Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

State the Obvious and Win!

From the department of No Shit, Sherlock, comes this startling admission from ABC chief Mark Scott:

Scott told Mumbrella’s sister title Encore: “One of the things we did with Randling that we learned from, and this was partly a budget thing, was that we locked all that away. It was all locked away before it went to air. If we had been broadcasting it as we were making it, we probably would have fine tuned it along the way and we weren’t able to.”

That said, unless the “fine-tuning” involved ditching both the host and the concept, we kinda get the feeling things would have played out pretty much the same. But aww, isn’t it nice that the ABC boss is willing to divert attention from the show’s many other failings and shift the blame for it tanking onto something that never gets mentioned as a plus or a minus for any other ABC show? Seriously, when a show rates its arse off does the ABC ever say “it should, we sunk a bloody fortune into it”? Has there been any other dud that’s received the “don’t blame the show, we should have spent more money on it” get out of jail free card in recent memory? Jesus Christ, that hold Denton has over the ABC must be one hell of a headlock.

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In further shocking news, today’s Melbourne Herald-Sun ran this in their “Confidential” section:

Matt Tilley and his popular “Gotcha” calls are no more, after the royal prank call scandal.

Wait, the royal prank call scandal killed Matt Tilley? YEEEEAAAAAA-oh wait, they just mean his prank calls are no more. Damn you, dead UK nurse, for depriving innocent fun-loving Victorians of Matt Tilley’s “popular” phone abuse. Let’s continue:

Fox FM will not broadcast the calls on its breakfast show this year, and probably never again. The dumping of the Gotcha pranks came after British nurse Jacintha Saldanha took her own life soon after taking a call from Sydney radio hosts Michael Christian and Mel Grieg … Tilley and Fox FM have been doing the calls for years, releasing a number of CDs that have performed well on the ARIA charts. Fox FM’s parent company Austereo announced in December that the company would suspend all prank calls. This ban now looks like being permanent.

And then, just when you think you’re reading a story that might as well be headlined “SYDNEY RADIO KILLERS MURDER MELBOURNE’S FUN”, there’s this:

Nothing has been heard from Grieg or Christian since they did interviews soon after the scandal broke in December. It seemed they were scapegoats in the affair, as little was heard from the content producers or directors who would have approved the prank call.

Which, by the Herald-Sun‘s standards, is actually almost insightful. Even if it is just calling for the real culprits to stick their heads up so they can have a kick at them.

Act your age!

While we were getting all worked-up about the likes of Balls of Steel Australia and The Janoskians for the 2012 Australian Tumbleweed Awards, The Comedy Channel started airing their latest “original” pranks show Off Their Rockers. Based on the American program Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, which in turn was based on the Belgian program Benidorm Bastards, Off Their Rockers sees a gang of senior citizens hitting the streets of Sydney, doing unexpected things in front of the public.

The ensuing hilarity is linked by sports commentator Sam Kekovich, who helpfully explains the premise (because presumably we’re too stupid to spot it ourselves): this show features a bunch of oldies behaving like teenagers. Cue 30 minutes of home video camera footage of elderly people snogging in the street, smoking reefers in the park, and asking for Cowboy Cocksuckers in pubs.

As a throwaway piece of summertime TV aimed at bored people this is just about acceptable. And unlike shows such as Balls of Steel Australia, at least the laughs come from the ludicrousness of the old timers’ behaviour and the bewildered reactions of the young people in their vicinity rather than the mean-spirited targeting of innocent passers-by: two elderly women walking past a building site yelling “Show us your tits!” at the builders makes the builders laugh – no one’s being harmed there.

What is irritating about Off The Rockers is the shooting style. The pranks themselves are quick and done reasonably well, but then the seniors walk out of shot and the camera closes in on the group of teens who happened to be sitting nearby. And then stays there for ages. The editor’s even slowed that part of the footage down to emphasise how bewildering/hilarious the teens found the oldies’ antics. And what with that and Kekovich’s pointless narration it feels like the makers of the show are trying to make a small amount of footage go a lot further than it should, which for a show which probably cost about $1.50 to make seems penny-pinching in the extreme.

