Paul Fenech – creator, writer, director, producer and star of Pizza, Housos and Swift and Shift Couriers
- Adam Richard – stand-up, radio personality, and co-creator and star of Outland
- Josh Thomas – stand-up, star of Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, and co-writer and star of Please Like Me
- Denise Drysdale – veteran comic performer whose best known comedy work was on The Ernie Sigley Show and Hey Hey it’s Saturday
Okay, you could dispute whether some of this quartet are strictly speaking “comedians”, but we’ll move on to the main point of this post anyway: should comedians do reality TV?
Isn’t one of the things about comedy that it’s supposed to be above this kind of crap? Shouldn’t comedy be taking the piss out of a show whose intelligence-insulting premise is “amateur attempts an armstand back double-somersault with one and a half twists in the free position, amateur actually does a belly whacker”.
To be fair to Paul Fenech and Denise Drysdale they’re actually quite good physical comedians, so they’ll be quite good at giving the audience a bit of a laugh, which is presumably what they’re on the show to do. Adam Richard, being someone we assume isn’t a “natural sportsman”, should also look suitably amusing as he plunges into the pool. It’s Josh Thomas that’s the worry. That awkwardness schtick of his should be hilarious in this context, but as Thomas seems to disappoint in everything else he does we doubt he could even pull off a half-decent bomb. He’d probably be too embarrassed to even attempt a bomb, or think it would be hilarious to pretend to be too embarrassed to attempt a bomb, or whatever the hell his comedy thought process is…apart from one that doesn’t result in something funny.
Hang on, have we just spent a paragraph analysing the level and style of hilarity these people will bring to Celebrity Splash? Aren’t we supposed to be pointing out that comedians shouldn’t lower themselves to appear in shows like Celebrity Splash? And that the natural place of the comedian with regard to Celebrity Splash is to, say, sit behind the Mad As Hell desk and point out why everything about it is RUINING THE WORLD WE LIVE IN in a very funny way?
As potentially amusing as Fenech, Richard, Thomas and Drysdale might be amongst the sportsperson/actor/model-turned-whatevers who’ll be taking the whole thing a little too seriously (because this could totally be their breakout show), we’d much rather see comedians writing and performing comedy. You know, being amusing in a way that has something to say beyond “look at my incompetence at a sport”.
The State of Play In the World Today
Press release time!
RICK KALOWSKI APPOINTED ABC TV’S NEW HEAD OF COMEDY
Rick Kalowski, former lawyer turned award-winning TV creator/writer/producer, has today been appointed ABC TV’s Head of Comedy.
He will take up his position at ABC TV in Sydney in the second half of 2013. In the meantime, ABC Fiction will continue to manage the comedy slate.
Rick, who is currently Creative Director for Sydney/Los Angeles based Quail Television, has extensive television experience creating, writing and producing numerous television projects in Australia and abroad. These shows have garnered considerable industry recognition, including 14 AACTA/AFI Award nominations – four for Best Television Comedy Series; several Australian Writers’ Guild Awards and nominations; a Logie Award nomination for Outstanding TV Comedy Series; and a Golden Rose of Montreux nomination for Best International Comedy.
Rick was most recently co‐creator/co-writer/executive producer of At Home with Julia (ABC1), 2011’s top rating Australian narrative comedy series, which sold to HULU in the United States. Popular with critics, the series won the 2012 Equity Award for Outstanding Comedy Ensemble Cast, and earned Rick an AACTA Award nomination for Best TV Comedy Series and two Australian Writers’ Guild Award nominations for Outstanding Comedy Writing.
Rick’s other credits include head writer of the long‐running, internationally broadcast sketch comedy hit Comedy Inc. – The Late Shift (Channel Nine); co‐creator/head writer of Channel Seven’s sketch comedy series Big Bite (starring Chris Lilley); and co-writer of the comedy feature film The Honourable Wally Norman produced by Emile Sherman (The King’s Speech), directed by Ted Emery (Kath & Kim) and starring Shaun Micallef. Rick has also developed comedy pilots for 20th Century Fox Television in the United States, and for the BBC.
Carole Sklan, ABC TV’s Head of Drama said “We’re delighted Rick is joining ABC TV as Head of Comedy. He is passionate about Australian comedy and brings considerable creative skills and experience to the role. Rick has written and produced hours of sketch and narrative comedy. He also has a background in the law which seems to have only enhanced his sense of humour.”
