Australian Tumbleweeds
Destroying The Gruen
And in comedy news, Helen Razer’s written a long article on how the twitter hashtag #destroythejoint has betrayed feminism. We’re mentioning this why now? It’s not like anyone really sees Razer as a comedian these days – probably not even herself, as her last (that we know of) stab at hilarity here was last updated August 2012. Remember The Sponsored Lady? Seems to only have been a thing for two months. Guess we wasted our time reviewing it. Here’s hoping her current article has more of an impact.
Like pretty much everything Razer writes, it’s over-long and self-obsessed (like you can talk – ed), but the short version is that Helen grew up (yes, it starts with her childhood) being aware that feminism could easily be co-opted by marketing (insert reference to “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby”), but had hoped that #destroythejoint could avoid this fate, what with being at least a little bit about being funny.
Here comes the sad music: It’s stopped being funny, it’s been co-opted by marketing, and it’s now a waste of time.
Destroy the Joint had turned from an organisation that fought sexism with a mocking wit to one that did nothing but reproduce miserable sexism. For both the advertising industry and the patriarchy.
It’s not just her that thinks this: she’s also got “34-year-old Sydney-based marketing strategist” and former administrator of a Destroy the Joint Facebook page Aaron Darc backing her up. So a self-styled internet funny lady and a marketing guru think #destroythejoint needs to be funnier and better handled marketing-wise? Quelle surprise.
Just to engage with the substance of the article for a moment: Marketing using a social movement to market a product? That’s what capitalism does (cue Kyle Reese voice: “That’s all it does!!“). We’re hardly experts, but we dimly recall William Gibson saying that grunge – remember that, 90s fans? – was the last bohemia that had a chance to develop before it was co-opted by marketing. That was pre-internet and 20 years ago: come up with a social movement today and it’ll be harnessed to some kind of marketing push by, um, later that day.
The reason we even bring this article up – considering Razer and professional comedy are pretty much strangers these days and yes, we do know that if the writer starts talking about themselves in the first sentence of an article about an issue that involves at least half the population we really shouldn’t act surprised if the whole thing is basically “WHY ISN’T THIS SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOLLOWING MY BRIGHT AND SHINING LEAD” – is that this is a prime example of the kind of thinking that leads to thinking that The Gruen Whatever is a worthwhile effort. Fight marketing with marketing! That way, marketing wins.
What if #destroythejoint had followed Razer’s wishes and remained a “mocking wit”-based takedown of misogyny in the media and Australian life? For one thing, it would still be exploited by marketers; yes, it’s easier for marketers to exploit you when your online movement is entirely built around stoking OUTRAGE (it’s pretty much the only marketing tool the ABC used for its comedy programs for a few years there), but if your movement involves drawing attention to things*, it can be used as a marketing tool to expand the reach of those things whether you’re laughing or crying at them.
Wait, doesn’t this mean that all comedy is actually supporting the things they’re making fun of? Duh, no. But comedy making fun of advertising is supporting advertising pretty much all the time. That’s because advertising is about getting people to pay attention to you. Of course, there’s such a thing as negative attention, which is what #destroyingthejoint wants to apply. But you can’t really apply that to an ad, because as the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Especially when misogyny (at least, in the mild “women are sex objects and household providers” form many ads use) actually still appeals to some consumers. That “What’s wrong with being sexy?” line from Spinal Tap was funny for more than one reason, after all.
Gruen doesn’t work because it tries – well, it pretends to try – to fight marketing with marketing. “These lies are bad lies,” says the panel, “they should have lied like this”. In contrast, The Checkout (no matter what you might think of it as a comedy) at least works on this level, by fighting marketing with facts. “Marketing says this burger looks good” says someone against a wacky backdrop, “reality says this burger looks bad.” Marketing can’t get around that, because that’s the kind of issue marketing is designed to avoid.
[Which may be the reason why googling “lawsuit against The Gruen Transfer” turns up no examples of anyone important getting annoyed while “lawsuit against The Checkout” gives you this.]
We are in no way saying that misogyny doesn’t exist in the Australian media. It’s all over the place and it’s a disgrace. But it’s something marketers can use, because for the most part it doesn’t relate to the product they’re marketing. No-one (Men’s Rights Activists and some politicians aside) is selling “misogyny” as their product: they use misogyny to get your attention because what they really want is your attention.