Australian Tumbleweeds 2012 – The Results

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012

Australian comedy in 2012 existed. It happened. It took place. We’d love to get more excited about it, but with a handful of exceptions – and even those programs were just more of the same from established figures – this was a year of shrugged shoulders and mumbled “whatevers”. Unlike 2011, where Live From Planet Earth was the kind of high profile car crash that could easily throw the very idea of television comedy through the windshield and into a nearby pond where it’d be impaled on the rusting remains of the last high profile commercial comedy car crash (let’s say, oh… Let Loose Live), this year commercial television played it safe and refused to air any comedy that didn’t come with a brand name attached. And even then, if that brand name was “The Chaser” it was given a throw-away timeslot late Thursday nights and eventually burnt off in two-episode batches. But at least all of The Unbelievable Truth went to air, and at least Hamish & Andy’s various Gap Years rated okay: for commercial television then, comedy managed to hang on by the skin of its increasingly decaying teeth for yet another year. Oh, and while nobody actually watched Ed Kavalee’s Scumbus, that was their loss, as it was easily the funniest Australian comedy to air on commercial television in 2012. Damning with faint praise yet again: that’s why you come to the Tumbleweeds.

Over on the ABC (SBS’s efforts consisted of the one joke parody Danger 5 and the no-joke swearing of whatever shout-fest it was Paul Fenech did this year) the National Broadcaster went out of their way to ensure nobody was excited about comedy in any way shape or form. Their best shows – Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell and The Hamster Wheel – involved trained professionals doing a very good job of something they’d already done. Everything else swung firmly for the middlebrow suburbs and either hit with a dull thud – hello A Moody Christmas – or splattered everywhere like a bag of shit. The fact that there was sixteen weeks in prime time of Agony Uncles / Aunts, AKA Adam Zwar’s filmed version of a Sunday tabloid puff piece, was grim enough; having the ABC and the Farifax press act like this was something to be proud of insulted the intelligence of every single Australian old enough to sit upright. Still, it is hard to fault Auntie for wanting to stick to the softball lobs when it comes to comedy, because everything else they tried was complete crap. It’d be easy to say the problem with Laid 2 was that it was made for and by unpleasant self-obsessives, but really it was made because once upon a time Marieke Hardy was seen as someone people were interested in. Doesn’t that seem so long ago now? Problems was a useful reminder that Sam Simmons’ hasn’t changed his act since he was shouting “ducks” over and over back in 2006, and as for Randling

Look, Andrew Denton was amazingly lucky that Randling aired in 2012. If it had been a better year for comedy it would have been dumped in a graveyard timeslot the second it became obvious that the actuality of a “word based game show” was as fatal to the concept of entertainment as the phrase “word-based game show”; if it had been a worse year the lingering stench of this utterly misguided bucket of rotting tripe just might have killed off the whole idea of comedy on the ABC. As it stands, it was just plain embarrassing seeing it drag on and on and on for twenty-seven weeks of “anyone watching? Nope? Oh well, see you next week then” simply because the ABC thought the viewing public were as much in love with Andrew Denton as Andrew Denton is.

But in the end, even a massive failure on every possible level such as Randling was largely brushed off with a shrug. No-one cares about Australian comedy at the moment; even the “adventurous” material like Outland, The Strange Calls and yes, Problems only ventured outside the lines in ways that were mostly safe and familiar (Outland was about gay science fiction fans, which might have been fresh in a world where The Big Bang Theory hadn’t made nerd comedy mainstream five years earlier; The Strange Calls was basically a re-tread of the 2003 series Fat Cow Motel from the same production company; Problems was the same laugh-free random LOL Simmons has been doing since his jTV days). Whatever the many, many problems with Live From Planet Earth, at least it got people talking about comedy in 2011; in contrast 2012 was as silent as the grave.