Rick Kalowski said “I’m hugely honoured and excited to be joining ABC TV as Head of Comedy. The ABC’s greatest comedy shows have been foundation experiences in my life, both as a viewer and a writer, and the opportunity to help continue that tradition is truly a privilege. Hopefully I don’t wreck the joint”.
And then this:
LOWDOWN NOMINATED FOR MONTE CARLO:
The ABC comedy Lowdown has been nominated for three awards at the prestigious Monte Carlo Television Festival.
The AACTA-award winning comedy has been nominated for Best Comedy, and Adam Zwar and Beth Buchanan have also been nominated in the Most Outstanding Actor and Actress categories.
Other nominees in the Best Actress and Actor category include Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell (Modern Family) and Tina Fey (30 Rock).
Lowdown is a High Wire Films production, produced by Nicole Minchin, created and written by Amanda Brotchie and Adam Zwar and directed by Amanda Brotchie. It joins Modern Family and Canadian show Les Parents, which also have three nominations, and 30 Rock which has two nominations, for Best Comedy and Outstanding Actress (Tina Fey). Other Best Comedy nominees include UK shows Fresh Meat and Red Dwarf X.
Along with winning the AACTA award for Best Comedy, Lowdown has won two AWGIE Awards for Best Comedy, and Season 1 won the Gold Medal for Best Comedy at the New York Film and Television Festival.
We’d love to say more, but we’re currently having a lie-down on the couch with a wet flannel draped over our foreheads.
Details are sketchy
Hmmm…this sure sounds worrying for the ABC…
An output deal between the BBC and ABC will end after nearly 50 years following the announcement of a new BBC Drama and Comedy channel on Foxtel.
Almost all the BBC Dramas and Comedies will shift to the new channel as Australian premieres, many which will be fast-tracked, and will only become available for Free to Air after 12 months.
But the ABC is unhappy it was not consulted on the new deal.
“In the past, the ABC has been able to point to our audience share, distinctive reach and the unique relationship between the two organisations, which has lasted 50 years,” an ABC spokesman said.
“The ABC is disappointed that this decision was taken without any consultation.
“The decision has no impact on the ABC’s ability to acquire content from other British production houses and television networks like ITV and Channel 4.”
On the other hand, when only 30% of the country can be bothered to get Foxtel this may be less of a problem than we think: the 70% without Foxtel will patiently wait a year to watch it on the ABC, right? The ones who haven’t learnt to torrent, that is.
Even so, you’ve got to wonder how the ABC are going retain their reputation for quality programming when less and less first-run quality broadcasting will be available on their channels. Want first run HBO? Sign up to Quickflix, or get it from iTunes or Foxtel. Want first run BBC, get Foxtel and watch it on their channel.
You have to feel sorry for the ABC, unlike the BBC or HBO, or the other big UK and US networks, they’ve never made almost all of the programmes they air. In a multi-channel environment it’s easy for an organisation like the BBC set up on their own; according to Wikipedia their flagship channel BBC One presented 100% original programming in peak time in 2010/11, and they’ve been on air since 1932 so they’ve also got quite a large archive.
Any broadcaster who either can’t get access to first run overseas shows or who isn’t making compelling, distinctive and good quality new programming for itself is going to become less and less relevant, and less and less watched. The ABC needs to make more Australian shows – including comedy. They’ll also need to be braver about the subject matter and formats if they want to stand out.
The most recent episode of Boxcutters concludes with a discussion of Greg Fleet’s Die On Your Feet, a dramedy featuring an all-star cast and directed by industry veteran Ted Robinson, which was filmed a couple of years ago but is most famous for not having made it to air. It was screened at MICF recently and Boxcutters presenter Josh Kinal went along to see it. “It wasn’t great”, he concluded, but the theories for it not airing are far more interesting. Cast member Adam Hills apparently reckons the ABC doesn’t want him, their flagship nice guy, playing a character who’s a “largely swearing arsehole”. There also seemed to be some hints that the show’s failure to make it to air was as much to do with politics as quality. For us, there are questions about whether a show with Alan Brough, Greg Fleet, Adam Hills, Steven Gates and Corinne Grant, and made by Ted Robinson, is likely to be worse than Please Like Me or Laid. If you’ve seen Die On Your Feet and have some thoughts on it please post a comment.