But surely comedy is powerful enough to defeat even the most evil forms of marketing? Well, considering the most evil forms of marketing usually involve comedy, maybe not. Good comedy should open our eyes to the truth; marketing wants to open our eyes to whatever it is they’re selling to us. Basically, comedy fails when the message becomes more important than getting a laugh. “These examples of sexism in the media are hilarious” works as an approach to comedy. “These examples of sexism in the media are horrible” does not**.
Then you’re just back to fighting marketing with marketing and unless there’s a deeper truth on your side – one that goes beyond “this ad or person is sexist”, because as we’ve pointed out, that’s probably what the marketers want you to think as sadly not everyone agrees that “being sexist” is a bad thing – marketing will win. As regular Gruen watchers know all too well.
And no, we’re not saying “ignore it and it’ll go away”. We actually kind of agree with Razer here: there’s no simple solution to the problem of entrenched misogyny and retweeting a joke on twitter isn’t going to change anything. But we’re not a social activism blog, we’re a blog about comedy. And selling this kind of social activism as comedy doesn’t work as either social activism OR as comedy.
It’s probably appropriate Razer was the one who brought it up, come to think of it.
*Basically, #destroythejoint was and is a method of marketing that attempts to over-write the original message with “this is sexist”. Razer thinks that comedy was a more effective way of doing that than outrage, because comedy is harder for marketing to co-opt. We disagree; ads are trying to get ‘in on the joke’ all the time.
**The difference being, when the joke stops being funny you have to move on, which is a bit tricky for a social movement supposedly naming and shaming society’s creeps over an important and on-going issue.
Hung Out To Dry
Considering our recent griping about Tractor Monkeys, it seems only right to start our review of Dirty Laundry Live with this: the ABC have taken exactly the right approach with this show. It’s on at 9.30pm on a Thursday night on ABC2, which is pretty much the textbook definition of “out of the way”, it’s shown live which means they can make changes week to week depending on what works and what doesn’t, and they’ve given it a reasonably long run (16 episodes), so it’ll have plenty of time to bed down.
On the other hand, this kind of thing rarely bodes well:
The public broadcaster confirmed it had engaged classifiers, editorial policy advisers and lawyers to make sure the hosts don’t get too litigious in their accusations.
Dirty Laundry has been granted an MA classification and it has to meet that rating. That means there needs to be a certain level of coarse language and naughtiness or they will get into trouble for being too prudish.
Or, you know, they could just try to be funny. And anyway, considering that outside of news programs the ABC doesn’t exactly “do” live television any more, presumably those extra lawyers have just been hired to bring the staffing levels up to, say, what Nine has for The Footy Show. And we all know how edgy that is these days.
The obvious snarkiness about having Sophie Monk on as a “celebrity guest” aside, things got off to a solid start – oh right, the show itself: Host Lawrence Mooney and a cast of semi-famous faces and comedians sit around a big desk to talk about the celebrity gossip of the week. It’s a solid comedy topic, and more importantly, it’s not one that’s currently being mined to death on the ABC *cough Daily Show knock-offs cough*. On the other hand yes, it’s another panel show. One that initially gave off strong Glasshouse vibes, which… yeah, we’ve got nothing good to say about that.
With two introductions to the panel and two introductions to the show either side of Mooney’s opening monologue (yeah, those Kristen Stewart vampire facial gags worked a treat) we’re four minutes into the show before the show actually starts. Chalk it up to first week nerves, alongside the “can I say FUCK?” “You can say fuck as much as you like, but you can’t talk about suicide.” bits. Oh, and then there’s a quiz. Joy. Fortunately they seem to just be using the quiz to kickstart discussions, which is exactly the right way to use a quiz on a comedy panel show.
Further on the plus side, these aren’t the usual TV panelists. It’s amazing just how refreshing it is to see some different comedians on television (especially when they turn out to be funny), and even though there were a few garbled moments here – there wasn’t a whole lot of chemistry between the panelists, who occasionally seemed to be shouting into the void rather than interacting with each other – the fact that we don’t already know every word that’s going to come out of their mouths is a big big plus for a television show in 2013. Even Sophie Monk, about whom we’ve previously had zero interest, came off here as someone moderately interesting. Or at least human, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of our more popular comedy panel show regulars.
