Australian Tumbleweeds
Back in the Doghouse
We were recently asked on twitter (by one Ducks McOntos) what we thought of this:
The Oxford dictionary defines ”influence” as the capacity to have an affect on the character, development or behaviour of someone or something. In television, that translates into only one thing: having a hand in the most successful programs.
Yet influence is more complex than mere power. Chief executives have power by virtue of their office. Programmers have it by virtue of their control over the schedule.
The Guide canvassed a panel of experts – critics, executives and industry insiders – to compile the list of the 50 Most Influential People in Television.
This draws together the power partnerships, the deal-makers behind the deals and the new generation of rising stars.
Seriously Fairfax? You’re starting off articles with “The Oxford dictionary defines…” now? We look forward to future articles written by your crack team of high school debaters and regional sales assistants.
But in this case our attention wasn’t directed towards the usual self-serving Fairfax waffle – FYI, putting out a “power” list doesn’t make it look like you have the power to say who’s powerful; quite the opposite in fact – but the fact that, for what is probably the first time in a long time, Working Dog – you know, the production house run by those guys who once made Frontline and some other less-impressive but more popular shows – isn’t on the list.
On one level, this isn’t at all surprising. These lists don’t actually measure real power, after all, just the perception of power gathered by a bunch of outsiders and people on the make. Working Dog don’t have any shows on air at the moment; of course they’re less powerful than Andrew Denton, who had thirteen hours worth of programming on ABC1 last year. Hey, remember this bit at the very start of the article?
The Oxford dictionary defines ”influence” as the capacity to have an affect on the character, development or behaviour of someone or something. In television, that translates into only one thing: having a hand in the most successful programs
Explain to us again what the creator and host of Randling is doing on this list?
That’s the problem with these lists: you need zero actual insight into television to do one. List all the obvious decision makers at the networks, add in the production companies that are “hot” right now, a bunch of writer-actors – seriously, even we did a double-take at seeing Brendan “did anyone actually read my novel?” Cowell listed here (for one thing, that Save Your Legs film he wrote and starred in really, uh, failed to set the box office on fire) – plus a few other creatives to flatter your readers that television in Australia is a real art form and not a veracious money-suckhole, and away you go.
A real-world top fifty power list would just list the top fifty executives at the various networks plus their mates (hey, maybe Denton does deserve to be on this list); another more useful version of this list would take into account the popularity of the shows being made. You’re going to list Adam Zwar but not Hamish & Andy? Which lot are making the shows people actually watch again?
So all Working Dog’s absence from this list means is that they aren’t currently making television – apart from another series of Audrey’s Kitchen for the ABC – right this second. Could they wander into Ten with a new idea for a series and get it green-lit in five minutes? We’re going to go with yes, considering that two of their earlier shows – The Panel and Thank God You’re Here – basically reshaped Australian television in a way that Randling, or anything else Denton’s ever created, didn’t. Last time we checked, that’s real power.
(we’ll shut up about Randling now)
But… okay, let’s be honest: Working Dog haven’t been rocking the television world of late. Pictures of You happened. Santo Sam & Ed’s Sports Fever was a great show that no-one watched. Those 2 minute episodes of Audrey’s Kitchen seem to have been a bit of a hit for the ABC, but they go two minutes. Otherwise, as far as television goes, their cupboard’s looking pretty bare. Guess what? That’s a good thing.
When Working Dog are making hit Australian television shows, they’re making the kind of bland, FM-radio-esque shows that become hits on Australian television. We’re not going to say anyone can do that kind of thing – obviously it’s a serious challenge – but other people can and do manage it. But when Working Dog aren’t making hit shows, they don’t make The Rennovators or Being Lara Bingle; they make comedy. And they’re still pretty good at that.
For a two minute show, Audrey’s Kitchen was a lot funnier than most of the ABC’s half hour comedies. The Santo, Sam & Ed postcast started out strong and gets better each week. The Working Dog website here has been coughing up the occasional manifesto from Tom Gleisner’s cricketing character Warrick Todd, and while we probably don’t need to see another book-length Todd outing, as with Audrey’s Kitchen he can get a lot done in a small space.
This would usually be the point where we’d start with our moaning about how Working Dog’s style of comedy is no longer fashionable amongst the television executives who populate the Power Lists, and how if these guys can’t get a television showcase for their comedy up and running what hope do newcomers wanting to follow in their ramshackle yet clued-in footsteps have? But for once we’re going to be happy with what we’ve got: Working Dog, one of the legends of Australian comedy, are still making comedy that’s actually funny.