Also on the most recent Boxcutters was a discussion of The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting and Australia’s recent lack of success in the area of sketch comedy. Josh Kinal said of …Knife Fighting “It’s really good, really good…the sketches are funny”, and praised the show for being about things that happen in the real world as opposed to being parodies of television.
There was also much praise the British system of developing comedy talent by giving newcomers opportunities in radio, to get experience and grow, as opposed to the Australian system of throwing a bunch of people into a room and hoping for the best. “It misses out on all the great chemistry that’s developed from performers and the writing that can come from that” said comedian and Boxcutters presenter Courtney Hocking.
We probably don’t need to point this out, but it’s notable that The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting is more an example of the “throwing a bunch of people into a room” system while the consistently excellent Mad As Hell comes from a team who’ve (mostly) been working together for a couple of decades. We know which we think is the better show.
The recent announcement that Quail Television will soon start production on a weekly topical sketch show called Wednesday Night Fever will also test this theory. The Creator/Executive Producer is Rick Kalowski (The Honourable Wally Norman, Big Bite, Comedy Inc – The Late Shift, Double Take, At Home with Julia) and the show will feature a mix of old and new talent:
There’s a new wave of young comedic talent in Australia and this series is the perfect vehicle to showcase them, while playing alongside some of Australia’s more established comedians.
Given that the show will be topical in nature it seems likely that Kalowski’s old cohorts Amanda Bishop and Paul McCarthy will be reprising their Gillard, Rudd and Abbott impressions. Hopefully amusingly.
This could go one of two ways. It could be a “bunch of people in a room” show as Kalowski gets in a load of new faces in the hope that they’ll come up with the goods. Or Kalowski could bring in a bunch of tried and tested names from his days on a string of somewhat similar sketch comedy shows and hope that reliability will win out over inspiration.
Ideally a show like this would start out on radio or ABC2 out of the spotlight, take the time to develop new talent and give them the skills required to write successful topical sketches, and then when a group develops that works lift them up into the big time. Instead we’re getting a show that may come together and work – or it may stumble early on, lose the faith of viewers, get bumped back to a later timeslot and then vanish, remembered only when someone wants to make the dubious point that Australian audiences seemingly aren’t interested in comedy any more.
Still, look on the bright side: with Mad as Hell and The Roast and The Chaser’s upcoming election work, it’s not like the ABC is going to run short of topical news satire any time soon.
Typing LOL Is Not The Same Thing As Actual Laughter
One of our contacts forwarded us this press release for tonight’s episode of The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting:
It is random, it’s weird it’s awkward and uncomfortable.
It’s not easy to boil down all the current cliches about what makes a comedy “good” in 2013 into a single line, but they’ve managed it. As usual with this kind of thing, the words to pay attention to are the words they don’t mention. Words like “funny”. Also “entertaining”, “exciting”, “hilarious”, and pretty much every other even vaguely positive term you could possible think of.
Who chooses to promote their show as being weird, awkward and uncomfortable? Don’t answer that, we already know and so do you: people who want you to think that it’s not a show for everyone. That somehow “getting it” will make you cooler than those morons around you who are still judging comedy on whether it makes them laugh. The fools! Everyone knows only the best comedy makes you feel like you’ve wasted your time and been insulted for your troubles.
The next line was just as thrilling:
It is dividing the audience.
Knife isn’t dividing audiences. According to last week’s ratings, it doesn’t have an audience:
new sketch comedy The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting slipped to just 292,000.
And that was before it was bumped back half an hour. With both The Voice and My Kitchen Rules pounding away at everything else on a Wednesday night, it’s time to call it: the ABC’s Wednesday night comedy line-up is dead. Even if the ABC could come up with a show people might want to watch, putting it on at 8.30pm on a Wednesday night is going to kill it.
Maybe the various Gruen efforts might bring a few viewers back out of sheer habit if the commercial networks aren’t trying, but television is a bullies game and once the ABC showed some weakness the commercial networks – well, Nine and Seven at least, as Ten tried their best to make Wednesdays into their light drama stronghold but couldn’t manage it – decided Wednesday nights were a corner of the playground they wanted all to themselves.