It’s hard to underestimate just how far you can get on television by being entertainingly shambolic. Lord knows Australian television has underestimated it over the last decade or so – though after Live From Planet Earth, some of that reluctance is understandable. Sure, watching panelists passing around a porn movie called ‘Back Door Teen Mom’ may not be the kind of thing you’d plan to tune in to watch, but watching it happen on a live show is at least as interesting as anything else you may have seen on ABC after 8.30pm this year.
There were plenty of rough edges on this opening episode, but Mooney is a rock-solid comedy performer who’ll settle in as host and Brooke Satchwell (who’ll be a regular panelist over the sixteen episodes) came off as pretty sharp as well. Luke McGregor’s comedy interview was a highlight, and not just because it made Josh Thomas seem kind of likable; is it too soon to say “breakout star”? Probably. We’ll stick with “love your work” for now.
We’re grading on a curve here because it’s the first episode of a show that’s doing its growing up in public. So while there’s plenty of room for improvement, we’re going to assume they’re at least going to try and address the show’s problems (which are mostly to do with structure anyway; they just need to find more elegant ways to move between topics). Otherwise we’re going to give Dirty Laundry Live our highest possible rating for an Australian comedy panel show: it’s worth a look.
Over the Hill
The strangest clip doing the rounds over the last few days hasn’t been this:
http://youtu.be/D29C6S9eSo4
Though that accent does have us scratching our heads so hard it looks like we’re wearing red nail polish. No, it’s been the oddly unavailable online promo for the third series of Adam Hills’ talk show, now just known as Adam Hills Tonight. The strange part is that it features a hefty clip from this:
http://youtu.be/hUsDWRgLKEM
We’ve discussed this elsewhere – short version, it’s hardly edgy, brave or funny for Hills to have a go at the appearance of a woman twice his age under the guise of defending an internationally successful and famous musician – but for the ABC to use it as promotion for Hills’ new show is a handy reminder that Hills isn’t really the lovely guy he plays on television. He is, in fact, someone who promotes himself as a “nice guy” but feels it’s part of his job to insult an old lady. And Joan Rivers, she’s totally a serious threat to someone who, well, take it away Wikipedia:
Adele is the first female in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have three singles in the top 10 at the same time as a lead artist, and the first female artist to have two albums in the top five of the Billboard 200 and two singles in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously.21 is the longest running number one album by a female solo artist on the UK and US Albums Chart. In 2011 and 2012, Billboard named Adele Artist of the Year. In 2012, Adele was listed at number five on VH1′s 100 Greatest Women In Music, and the American magazine Time named Adele one of the most influential people in the world. In 2013, she received an Academy Award as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for her song “Skyfall“, written for Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond film.
Phew, lucky Hills stood up for her. Inexperienced newcomers really need a protector in today’s media landscape.
Anyway, it’s hardly like Hills goes around stabbing kittens in the opening episode of his remarkably resilient talk show. Rather, once you get past the new opening and new set he does the same old talk show business he’s been doing to no real success for the last two years. Same nothing jokes, same chat with the punters, same sense that life’s passing you by.
Yes you, up the back. “No real success? But it’s back for a third year! Nothing gets a third year at the ABC these days!” And yet last year we were reading this:
After years of much success on the middle night of the week, Aunty has flopped hard this year as viewers have deserted its relatively fresh Wednesday lineup. Their tentpole programme, Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight, has completely underwhelmed, even in comparison to its first season last year.
On the comparable night in 2011, Gordon Street pulled 760,000 viewers – a massive difference to the 508,000 viewers it attracted last night. Comparisons to long-running programme Spicks and Specks significantly out-shadow current figures for the timeslot and underline how far ABC1 has fallen post-8:00pm.
Clearly the ABC wants to stay in the Adam Hills business, even when the general public just aren’t all that fussed. Actually, that’s not true: people clearly like Hills a whole lot, they just don’t like him as a talk show host.