If Fairfax can’t see that, they deserve all the “comedy” from the influential Rick Kalowksi – remember, he’s “one of Australia’s most prolific comedy writers, with credits including Comedy Inc. and Double Take” – that comes their way.
Oh Donna
A couple of months ago we received a media release from the Melbourne-based sketch comedy group Aunty Donna, telling us about their web series Aunty Donna’s Rumpus Room. Our policy with such media releases is to watch the shows when we have time but only to write something if we like and/or have anything interesting to say about them. In the case of Aunty Donna’s Rumpus Room we liked it, but whether the following review is interesting…well, you decide.
Aunty Donna’s Rumpus Room was part of the community TV sketch show Lost Dog and it’s also available on Aunty Donna’s YouTube channel. A good video to start with on YouTube is the Trailer, a series of lightening-fast sketches which together cover just about every way you could ever parody an “on the streets” vox pop video. As for the Rumpus Room episodes themselves, they contain a mix of a good sketches and sketches which need some work.
The most watched of the episodes is Sweetlove, which consists of a slow, not very funny sketch about a douchebag Russell Brand-lookalike DJ called Sweet Love, but is followed by a brilliant rant by a guy who gets called gay by someone leaning out of a car window. Similarly, Women has another so-so sketch about DJ Sweet Love, but this is followed by several better sketches. Our favourite episode was Lion which includes a sketch about Tony the door-to-door tea towel salesman. Throughout the sketch more and more revelations about Tony’s personal life emerge, each one funnier and funnier.
The production values on this show are about as high as you can expect from community television and we suspect the more successful sketches began life on stage, but the flaws are endearing, because the show’s made in the right spirit, and the bulk of the material is amusing enough to keep you watching. Hopefully Aunty Donna will get the opportunity to make more sketches for online or TV, but in the meantime the group have some live shows coming up the Melbourne International Comedy Festival which might be worth a look.
The model and the charmless man
Isn’t Josh Thomas so loveable, with his cute hair and his innocent gormlessness? Look! He’s all curled up on his bed in the foetal position because THE HOTTEST GUY ON THE PLANET wants to kiss him. Feel his pain, everyone! That must be, like, TOTALLY AWKWARD!
Please Like Me is the story of 21 year old Josh, who can’t quite get his head straight about how he’s not straight. His relationship with Claire (Caitlin Stasey) ends when she points out he’s gay, then he doesn’t quite get it on with ultra-hot Geoffrey (Wade Briggs), then his Mum (Debra Lawrence) overdoses and needs looking after, except his Dad (David Roberts) can’t do that because he’s now in a relationship with the much younger Mae (Renee Lim). But just when the situation with Mum kinda sorts itself out – conservative battle-axe Aunty Peg (Judi Farr) comes to the rescue – Claire starts showing up at the flat Josh shares with Tom (Thomas Ward), which makes finally getting it on with Geoffrey even more difficult. Or indeed AWKWARD.
So, all the classic ingredients of the sitcom present and correct there…except the script misses opportunity after opportunity to make use of them in a way that’s really funny, which makes Please Like Me seem more like a hipster teen drama about nothing than a sitcom about young people coming of age. Thomas and the rest of the cast get us much out of the script as they can, and there are a few funny moments, but ultimately this show is about as empty as Josh Thomas’ Gen Y persona. Which is great news if you like stupid conversations about embarrassing genitals, but bad news if you want things to move things along to, well, something a bit more interesting.
The various will they/won’t they/why have they… moments in this series are all well and good, but they’ve been done to death by shows like The Office and are no funnier this time ‘round. Where’s the peril? Why should we give a shit? Josh is basically a dick who got very lucky, and who inexplicably maintains that luck despite treating his friends and lovers like doormats. That might be realistic if he was ultra-charming or occasionally nice to them, but he isn’t. He’s a self-indulgent, over-grown schoolboy, exaggerating his awkwardness and youth to get away with being a jerk, and Geoffrey, THE HOTTEST GUY ON THE PLANET, who likes him for no reason we can understand, should cut his losses and move on.