Realistically, we’re back to where we were a decade or more ago when every comedy had to survive on its merits and the sooner the ABC realises it the better. Back then half hour comedies usually aired at 8pm, often on a Monday: it’s no surprise that the closest thing to a success the ABC has had with a new show has been the 8pm only Mad as Hell. And having to make shows for an 8pm timeslot would rule out a lot of the “weird”, “awkward” and “uncomfortable” crutches they’ve been leaning on and force them to go for “light”, “likable” and above all else, “funny”.
Maybe they could move comedy over to Thursday nights, where at least it might do better against the various footy shows. The idea of actually having a night when people know the ABC will be showing comedy-themed local programming is still a good one, even if they’ve managed to shit all over the Wednesday night version by green-lighting year after year’s worth of rubbish*. Back in the bad old days, a lot of ABC comedy series vanished without trace simply because no-one knew where to look for them.
The big difference is, back then the shows themselves often weren’t half bad; giving The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting a prime-time timeslot and then wondering why it doesn’t rate is like wondering why your live stage show about that time you fell asleep on the couch during a commercial for GayMatchMaker.com isn’t packing out the MCG.
*then again, who can blame them? When Spicks and Specks was on, they could put anything on after it at 9pm and it would automatically pull in over 800,000 viewers. Now they’re lucky to get a third of that. The only possible upside to all this is that without the support of a strong ratings lead-in, the ABC will realise they have to make sure every single comedy they green-light can stand on its own as broad-based or quality entertainment. You know, like they already do with drama.
Rubbish Shows in Failure to Rate Non-Shocker
If you ever wanted to whiff deep the odor of desperation, simply hold your nose close to your television set during the ABC’s Wednesday night line-up. How bad has it become? This bad:
It was a bad week for ABC’s Wednesday line-up this week and it is wasting no time in adjusting its schedule.
From next week Qi is back in at 8:30pm (with a repeat no less) while the local Aussie offerings have been pushed out by thirty minutes.
When the answer is “who needs one when you have old Qi‘s”, presumably the question is “why doesn’t the ABC have a current head of comedy?”
The system of entertainment we know as “television” involves three separate and rarely overlapping groups: the people who make television, the people who watch television and – most critically here – the people who run television. Usually when we have a failure as big as the on-going one with the ABC’s Wednesday night comedy line-up, the temptation is to blame one or both of the first two groups, as well-worn terms like “Show X sadly failed to find an audience” and “Show Y was a pile of shit” suggest.
But when you have an on-going failure like the one here, it’s the third group that deserves our attention. Put another way, even in 2013 it remains a fact that if you somehow make a local comedy program that either sounds interesting or features popular performers, audiences will tune in. It’s also a fact that Australia has a number of proven comedy performers who can generally be relied upon to create watchable television. So to have a Wednesday night comedy line up that consists of yet another “comedy” panel show hosted by multiple ratings zero Merrick Watts and a sketch show starring no-one anyone gives a shit about that was seemingly written by anyone who happened to be on set at the time of filming suggests either massive incompetence or a criminal disinterest in the idea of success.
Let’s point out just how easy this whole “spotting losers” deal is: here’s our post on the announcement of Tractor Monkeys:
Yes, it really has come to this: an ABC re-make of The White Room. And the latest in a long line of attempts to ape the success of Spicks & Specks with as little budget as possible. Makes you wonder if we’re almost at the point where a program will get made which consists entirely of random tweets put up on the screen while Andrew Denton laughs.
And here’s what we said at the announcement of The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting:
Perhaps we should look to the next generation, perhaps they’ll return Australian comedy to its glory days? They’ll be keen to cast aside the conservatism of the Howard era, and be “native” to the multimedia environment, right? The announcement last week of the senior creative team behind Jungleboy’s upcoming sketch show, which will showcase up-and-coming talent, was…interesting. Almost 100 sketches from new writers will be directed by the likes of Wayne Blair (The Sapphires), Christiaan and Connor Van Vuuren (The Bondi Hipsters), and Abe Forsythe (Laid). It could work, but as with many new talent projects this is more likely to be the start of something than a great comedy in and of itself, a D-Generation rather than a Late Show, if you like. But good luck to them anyway.