That said, when your very first segment is your (actually pretty funny) sidekick struggling with learning how to get into the world of baton-twirling, either you’re not a fan of starting big or you figure you can do pretty much whatever takes your fancy. Which would get two thumbs up from us if it ever really seemed like Hills is interested in anything beyond a fairly forgettable chat show. An opening show featuring as guests Denise Scott and Father Bob (both solid talent, make no mistake), does feel somewhat as if decent ratings are not the highest priority. Even if there are plenty of attractive women in the audience for the numerous audience segments. Just don’t cut to any hefty dudes!
We were hardly fans of Enough Rope (drain your guests salty tears, Denton!), but it did provide a solid example of how to make a decent talk show when A-grade guests aren’t walking in the door – “A-grade guests”, by our definition, are those interesting or famous types that people are interested in no matter who they’re talking to. Ditching the usual surface talk show waffle, Denton (and researchers) pushed it a little further, and though the seedy, tabloid-esque results weren’t our cup of tea it certainly did pull in the crowds. We’re saying, if famous people aren’t beating down your door, just go with regular people who have interesting stories… or jerk some tears out of B-list celebs, we’re cool with that. What we don’t want is just the same old chit from the same old chatters.
And the rest of the evening’s events were… well, having Tripod rock out reminded us all that hey, where’s that Tripod sitcom they’ve been deserving for the last decade or so? Not to mention that the ABC know their audience of inner-city types and this show is pointed straight at their heart. The question remains: where’s the laughs? US talk show are packed with boffo yuks, or at least the occasional scripted bit. UK talk shows mean well but largely get by on the quality of their guests. But this?
To be fair, it’s clear the ABC needs a talk show: Australian television currently doesn’t have one and the commercial networks clearly can’t be arsed. Two years on though, and it’s kind of obvious that Adam Hills Tonight isn’t getting the job done. The guests are the same old same old before, during and after the interview, the comedy is featherweight at best – Hills just doesn’t do sketches, though he does seem to like hanging out with the audience as much as possible, which is great for the audience but not so much for the home viewer – and overall the end product is solidly, firmly, determinedly safe. It’s a show with all the signs of being a good time, but the closer you look the less there is to see.
Maybe we were too harsh on Hills’ rant against Joan Rivers. Whatever its dubious underpinnings, at least it showed some life and energy. But don’t worry, it seems the ABC will be running Hills’ full unedited chat with Sir Michael Parkinson as a half hour special! And next week, they’ll be going through Hills’ trash hoping to find a sheet of notepaper with “Hills <3 ABC” written on it over and over and over again. They could get a ten-part series out of that.
Vale Tractor Monkeys
Sorry we’re a bit late with this one, but we’ll be honest: it took us a few days to realise Tractor Monkeys was over. From its nonsensical title to its tried and rejected host to its no-star cast of unexciting personalities to its blatant use of old footage to pad out banter that would have been rejected by AD/BC as “too stilted”, it was not a show that will live on in our hearts or minds or the part of our memory where we keep lists of shows to use as negative comparisons. Randling, your crown is safe.
Of course, not all that is the fault of the show itself. Since Spicks and Specks a): became the ABC’s biggest and most reliable comedy hit and then was b): dumped, the pressure has been on to find a replacement. Having learned with Randling that getting a million viewers a week isn’t simply a matter of sticking a random bunch of comedians behind a couple of desks, a strange combination of panic and disinterest seems to have settled in over at the ABC. They want to find the next S&S and fast, so forget about putting a low-key panel show together and letting it develop, and yet they don’t seem to want to spend any real money or put any serious effort into creating something that, you know, people might want to watch.
Part of the problem is that the ABC doesn’t seem to realise that even when television is free people want value for money. Tractor Monkeys might have worked at, say, 6.30pm on a Sunday night, where looking cheap and involving little more than people mucking around inbetween old clips seems like a good deal. But prime time on a Wednesday night? No. Noooo. People want to watch real entertainment then – you know, like high-stakes cooking contests or talent quests.
Another part of the problem is that the ABC doesn’t seem to realise that panel shows only work when the guests are, as the French say, not la massif shithouse. UK panel shows might seem equally thrown together, but their guests are usually people who are also off making television shows or having smash hit stand-up careers. The equivalent here, much as it pains us to say it, would be doing a panel show featuring Dave Hughes and Wil Anderson, not Dave O’Neil and Someone You’ve Never Heard Of. Get Chris Lilley to turn up and you’ve got your ratings hit; a musician most people know nothing about and they’re not even playing music on the show… not so much.