Which brings us to the question of to what extent that ditzy blonde Gen Y guy is a comic persona or the real Josh Thomas, and to what extent Please Like Me was a misguided commission that’s become a vanity project. Thomas’ multiple Tumblie-winning podcast Josh Thomas & Friend (the friend being Thomas Ward) was kind of a pilot for this sitcom, and as we’ve documented several times it was chock-full of awkwardness about sex and genitals, and totally uninteresting to anyone who’s attained any level of maturity, sexual or otherwise. Maybe there’s a clue here as to why this sitcom from a high profile comedian was announced with great fanfare several years ago, and then delayed and delayed until it now limps on to our screens in a two-episode block on ABC2. Has someone at the ABC had an AWKWARD moment of their own? Where they’ve realised that famous guy from that panel show isn’t actually very good? And he’s just using his sitcom to spend time being feted by admirers and canoodling with hot guys, whilst pretending he doesn’t give a shit? Far from being a shunted to ABC2 because it’s about gays, we suspect Please Life Me has been shunted to ABC2 because it’s just not very good. SUPER AWKWARD!!!!
You’ll Have a Gay Old Time
It took us a while, but we finally managed to track down a copy of “Switched On”, the TV guide that came with today’s Herald-Sun newspaper. Why bother, you might ask before recoiling in horror as we wave it under your nose and you see the cover tagline: “SITCOM SCANDAL: Is Josh Thomas’ new show too gay for ABC1?”
Before we get into the meat of this we’d be remiss not to point out that, much like the recent study that revealed that every one of the Herald-Sun‘s editorials since 1996 were 100% in support of the Coalition, the Herald-Sun will NEVER say anything good about the ABC. They will even side with groups they otherwise are somewhat dubious about – immigrants perhaps, or homosexuals – if it means they get the chance to beat up on the national broadcaster. So with this story completely explained away before we even open the paper, let’s continue.
Strangely, the page 3 story titled “Hard to Please” (geddit? gays are, um, hard?) is credited to two writers: The Herald-Sun‘s hard man of entertainment opinions Colin Vickery and “Switched On” editor Darren Devlyn. Not being privvy to the News Ltd editorial meetings, we can only speculate on why it took two writers to write a puff piece largely comprised of easily google-able information about previous “gay panics” on network television. So lets: presumably this story began as the usual mild look at Thomas’ upcoming show, then someone (*cough* Vickery *cough*) realised this was a big old stick he could use to stir up some controversy so any part of the interview that wasn’t Thomas talking about the timeslot change got dumped in favour of making it look like the ABC was scared of teh gays, and hey presto:
IS Please Like Me too gay? That is what Josh Thomas is asking as he prepares for the debut of his new TV comedy.
Please Like Me was originally set to screen on ABC1 last year but has been shunted into digital channel ABC2.
Thomas plays twentysomething Josh who lives with best mate Thomas (Thomas Ward) and, at first, is in a steady relationship with girlfriend Claire (Caitlin Stasey).
Claire splits with Josh, telling him that he is obviously gay. His despair is short-lived when young hunk Geoffrey (Wade Briggs) enters the scene.
Geoffrey wants to get physical with Josh. Cue lots of man-on-man kissing, bed scenes, and jokes about sex.
Later, Josh is forced to move back into the family home after his divorced mum Rose (Debra Lawrence) overdoses.
Please Like Me has a sweetness that sets it apart from other boundary-pushing comedies such as Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys and Summer Heights High which happily found a home on ABC1.
The ABC insists the gay content isn’t the reason Please Like Me was shunted to ABC2, where it is sure to attract a smaller audience.
“The tone of Please Like Me and the issues discussed are principally aimed at an audience in their early 20s,” an ABC spokesperson says.
“Since ABC1 is largely a channel of mass appeal that tends to attract an audience with an average age the other side of 35, we decided the best home for Please Like Me was ABC2.”
Thomas isn’t convinced.
“They told me it (the switch to ABC2) was a compliment. I don’t believe them,” Thomas says. “I don’t know if what they were really saying was, ‘Josh the show is a bit s—‘ or, ‘Josh the show has too much suicide and gay sex in it’.
“People have suggested to me that (too gay) is why they did it (put it on ABC2). I would be shocked if that’s why but I also wouldn’t be.”