Every now and again someone tells us that our relentless negativity is not an accurate reflection of the current state of Australian comedy, but rather a reflection of the ugly nature of our souls. Ya boo sucks to them: we’re negative about so much of Australian comedy because not only is so much of it shit, but so much of it is obviously shit from the moment it is announced.
And because we live in the real world, and not some magic fantasy land where Merrick Watts or random sketches featuring nobodies are ratings drawcards, the fact that so many of these shows sound crap from the start isn’t just typical internet hating, but a serious problem for the ABC. Put bluntly, PEOPLE WILL NOT WATCH SHOWS THAT ARE SHIT. And thus you have your ratings failure. At least people are still tuning in to check out these new shows before dismissing them: another year’s worth of these turds and the ABC won’t even be able to rely on that.
As for the unreplacable holy grail of Australian comedy, Spicks & Specks wasn’t a hit because of a whole range of bizarre and unexplainable reasons that can never be replicated. Spicks & Specks was, let’s not forget, a rip-off of Never Mind the Buzzcocks that was greenlit after the ABC knocked back Rockwiz. So while even we said the ABC were screwing over their Wednesday night line-up by letting S&S go, that doesn’t mean it was a magical once-off thing that can never be replaced and all blame for the failure of Wednesday nights since then can be laid at its feet, it’s clearly not management’s fault all the replacements they picked have failed, time to hit the pub.
Spicks & Specks worked because A): people like music – they like current music because it’s fun, and the like old music because it brings back memories of fun; B): musicians are entertaining – they’re often good with banter, and when they’re not they can always play some music; C): comedians, being people, like music, so when they’re not trying to be funny about it they can display their passion for it and seeing people being passionate always makes them likable, and D): by staffing it with talented nobodies the audience grew to feel they had ownership of the program – the host and team leaders weren’t the same old faces they saw everywhere else, they were part of the show (and something they could only get by watching the show). Do we really have to point out that none of these things apply to Tractor Monkeys?
If the ABC wants to have a Wednesday night comedy night line-up that rates well, they need to start commissioning comedy shows that at least sound like things people might want to watch. Here’s a quick list of what not to do if you want to get an audience excited*:
Dramadies? Dead.
Panel shows? Dead.
Sketch shows that don’t have a really really good hook to them? Dead.
So we assume we can look forward to seeing at least one more of each from the ABC on Wednesday nights before the year is out.
*unless you can get some seriously high grade talent involved, and as Shaun Micallef seems occupied elsewhere that seems unlikely.
Things You Learn At The Logies
Well, you learn that no-one gives a fuck about Australian comedy, for starters. Mad as Hell was beaten by The X Factor? All the comedy categories replaced by “Best Presenter” and “Best Light Entertainment”? It’s enough to make you think The TV Week Logie Awards are nothing more than a promotional tool for the comedy-free commercial networks. Ahem.
But there’s more to be gleaned from television’s night of shite than just a wall of contempt for making people laugh*. For one, TV Tonight’s David Knox hit the red carpet to chat with the “stars”, and despite The Logies best efforts some of those stars actually make shows that could be defined (by us) as comedy.
For example, this-
Adam Hills on the new title for the show formerly known as Gordon Street Tonight:
“I can’t say Adam Hills Tonight. It’s Me Tonight!
“We start in the middle of May and go right up until the end of July. We film our last episode on July 29 and then I go live on Channel 4 in the UK on the second of August.”
-is handy to know. Will it replace The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting? Hours of fun speculation. Then there’s this:
Adam Zwar on developing new shows for his production company High Wire Productions:
“We’re developing a number of shows for the company. There may be a sketch show for ABC2. But it’s early days and no contract has been signed. It’s with 20-somethings.
“I’d be the EP with Amanda (Brotchie) and Nicole (Minchin) and maybe write a sketch or two.
“We’ve got a few dramas and comedies that are percolating.”
Are we getting more Lowdown and Agony?
“I’m waiting to hear back on Lowdown.
“Until they (ABC) get a Head of Comedy they can’t really commission anything.
“We’re looking good for more Agony. We had really good ratings up until the last week.”
We honestly can’t draw enough oxygen into our lungs to let out a sigh deep enough to express our feelings over “we’re looking good for more Agony“. This piss-useless format is just going to go on and on, isn’t it? Not being funny, not being informative, not being insightful, not being anything but cheap as shit to make as it clogs up timeslots that could have gone to shows that at least tried to be more than a parade of c-list celebrities talking about that one time something happened to them that was pretty much universal to human existence in the affluent west. Fuck.