But why so glum – there’s awards to be given out! Of course, the awards are largely pointing out the many reasons we have to be glum, but, uh… eh, let’s just get this show on the road. The envelopes, please…

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sketches

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Wost Sketches - Runner-Up: Nice (ABC) - 20.7%

After years of making endless “a comedian explores…” shows, Myf Warhurst’s Nice was the only example of this genre on the ABC this year. Not that Myf’s really a comedian or that the show was really a comedy. Nice is only really worth noting here because it seems to mark a shift away from comedy and toward a bland earnestness in this well-established format. Joe Hildebrand’s Dumb, Drunk and Racist took this even further, being a serious show dealing with a serious topic, yet still being full of stunts and comedy-style moments. Perhaps all TV shows – even the news – will be like this in a few years’ time. Oh wait, they kinda already are.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Wost Sketches - Runner-Up: Problems (ABC) - 25.9%

Sam Simmons is a man with a firm vision of what comedy can be. Unfortunately, “funny” isn’t part of it. He wants to disturb and unsettle you, confront you and make you think, and while there’s been nothing all that disturbing or unsettling about a physically unpleasant man in a variety of socially awkward situations since George & Mildred, Problems did at least confront us with the concept that someone might find a bunch of tossed-off songs about office equipment a worthwhile way to spend their time. As for what he made us think, let’s just say there’s a reason why “smart and funny” is a compliment while “awkward and uncomfortable” is usually a reason to get away as fast as possible.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sketches - Winner: Balls of Steel (The Comedy Channel) - 53.4%. | Voter’s Comments: "I usually sided with the victims." "Because the world needs more Jackasses." "I can't even think of anything biting to say about it. I'm just depressed it actually got on air." | Last Year’s Winner: Good News World (10)

The second series of The Comedy Channel’s Balls of Steel Australia was the runaway winner of the Tumblie for Worst Sketches but describing that program’s output as “sketches” seems over-generous. Sketches, strictly speaking, are scripted. Getting some hot twins to take their clothes off in a public place isn’t exactly a sketch. It’s barely even a premise. In a world full of internet porn, it’s hardly even a reason to go “phwooor”.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sitcom

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sitcom - Runner Up: Lowdown (ABC) - 14.8%

2012 was perhaps the year of Adam Zwar, who produced three programs so forgettable that two of them barely scraped into the Tumblies categories they were nominated in…even though they were shit. The second series of Zwar’s sitcom Lowdown at least gets points for effort in that it had scripts and characters and costumes and stuff like that. He was presumably too busy cutting-together the least worst observations of the Agony Aunts and Agony Uncles to make it worth watching, though.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sitcom - Runner Up: Outland (ABC) - 18.0%

One of the seemingly endless list of problems Australian comedy has next to no idea how to deal with is making sure every single part of your comedy is funny. It’s not enough to come up with a hilarious premise: you then have to come up with funny characters, funny scenes, funny lines, funny expressions, funny moments of silence, and then do it all again next week. Often Outland felt like “Hey, gay people are funny, nerds are funny – let’s break for lunch”. There are ways to make dildos funny, but throwing a big black rubber one around in slow motion isn’t one of them.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sitcom - Winner: Laid (ABC) - 67.2% | Voter’s Comments: "Just when you thought they couldn't paint themselves into a corner enough with Season 1, along comes Season 2." "Laid. Where nary a joke to be found. Who would have thought that the left wing commie pinko audience the ABC has, who hates such lowbrow shows such as Two and a Half Men, wouldn't like the same show with a female lead? Oh that's right, everyone." "Pseudo intellectual shite." | Last Year’s Winner: WORST SITCOM OR DRAMEDY - Angry Boys (ABC)