Not to pre-empt our upcoming review of Please Like Me, but did you notice the missing word in that article? Here’s another clue: later on in the guide Vickery reviews Please Like Me and surprise surprise, he actually likes it (of course he does – he couldn’t argue the ABC were evil gay-hating bastards for shafting the show if he thought the show was crap). It’s not available online that we could find, so here’s his review in full – again, keep an eye out for the missing word:
I am still struggling to understand why Please Like Me has been shunted to a digital channel. The ABC reckons it is because Josh Thomas’ comedy is aimed at a young audience. If that is the case, Chris Lilley’s new comedy should land on ABC2 as well. We know that isn’t going to happen. Thomas, of Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation fame, plays Josh, who lives with his best mate Tom (Tom Ward). Josh is devastated when he is dumped by his girlfriend, Claire (Caitlin Stasey). She reckons he is gay. He hasn’t quite accepted the fact. Young hunk Geoffery (Wade Briggs) certainly hopes Josh is gay. he wants to stay the night. Josh also has to contend with divorced mum Rose (Debra Lawrence) and dad Alan (David Roberts), who has a young girlfriend, Mae (Renee Lim). Some will find the gay content in Please Like Me confronting, but at heart this is a sweet – and very honest – look at relationships and growing up. Thomas more than holds his own in a challenging lead role. File next to A Moody Christmas.
So, did you spot the missing word? The word that’s nowhere to be found in all this supposedly “positive” coverage of Please Like Me?
Funny.
No-one – and by “no-one” we mean “Colin Vickery” – dares to come out and claim that this “comedy” is actually funny. It gets described as “sweet” twice and “confronting” and “boundary-pushing” once each – the dog-whistle you now hear is aimed entirely at Herald-Sun readers, by the way, so you may want to get your hearing checked – but no-one there seems willing to use a single word to describe Please Like Me that might even hint at anyone at home getting a laugh out of it.
Whether that’s a nod towards what they actually think of the show or just that the Herald-Sun doesn’t want to admit to laughing at a program that features 20-something gay characters who have sex and aren’t mincing queens, we don’t know. We’d like to think it’s the former; it’s just that the latter is a heck of a lot more likely.
Trolling the trove
It was great to hear last week that Tony Martin has donated a large number of tapes of material from Martin/Molloy, Get This and The D-Generation breakfast show to the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). Audio-visual archives worldwide primarily acquire their collections from “official” sources such as broadcasters and production companies, and in Australia commercial radio has historically been overlooked and under-archived. Actors, writers, hosts and producers, who sometimes have copies of productions they have worked on which have not been officially archived, often fill this gap, and Tony Martin has become the most famous recent example of such a person donating some of their work to an archive.
But while material from these classic radio shows will now be preserved for the ages it’s unlikely we the public will get to hear any of it very soon. Providing access to its collection is part of NFSA’s remit but section 4.4.3.1 of its collections policy makes it clear that this is highly unlikely in this case:
c) Access to items in the collections for commercial use may be permitted if such activity:
- does not violate any party’s intellectual property rights
- does not violate any donor- or depositor-imposed restrictions
- does not jeopardise the NFSA’s not-for-profit status.
d) The NFSA may provide, usually for a fee, reproductions of collection material. Such reproductions do not transfer to the researcher or producer copyright or other intellectual property rights, or otherwise constitute permission for the researcher to publish or display the reproduction beyond the contracted use specified.
The copyright on much of the donated material is likely to prevent anything beyond digitisation and expert care of the tapes for the foreseeable future, so don’t hold your breath for CD releases, or downloads from the NFSA’s website. While it will presumably be possible to visit the NFSA and hear the material once it has been digitised, this is not something that will be convenient for most people. Therefore we must continue to rely on existing CD compilations and off-air recordings made by enthusiasts. Happily, many of the latter are easily available online…if you know where to look.
The other piece of good news is that many audio-visual archives now recognise that there are significant gaps in their collections and are actively trying to redress the balance. The British Film Institute’s Missing Believed Wiped scheme is one example of a way in which illegal off-air recordings are being absorbed into national collections and made accessible to the public, and to a certain extent the NFSA seems to be following suit.
NFSA archivists are also engaged in active, “contemporary collecting” of material indicative of the times. Last year staff from the NFSA visited Triple M Melbourne’s Hot Breakfast to get the views of their listeners on what segments from that show they should preserve. The Hot Breakfast may not be the greatest show ever but it is indicative of commercial radio at this time in history, so it’s reasonable that the NFSA bothered to do this.