Also, the ABC doesn’t have a current Head of Comedy? Presumably they’re waiting for the stink to die down over Randling before they slide Andrew Denton in there all nice and cosy. That would explain why Denton recently distanced himself from his production company too, come to think of it…
*See the constant appearances by Julia Morris
Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight
We’ve been a bit negative around these parts of late, so let’s start off our review of The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting – or as we’ll call it from here on, Knife – with a positive: it’s giving fresh faces a shot at making comedy on ABC1. Traditionally the ABC’s major network has been something of a closed shop comedy-wise, so while the show itself is more than a little rough around the edges, obviously the benefits of giving new talent a run far outweigh the uneven quality of the end result.
Excuse us a second, we’ve just been handed this press release:
Produced by the award-winning Jungleboys and the creators of Review with Myles Barlow and A Moody Christmas, THE ELEGANT GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO KNIFE FIGHTING creates a brand new uncharted space for sketch comedy in Australia.
Based on the experimental online comedy site of the same name, the series has attracted a formidable lineup of the country’s finest comedic and dramatic actors.
Patrick Brammall (A Moody Christmas, East West 101), Phil Lloyd (Review with Myles Barlow, A Moody Christmas), Damon Herriman (Breaking Bad, Justified), Georgina Haig (Fringe, Underbelly), Darren Gilshenan (A Moody Christmas,Top of the Lake), Robin McLeavy (Hell on Wheels, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), Craig Anderson (Next Stop Hollywood, Laid), Janis McGavin (The Urban Monkey, Laid) and Dave Eastgate (A Moody Christmas, Problems) lead an amazing lineup of onscreen talent.
Behind the camera is an equally distinguished lineup of creative talent. Among the directors: one of Variety Magazine’s Ten Director’s to Watch, Wayne Blair (The Sapphires, Redfern Now); Trent O’Donnell (Review with Myles Barlow, A Moody Christmas), Craig Melville (John Safran’s Race Relations and John Sarfan Vs God), the Van Vuuren Brothers (Bondi Hipsters, The Fully Sick Rapper), Abe Forsythe (Laid, Mr & Mrs Murder), award-winning documentary director Stephen Oliver (Chateau Chunder: A Wine Revolution, Skippy: Australia’s First Superstar) Alex Morrow (rage, Triple J TV), Alethea Jones (Tropfest and IF award winner) and first-time TV directors Scott Pickett and Leigh Richards.
Ah.
Taken in light of these just-to-hand facts, what we have here is not a hit-and-miss show where newcomers get a chance to develop their comedy skills, but an “amazing lineup of onscreen talent” revealing they’re not really all that good at comedy. And why? The secret lies in a close reading of this very press release, which goes out of its way to list the cast and directors while failing to mention anywhere the names of the people who actually wrote the jokes we’ve come here to laugh at. Who gives a shit about writers? They just write the show.
[Or do they? We’ve heard a third-hand rumour that at least one cast member, unimpressed with the quality of sketches they were appearing in, suggested new jokes and punchlines on the day of filming. Punchlines the producers then went with instead of the scripted ones.]
Having established the producers’ priorities, many of this show’s problems become a lot easier to grasp… in that pretty much all this show’s many, many problems stem from piss-poor writing. Yes, there are plenty of poor performances here as well, but as they largely stem from bad writing – many of the cast members, as that press release is so keen to remind us, have been tolerable in other things – we’re going to stick with blaming the bad writing.
Avoiding the obvious segue, here’s the opening of the Knife review at Molks Tv Talk:
The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting is new sketch comedy from the pens of the Jungle Boys (Trent O’Donnell, Phil Lloyd & Jason Burrows) that doesn’t just push sketch comedy in a ‘different direction’, it picks it up kicking and screaming and carries it over there; then consoling it at their collective bosom whilst changing it’s nappy of shame which it soiled in the process.