We’ve been banging on about Laid for a long time now – oh alright, here’s a quick summary: thanks to a decades-long career of self-promotion coupled with the advantages of having TV producer parents and a famous literary figure for a grandfather, Laid creator Marieke Hardy launched her first sitcom with a wave of publicity (largely from her employer, Fairfax) unrivalled in the annals of Australian television. The show tanked, largely because it was creepy and sad and somewhat confused about what it was saying. So of course, it got a second series, which was more of the same only with slightly less fanfare from the slowly backing away Fairfax and even less viewers thanks to no-one liking it the first time around. It’s hard to know what was worse: the fact this crap got a second series or the fact the second series had even less happening than the first. Ha ha, only joking: the worst bit was the hilarious comedy rape scene where our heroine Roo tried to have sex with a man she’d drugged into unconsciousness by creating an icy pole splint for his non-erect dick. That’s right, this was a show that “went there”; lucky no-one was watching by that episode or the ABC might have had to answer questions as to exactly how rape is funny.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Topical Comedy

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Topical Comedy - Runner-Up: Rush Hour - Going For Gold (Triple M Melbourne) - 18.8%

It’s hard to believe that Triple M Melbourne’s Rush Hour – Going For Gold was a finalist in this category. Perhaps some of our voters mistook the two-week Olympics series hosted by Santo Cilauro and Sam Pang for the regular Rush Hour drive shift hosted by James Brayshaw and Billy Brownless? Understandable if the votes were for Brayshaw and Brownless, unbelievable if they were for Cilauro and Pang, who brought with them the kind of laughs Triple M hasn’t allowed on air since it axed The Sweetest Plum, or Get This.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Topical Comedy - Runner Up: Gruen Sweat (ABC) - 31.3%

Making some Gruen specials on theme of the Olympics was always going to be a fail – the Gruen franchise has put its cack-handed spin on everything remotely interesting about marketing and advertising already, so why would shows about Olympics marketing and advertising be an improvement? That didn’t stop them stating the obvious for roughly the seven millionth time, mind you: what’s that? Sports and advertising are firmly linked? You don’t say.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Topical Comedy - Winner: The Project (10) - 50.0% | Voter’s Comments: "Still being broadcast, which is the only thing they’re aiming for." "The Project is perhaps the only mainstream TV show on Australia that dares to be pro-left so I should like it more. But this show has decayed to the point where it’s The Drum only with bouncier graphics and Cal Wilson." "Still can't get the tone shifts to work." | Last Year’s Winner: WORST THEMED COMEDY – Good New World (10)

The Project, one of the hangovers from Channel 10’s now almost dead initiative to get viewers in through its news programs, was mostly recently watched by one of the Tumblies writers when they were in a state of severe jetlag following an international flight. It was still more stimulating than that evening’s National Nine News, but that’s probably because Peter Overton doesn’t have a studio audience who’ll whoop or laugh loudly at everything. Yet. And while Charlie Pickering has been receiving praise from the twitteratti for serving it up to Bob Katter recently, that’s largely due to him taking his skill set – coming across as a smug, smarmy, somewhat unpleasant careerist – away from comedy and into the only realm where those flaws could possibly be considered positives: political interviewing.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Panel/Game Show

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Panel/Game Show - Runner Up: Agony Uncles (ABC) - 12.1%

Agony Uncles (and for that matter Agony Aunts) featured a grab bag of comedians and personalities giving their savagely edited and scarcely thought-out views on a range of non-issues. If you enjoyed them they’ll be back this year in The Agony Guide To Life…we can’t be the only ones wondering if The Agony Guide To Life is a compilation of off-cuts from Agony Aunts and Agony Uncles, can we?

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Panel/Game Show - Runner Up: Can of Worms (10) - 15.2%

Did anyone bother watching the “all new” Can of Worms in 2012? The buzz the series received in 2011 seemed to have disappeared with original hosts Ian “Dicko” Dickson and Meshel Laurie… not that either of them were necessarily better than new host Chrissie Swan. Can of Worms series 2 may have been technically better – i.e. they’d found someone to edit it who had experience of editing – but with its all new cuddly feel it delivered less laughs and less debate than the original, which we admit is an achievement.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Panel/Game Show - Winner: Randling (ABC) - 72.7% | Voter’s Comments: "Slightly surprised Denton didn’t demand a 2013 season be pre-recorded last year as well." "Great to see Andrew Denton really aim for that youth market again, this time with obscure words from the 18th century." "'ABC has announced that the show will not return in 2013' is probably the most unnecessary bit of information on Wikipedia. The only thing Randling was good for was fodder for other shows like The Hamster Wheel and Mad As Hell." | Last Year’s Winner: Can of Worms (10)