No doubt NFSA staff are also out there tracking down episodes of Kyle and Jackie O and the master copy of Mel Greig and Michael Christian’s Royal phone prank. What will the Australians of the future think of us when they hear them? Apart from that we must have been savages? Let’s hope a kindly archivist will include a note with Tony Martin’s donations, explaining “Beat the Beazley” and “Donkey Courtroom” – that’ll prevent our children’s children from burning down our retirement homes in disgust, right?
We’re Quite Happy To Take It For As Long As Humanly Possible
Shaun Micallef is Mad as Hell is back. Our long national nightmare is over. It’s not until you actually watch this show that you realise just how thin and flavourless so much of what passes for comedy in this country really is. Taken individually, pretty much every joke here could appear – most likely in a much less funny form – on any number of the “quality” comedy shows we get in a year. Jokes about how boring and pointless Q&A is, how the ABC won’t even let them dress someone up as a Muslim cleric, over-the-top news graphics, pointing out how creepy Julie Bishop is when talking about her “friendship” with Kevin Rudd. Nothing too ground breaking there.
But Mad as Hell doesn’t leave it there. It doesn’t linger at the scene of the crime; instead it piles on the jokes, from Micallef’s face-pulling to the offbeat and occasionally unsettling personalities of his reporters and guests. It throws in some wordplay, then has a fashion show with Cardinals because why not? It’s the sheer density of the show above all else that stands out against the limp backdrop of so much Australian comedy. It’s the feel of a show where everyone involved is trying non-stop from start to finish to try and make you laugh.
If you saw the last series then you know what to expect, and nothing major has changed here. Good. Those idiots complaining that it was too much like Newstopia are idiots. Micallef is currently the funniest man on Australian television – or if not the funniest man personally, then a man who likes funny enough to surround himself with writers and performers who are so good at being funny themselves they lift him up to that position – and it’s extremely difficult to think of a better format for his style of comedy.
Plus, c’mon: it’s a smart show. Not smart in the way that Randling liked to think it was smart, all condescending and packed with smug gits doling out tidbits of utterly useless “information”: smart in that it knows the news is this country is one big half-arsed pantomine based more on “look over here!” style reporting than any desire to actually explain what’s going on. And it’s fine with that, because that is a lot funnier than a useful working media would be.
It’s not a show anyone would call savage, but there’s enough anger here to give it an edge rarely seen in recent years – and if you think we’re referring back fondly to Wil Anderson’s moronic poo-jokes about Liberal politicans, fuck off. It’s simply a show that will try anything to make people laugh, from silly voices to sharp digs at important figures, and it knows that letting the audience get too comfy about proceedings is a great way to make sure they don’t laugh. In short, the best comedy show in Australia is back: you should probably tune in.
The Future of the Internet is a Shambles
We almost never forward-promote stuff – our job being to snarkily dismiss, not talk up – but we’re making an exception today because of the magic word(s) when it comes to online content: audience interaction! Or is it “join the conversation” now? Whatever: it seems the three guys who make up The Shambles are reuniting to record / perform a commentary over this year’s Oscar’s ceremony. The two points of interest here are as follows:
A): While The Shambles were pretty funny back in the days of their c31 show, they haven’t performed together as a group for a number of years now (Sean “Lynchy” Lynch did short comedy segments solo on Ten’s ill-fated The Circle; Nath Valvo has a radio gig and a growing reputation based on his string of successful live shows; Anthony “Sos” Ziella has dropped off the face of the Earth). So comedy aside there’s also some novelty value in seeing them get back together, if only because they might just hate each other now. And isn’t awkward comedy “the in thing” now?
B): Supposedly it’s all going to be happening on the day at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-shambles And you’re going to be able to interact with the guys as they crap on about the Oscars via the ustream page or twitter via the Shambles guy’s various handles. Live online heckling! And the whole thing will be archived on the guys’ YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/shamlynchy
It’ll be interesting to see how all this pans out. The Shambles’ background is in community radio and television so something rough and ready is pretty much their style (according to the press release 2013 marks the ten year anniversary of their formation, so hopefully they know what they’re doing by now). Considering the excess of comedy talent in this country compared to the outlets available for it, moving online seems like the logical – if non-paying – way to go.
Whether this kind of thing works better as a bunch of online tweets rather than an actual broadcast is, again, one of the reasons to keep an eye on this: if it works you’d expect this kind of thing to become a lot more common.