Where to begin? For starters, this supposedly insanely edgy and out-there sketch show features a sketch where an Amish I.T. guy tries to fix a computer monitor with a hand drill. May we refer you to #16 (“Wooden Spoons”) in this list of offbeat Saturday Night Live sketches. Or this sketch from the UK’s It’s Kevin, which aired slighter earlier this week. Or the extended Amish jokes in the recent US teen sex comedy film Sex Drive. Or just comedy in general. Amish jokes – look, they’re people who don’t get modern technology! – have not been taking comedy in a “different direction” since roughly a fortnight after the Amish first came to America. They may still be funny, but making them is about as conservative and safe as sketch comedy gets.
“But duh, that’s not the joke – the REAL joke is that the guy who’s computer is being “fixed” is the only person who realises the Amish I.T. guy is useless! He’s a sane man trapped in a mad world!”. Thank you, imaginary idiot. What you’ve just described is not a joke; it’s lazy writing trying to drag out a one-joke idea for three or four minutes. We know sketch comedy is rare in this country, but anyone who’s watched any sketch comedy at all ever from any source knows that, unless you really put your back into it, the whole “we’re treating this insane idea as if it’s normal” idea is not strong enough to hang an entire sketch on. Especially when your sketches are overlong, as Knife‘s tend to be.
That brings us to the same basic flaw that runs through almost all of the sketches here: what is a moderately funny idea when expressed in one line (“he’s an average guy at a posh restaurant who’s trying to impress his date but he doesn’t know what any of the menu items are!”) is turned into a lengthy sketch, only no-one has any idea where to take it (“let’s have the food served on a naked fat guy!”).
For example, there’s a sketch about a guy who never takes his hat off and his wife pleads with him to let her see his head. It doesn’t matter if you’re bald, she says, I’ll still love you, she pleads and pleads and pleads. If you can’t see how this is going to end, you may want to check if English is a language you actually understand.
The low point comes in a dinner party sketch – yes, for a show that supposedly takes sketch comedy in a “different direction”, this features both a dinner party sketch AND a restaurant sketch, breaking the exact same ground that, say, Full Frontal broke for a full hour 26 times a year in the mid 1990s – in which a guy who looks like a sex criminal acts like an abusive dickhead for what feels like hours before it’s revealed that the reason why he’s acting like an abusive dickhead is – wait for it – because he owns a Prius, and thus is morally superior to everyone else there.
Then he continues to act like an abusive dickhead. Everyone else goes along with it. He drives a Prius.
Then later on there’s a callback to him acting like an abusive dickhead. He gets two women to make out for his amusement, because he drives a Prius.
Then after that there’s another callback to him acting like an abusive dickhead, followed by the only actual punchline in the show. It’s not a great one.
If you’re going to do a sketch show where all you have is good sketch concepts – and none of the basic concepts here are terrible – you need to do one of those rapid-fire sketch shows that just fires out the funny ideas willy-nilly. Oh wait: those shows don’t give the directors a chance to display their chops, or the performers a chance to ham it up for their showreels. Those shows do require writers, and plenty of them. Those shows don’t provide a chance for an up-and-coming production house to give their mates profile-raising work. Those shows do end up being funny for the people at home.
The one sketch here that does work is the one where Captain Cook is berated for his lazy naming of the islands he discovered, and that works because hey, a lot of those names really are lazy! Thursday Island, Easter Island, Christmas Island… the Cook Islands… maybe you had to be there. It is also the only sketch here that isn’t trying to be “edgy”. Could it be that the way to be funny is by being funny, not edgy? Could it be that the last decade of “awkward” comedy got it all wrong?
Let’s be blunt: even with the current slip-shod state of ABC comedy, this just isn’t prime time ABC1 material. This isn’t even C31 material. For a sketch show to work in sketch-adverse 2013, you either need a really solid concept to tie the sketches together (Problems wasn’t a great show by any stretch, but at least it advertised itself as having a definite point of view behind its sketches) or the sketches need to be really, really, really good.
The overall concept’s nearly there, what with most of the sketches (like most sketch shows) being about daily life being taken to awkward extremes (“let’s test out our potential new home by having a fight!” “look, it’s the dad who gets offended and goes into too much detail about sex when he hears his daughter’s pregnant!”); as for the quality…
Let’s give the last word to Molks:
Thank you, ABC1, for the return of hilarious, uncomfortable, giggle-inducing, awkward sketch comedy. The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting is sure to put the cat among the pigeons of comedic taste and we’re long overdue the shit-covered statue that will be the debate surrounding it’s screening.
At least he got the “shit-covered statue” part right.