To be fair to the ABC, it’s easy to see why they invested in a bulk order of a cheap comedy game show hosted by Andrew Denton: they’re staffed by nitwits. First rule of bargain hunting; it’s not a bargain if it doesn’t work, and this word-based game show was… shit, we keep going on about it, but what planet do you have to be living on to find the term “word-based game show” anything but a giant neon sign blaring WRONG WAY GO BACK. Not to mention Denton’s personal charm exists solely in the mind of one A. Denton Esquire. Throw in the frankly moronic decision to make scoring a vital part of a comedy game show alongside the colossal blunder that was filming all 27 episodes before even airing one so no changes could be made if the show turned out to be a turd which a-ha-ha-ha it was from day one, and what’s left is the kind of mistake that on a commercial network – or a government one that didn’t hold its audience in contempt – would see pretty much everyone involved on the management side fired. We saw this mistake coming and we’re dickheads on the internet; what does it say that the professionals didn’t?

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Film

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Film - Runner Up: Any Questions for Ben? - 22.8%

Any Questions For Ben?… or as it’s better known, “The Melbourne Tourism Board Promotional Video That Walks Like A Man”, was Working Dog’s big return to feature film making after their one massive hit (The Castle) and that one that never really cut it overseas (The Dish). Why Working Dog felt anyone would want to see a movie about a smug git with no problems wandering around wondering if he had any problems remains a mystery. Wait, no it doesn’t: they wanted to make a movie involving a lot of good-looking people having lots of fun and they never quite figured out a way to make anyone give a shit about them. But look! Aerial shots of Melbourne! It’s a glamourous, modern city where anything can happen! As long as it’s not funny.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Film - Runner Up: Kath & Kimderella - 31.6%

While Kath & Kim died as a comedy concept around halfway through series two, they live on as “personalities” – you know, they turn up, dump a few catchphrases, fail to develop as characters in any way, everyone goes home happy. Only that’s not really enough to sustain a feature-length film, especially one that for some odd reason (*cough funding deal cough*) was largely set 5,000 kilometres from the only place on the planet where they were actually funny. But it did feature Rob Sitch and Glenn Robbins having a swordfight, which for comedy fans of a certain vintage makes it at least worth a night’s rental.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Film - Winner: Housos vs Authority - 45.6% | Voter’s Comments: "The fact that no-one can be bothered to be offended by Fenech speaks volumes." "Take the worst cast members from Pizza, the most snore-worthy stereotypes, add in a dash of Swift and Shit Couriers, and what do you get? Paul Fenech's worst production to date. Making a mockery of the brilliant Trailer Park Boys, which is a travesty." "It's supposed to be a film, not a feature length episode shot on video." | Last Year’s Winner: WORST FILM COMEDY – Big Mamma’s Boy

When SBS dawdled over funding another series of Housos, creator Paul Fenech decided to go it on his own and make a movie, which distributor Paramount picked up for Australian distribution. Whatever you think of his product – don’t bother thinking about it, it’s crap – you have to be impressed by the way he keeps on finding people willing to dump his rubbish in front of the Australian public. Why did SBS fund the first series? Why did Paramount agree to put it in cinemas? Why won’t the nightmare end?

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Online Comedy

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Online Comedy - Runner Up: Jungleboys.tv (Video Website) - 12.2%

Jungleboys.tv is the website from the team who brought us Review with Myles Barlow and A Moody Christmas. Announced with much fanfare at the end of 2011, it’s a sort of Australian answer to Funny or Die, and over the past year or so it’s been running a sketch writing competition and seeking new writers for an upcoming ABC1 show. This is more than any of the TV or radio networks can be bothered to do – apart from commissioning the occasional sketch show or getting involved in the occasional new talent initiative, they’re pretty much happy to let sketch and new writing die on its arse. We here at Australian Tumbleweeds are always in favour of schemes like this, even if the initial results are usually pretty poor. There’s not much hilarity to be found in the sketches on the Jungleboys website, but on the other hand the comedians of tomorrow have to start somewhere…