And if it doesn’t, it’ll just be a shambles. Uh, zing?
Murder Was the Case
If you want to sell a program to a commercial network, here’s how you do it: walk into the programming chief’s office, sit yourself down in one of the comfy chairs, and say the following: “Shaun Micallef. Kat Stewart. They’re husband and wife. And they solve murders.” Done and done, back slaps all ’round, break out the Bundy, money in the bank.
Unfortunately, going by the first episode of Mr & Mrs Murder, no-one really seems to have thought much beyond that. Oh, just to make it extra clear up front: despite our reviewing it here today, this show isn’t a comedy. Micallef gets a few Micallef-style lines, but otherwise this seems to be pretty much just a straight lightweight mystery show. You know, the kind of thing that’s just fine in the background of your life but not something anyone ever actually watches.
The ABC have been punching these shows out for the last year or so, what with Mrs Fishers’ Flapper Murder Spree and Craig McLachlan Has A Crime-Solving Beard, and their big point of difference has been they they’ve been set in olden times with (slightly more) modern characters: Fisher is an independent woman in the 1920s, McLachlan’s Beard believes in science so it could be set pretty much any time in Australia up to and including right now.
Mr & Mrs Murder is walking the same side of the street but without the obvious crutch of old-timey settings. Instead, its point of difference is the “charming” relationship between two crime solving lovebirds who tidy up murder scenes (their job) and meddle with investigations (their hobby). Trouble is, even with Micallef’s involvement we are still talking about Australian television and while our costumers and set designers are generally considered to be competent the same can’t be said for our writers.
As this first episode plods along – a national hero is found dead in a fancy hotel and while the amazingly lazy police assume it’s the room service guy they found clutching the knife, our murder clean-up crew thinks differently – through a string of dull scenes populated by forgettable actors and average dialogue, it’s increasingly clear that Micallef and Stewart (at least as written here) aren’t as charming as they think they are. They’re certainly nice enough to spend some time with, but they can’t carry an entire show on their own when everything else is below par.
Getting the tone for this kind of show right is a big challenge. The murder has to keep our attention without being so ugly that the nice detective couple couldn’t realistically get involved. The story has to pile on the twists to – again – keep our attention, but there has to be enough room between the twists for the leads to be charming and likable. And the leads themselves have to be convincing as murder-solvers without being annoying smart-arses or bungling nitwits. Australian television drama often has difficulty doing just one thing at a time; asking them to juggle this many plates is putting in a bulk order for a lot of broken crockery.
It’s hard to know if things will get better. We’d like to think so, but considering at this early stage it doesn’t seem to be a series with strong continuity, it’s just as likely they started off with one of their stronger episodes. In which case, gulp. At least Micallef’s Mad as Hell – yes, we will be watching it and yes, our review will be along once we figure out what to say past “it’s a lot like it was last year” – is on the air now as well so it’s unlikely that Mr & Mrs Murder will tank his career even if it fails. Hell, it’s not like Ten hasn’t served up a bunch of duds over the last few years, one more isn’t going to hurt them. Much.
What’s left is a show that simply isn’t as good as it should be. All the ingredients are there, but no-one seems to have paid enough attention to the recipe. Choose your own sign-off from the following: A): “And that’s the real mystery here”, B): “You’d think with all the cooking shows Ten’s served up over the years they’d know the importance of getting the recipe right”, C): “Hopefully by week five or so Micallef will spend an entire episode doing his Sir Alec Guinness impersonation (or better yet, Milo Kerrigan) for no reason”, and D): “Will Mad as Hell make jokes about Mr & Mrs Murder if things go south?”
Worming its way out
What is the point of Can of Worms? Its ever-changing format suggests it doesn’t know itself. Maybe that’s its point? It’s there to test every possible permutation of the panel show format until it gets it right? Well, good luck with that, meanwhile we’ll be over here reading a book about grammar. Apparently we’re bad at that.
Oh, alright, Can of Worms is probably better now it’s live…if you’re the kind of person who’s really into the “second screen experience”, or if you just like making sarcastic comments about lame telly on Twitter. But if you’re of the increasingly old-fashioned view that one screen is all you need to be entertained and informed then there’s not much on Can of Worms for you.
Want some views on drugs in sport? Or the horse meat scandal? Read a newspaper, or a blog, or listen to breakfast radio, or watch a TV show that’s on nightly…chances are the same sort of people who turn up on Can of Worms are giving their comments there. Even better, some of those people are giving informed views rather than angling their comments to get to a punchline.