Panel shows can create stars, but it usually takes at least a few episodes and the freedom to mess around and see what works. If the ABC was serious about finding a real replacement for Spicks and Specks, they would have done the exact opposite of Tractor Monkeys: either get serious with the talent and bring on board people viewers want to watch (lets not forget, even The Panel featured the Working Dog guys, who at the time had a lot of goodwill from their radio work and The Late Show), or put together something featuring talented nobodies, place it out of the spotlight and give it the time to develop into something special. Which was how they got Spicks and Specks in the first place.
It’s easy to say that the big names don’t want to do panel shows. It’s just as easy to say that today’s ABC doesn’t have the resources to put together a panel show outside of prime time. And that’s fine. But if that’s the case, don’t waste our time with half-arsed crap like Tractor Monkeys. If even we can tell it’s not going to work, what are they paying the programmers at the ABC for?
Vale Mad As Hell
It’s rare for an Australian comedy show to be “must watch” but that’s what Mad As Hell has been for the past 12 weeks, and part of what has made it compelling is that it’s a topical comedy show with real attitude. That’s “attitude” rather than “bias”, something it’s probably been accused of by idiots (judging from some of Micallef’s snarky gags) and something that’s increasingly rare in a television climate where everyone seems afraid to be seen to have an opinion because that might alienate someone.
Part of what made Charles Ramsey, hero of the Amanda Berry escape in Ohio, a worldwide internet legend this week is that he has attitude too. He talked about his experience and expressed his opinions in a frank, honest and amusing way – and he wasn’t afraid to address the racial politics of the situation. People loved him for this.
Last year Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech captured the internet’s imagination too. One of the reasons was that she said what half the population have felt for a long time but have never been able to express so well.
Mad As Hell has had a similar effect, although with a much smaller audience than these global internet phenomena. The sketch deconstructing the Liberal party’s headless chooks video beautifully ripped to shreds the video’s strained metaphorical conceit and its idiot creators, before ending with “Go tell it to Wil Anderson”. That last line was particularly cutting given the way in which the Gruen franchise has been more an ad for the ad makers than a fascinating deconstruction of advertising (or whatever they claim it is).
This and various other Micallef-led, ranty sketches throughout the series have said more about the Carbon Tax, Gonski and just about any other political issue than you could name than a month of mainstream news programmes. Sometimes you need a bit of attitude and opinion to tell it like it is. And as light relief there’s a giant green Octopus and characters with names like Vomitoria Catchment – now that’s entertainment!
As with the final episode of Get This, it’s a massive shame Mad As Hell won’t be around to de-construct the election. Their countdown clock suggested that was the plan, and in the absence of a more boring explanation we can perhaps legitimately suggest that someone at the ABC might not have wanted a comedy show with a satirical bent on air during the campaign.
The recent commissioning of Wednesday Night Fever was a bit of a surprise (perhaps to the Mad As Hell team too), but we’ll wait to see it before passing judgement. It’ll be hard for it to follow Mad As Hell though, which has been the best Australian sketch show since, well, probably The Micallef Program. Still, Mad As Hell will probably be back next year – and if Tony Abbott’s Prime Minister imagine the fun they’ll have!
The Lights Are Going Out All Over Television. We May Not See Them Lit Again In Our Lifetimes.
First, the bad news: Channel Seven, home of commercial sketch comedy in Australia for close to two decades, now thinks this is a good idea:
From Kylie and Dannii to Warney and Thorpey, the celebs come out to play for a new series of Kath & Kim specials coming to Seven.
A galaxy of Australia’s biggest stars (and best known fans) will share their funniest foxymoron moments in a new series of Kath & Kim specials which will air soon on Channel Seven.
Featuring never-before-seen footage of Australia’s favourite hornbags, The Kath & Kim Kountdown celebrates the magic of Fountain Lakes, counting down to the Top Ten Kath & Kim moments of all time.
Kylie and Dannii? Warney and Thorpey? What, Sleepy and Dopey weren’t available?