We’d complain less if the punchlines reached were any good, obviously. Or if the serious parts of the conversation contained the sorts of views you couldn’t hear anywhere else. Can of Worms came close to that last week when they invited an expert on the issue to say a few words in favour of drugs in sport, but he didn’t get much time to say his piece. They presumably had to cut back to Julie Goodwin or something. Fair enough, she’s the real expert on the topic.
In its early days Can of Worms tried to get an audience by being a bit controversial, now it can’t even manage that – partly because nobody’s watching. This is Can of Worms‘ third series, and you have to wonder whether this is its last. It’s never quite worked, it’s never rated brilliantly, it’s changed itself more times than we can count, and these days we only tune in when there’s nothing else for us to blog about that week. You’re presumably the same, except you don’t write a blog about Australian comedy and therefore have no reason to watch it at all. We wish we were you right now, we really do. They had Rebel Wilson on last night, for heaven’s sake!
When Networks Collide!
For a while there it looked like we were going to be in some serious trouble. Let’s set the scene: after years of struggling in the wilderness after the fizzle that was Micallef Tonight, followed by a few years of good solid game show hosting on Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation, Shaun Micallef had not one but two shows lined up on Australian television in 2013.
On Ten he has his new lightweight murder mystery series Mr & Mrs Murder, in which he and Kat Stewart play a married couple who making a living from cleaning up murder scenes and just happen to solve the actual murders in their spare time; on the ABC we have the return of Micallef’s news / sketch show Mad as Hell, in which he hosts a fake news show that’s really just an excuse for the kind of sketch comedy he’s been doing since The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) back in the late 1990s.
So far so good… only this is Australian television we’re talking about so some kind of shitfit is never all that far away. In this case, it took the form of scheduling: both shows start next week on Wednesday the 20th. And for a while there it looked likely that they’d both air at the exact same time: 8.30pm. Thankfully it’s not quite that bad, as the ABC are putting Mad as Hell to air at 8pm. So long as you’re quick with the remote, watching both should be doable. Phew.
Yes, Mad as Hell is going to be repeated the next day on ABC2 anyway; yes, if these shows didn’t both star Shaun Micallef most people wouldn’t see them as clashing with each other in any real way. One’s a flat-out comedy, the other is a fairly gentle murder mystery series. But they both star Micallef, so why split his (presumably large – the man has managed to get television series up and running on two separate networks after all) fanbase?
It basically boils down to this: while Australian television is on the air all day every day, there are only a limited amount of timeslots that are actually “in play” where a network can improve their ratings. For example, Seven currently owns Tuesday nights thanks to Packed to the Rafters and Winners & Losers; Nine owns Thursday nights thanks to the Footy Show. Monday night is a night everyone wants, hence all the big guns come out; Friday night is a night no-one really cares about because whoever has the sport usually does okay then.
And for quite a while the ABC owned Wednesday nights thanks to their comedy line-up anchored by Spicks & Specks and its’ million viewers a week. But the hosts of Spicks & Specks grew tired and hey, Andrew Denton reckons word-based game shows will be the next big thing and suddenly the ABC’s hold on Wednesday night was less of a death grip and more like a dead man’s hand. Ten, not so much sensing a weakness as hearing the ABC shouting it from the rooftops, has been screening their quality series – your Offsprings and your Puberty Blues, not to mention Micallef’s own Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation – on Wednesday nights ever since in the hope of making it their time to shine.
So Micallef is (almost) the victim of a turf war, as both networks battle to claim Wednesday evenings as their own. As usual with Australian television, the losers are the viewers: while the Ten product isn’t exactly comedy, it’s about as close to comedy as commercial television seems likely to get without the words “Hamish & Andy” being thrown in there somewhere.
This is, of course, the whole point of the exercise: Ten wants viewers to have to choose, in the hope that they’ll choose their shows over the ABCs. Which would pretty much fuck local comedy into its long-prepared grave, as it would signal that viewers would rather watch light drama with a few laughs – which is what Micallef is delivering with Mr & Mrs Murder – than something that was more committed to being all-out funny. And if the ABC wins, comedy on the commercial networks becomes even more unlikely. Man, that “Whoever Wins, We Lose” tagline from Aliens vs Predator really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it?