So a bunch of “Australia’s biggest stars” are going to talk about their “favourite” (from the ones selected by the producers for them to choose from) moments from Kath & Kim? So it’s a clip show? For a show that hasn’t been on the air in five years? Wow, good thing it’ll be desperately promoting both a range of Channel Seven “personalities” and the commercial television / DVD release of the critically and popularly ignored Kath & Kimderella movie, otherwise there’d just be no reason to show it at all.
At least we’re supposedly going to get at least some new linking material. Yay? Presumably it’s hard for creative types to accurately pinpoint the moment when they stop caring about their characters – especially when there’s still money to be made – but it’s still safe to assume that the idea of quitting while they’re ahead and preserving some of their dignity as comedians is something they’ve considered… and then said “naaah”. But who knows? Perhaps the goodwill towards Kath & Kim is so bottomless that they can be attached to literally any cheap, nasty, time-wasting product or programme and the public will lap it up. Lord knows they’re still miles ahead of anything Chris Lilley’s come up with.
Meanwhile, over at Jungleboys the champagne corks are popping once again:
It draws a meagre 300,000 viewers on ABC1 – yet this Australian comedy has become a global internet sensation, racking up millions of YouTube views and attracting the interest of Fox Television in the US.
The debut episode of provocative sketch comedy The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting, made by Sydney production company Jungleboys, was watched by 432,000 people. The audience dropped to 290,000 by the second episode – perhaps not surprising given the dark, edgy nature of some of the material.
But yesterday, executive producer Jason Burrows awoke to an email, alerting him to the fact that someone had posted a clip from the program on YouTube.
“It was sent at 10.30 at night and it said the clip had 600,000 views,” Burrows says. “By the time I read it at 7am, it had 1.4 million views.”
Now, it is close to 1.6 million.
Great! Oh wait a second, 1.6 million views (more like 1.9 million now) for a professionally made product on YouTube is, how you say, “average”? Put a slightly less snarky way, at the time of writing the original “Beached Az” clip on YouTube has 7,839,920 views. And where’s Beached Az now? Where was Beached Az in the first place, apart from on a bunch of merchandise?
When Jungleboys honcho Jason Burrows says “the game has changed”, what he means is “we now have an angle we can use to try and paint The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting (which finished up this week) as something more than a flop.” To which we draw your attention to the final line of this article:
Ironically, The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting began as a web series in 2011 before it was picked up by the ABC.
That is correct, sir or madam: the show has succeed at doing what it was a success at doing before it became a television show. The story here is not “ABC series makes good”, but “ABC blunders in taking web series to television”. When a show is a hit on the web, then fails to make any kind of impact on television, then becomes a hit again on the internet, the takeaway is obvious: it’s a really good web series. So leave it on the web.
The internet rewards short clips – like comedy sketches – that have “edgy” premises. Television, not so much. In fact, you could probably argue that the internet has killed off sketch comedy as we once knew it, where sketches were discrete scenes like individual short films. The sketch shows that work on television today look more like The Daily Show or even Mad as Hell, where the comedy bits weave in and out without clear cut-offs. Because if you want short, stand-alone, done-in-one comedy, YouTube is where you’re looking. Probably at bits from Family Guy. That “The Bird is the Word” clip they did has seventy million views.
If we wanted to be extremely cynical, we could suggest that Jungleboys have taken the ABC’s resources to make a product they can exploit outside of the ABC. Obviously that’s not the case here, though the person who posted the 1,900,000 version has only ever posted one other clip, also from The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting; guess they’re a committed fan.
Meanwhile, the official version on the Jungleboys YouTube channel has around 12,000 views, and their other clips don’t seem to have been as successful: the Amish IT guy clip is around 190,000 views, and the rest range between 50,000 and 5,000 views. The 300,000 viewers ratings figure for the TV show meant it was a flop, right?
What this story really tells us is that while The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting was a fizzle on television, one of their clips is doing really well on YouTube, as someone not related to the production company has scored almost two million views for their channel using one of Jungleboys clips. So the ABC lost out by trying to take an online show to television, and then the production company lost out when someone ripped off one of their clips and everyone linked to it.
Australian comedy in 2013, everybody. Take a bow.
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.