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Online Comedy - Runner Up: The Janoskians (Online Videos) - 32.7%

One of the great media themes of 2012 was trolling or cyber bullying, and even online teen sensations The Janoskians had to get their lawyers to serve a troll who’d be harassing them with an intervention order. But wait, isn’t that the same Janoskians whose fame is based on their prank videos, such as this one in which they block a public road and force motorists stop their cars, or this one where they annoy and harass people on trains and in shopping malls? We’re not saying the racism and abuse directed at The Janoskians online was right or justified – it wasn’t – but there’s still a fairly hefty irony here.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Online Comedy - Winner: Josh Thomas and Friend (Podcast) - 55.1% | Voter’s Comments: "Is Josh Thomas still a thing?" "Josh Thomas: The Tumbleweeds' own Ben Hur." "Nobody likes Milhouse"

For a comedian whose TV profile was relatively low in 2012 – he appeared in 10 episodes of Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation and one episode of The Project – Josh Thomas has managed to annoy our voters so much that he got two Tumblies nominations this year. Along with Tom Ward he wins this award for Josh Thomas and Friend, a podcast of which only two episodes were made in 2012. As in previous podcasts, the duo rambled on in their tedious post-Gervais way about gay sex and other supposedly controversial subjects. Don’t bother to download it.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Comedy Personality or Talent

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Comedy Personality or Talent - Runner-Up: Andrew Denton - Randling/Gruen (ABC) - 26.2%

Wait, Denton has a personality now? We were going to make the joke in our previous sentence about him having talent, but seriously, if he was able to sell the ABC on buying 27 episodes sight unseen of a “word-based game show”, he must be one hell of a salesman. Or, you know, the ABC might have failed to notice that in any situation where the focus is on Denton he never fails to come off as the kind of self-satisfied knob who you only ever see at dinner parties because if he went down the pub someone would glass him within twenty minutes.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Comedy Personality or Talent - Runner-Up: Rebel Wilson - A Few Best Men/Pitch Perfect/Bachelorettes (Film) - 27.7%

For all her constant talk about the numerous writing projects she’s got on the go in Hollywood, anyone with even the smallest soft spot in their hearts for Rebel Wilson – and she’s been in enough semi-decent US films by now to have generated at least some minor goodwill – must be hoping desperately that she never gets any of them up and running. That’s because she is a one-note performer who only works in small doses in films where she provides contrast to the main goings on. If you put her – well, her current comedy persona, which she hasn’t changed since her days on Pizza so we’re going to stick with “one note performer” – at the centre of something, she quickly becomes as much fun as chewing tinfoil. And we’ve got the DVD of Bogan Pride to prove it.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Comedy Personality or Talent - Winner: Marieke Hardy - Laid - 46.2% | Voter’s Comments: "Welcher & Welcher and Very Small Business each got one series. Laid gets two. Shaun Micallef and Wayne Hope are friends of the ABC. Marieke Hardy has friends IN the ABC. That's the difference." "Also: Worst Person Alive." "Have you ever met anyone that is considered 'quirky' or 'weird'. I have, and I don't find them funny." | Last Year’s Winner: WORST COMEDY PERSONALITY OR PERFORMER – Chris Lilley, Angry Boys (ABC)

Marieke Hardy is in the Marieke Hardy business, but in 2012 the share price was looking a little soft. It’s fair to say that in 2011 her reach finally exceeded her grasp, thanks to the one-two punch of actually getting a television show up based largely on “Marieke Hardy” only to have it tank in the ratings, and outing her online nemesis only to direct her hate-filled fanbase to the wrong man who then secured an apology and a big cash payout. In hindsight, even for Hardy a second series of Laid was a bad idea: it was never going to be an improvement on the first, and serving up another six episodes of creepy self-loathing disguised as comedy only underlined the fact that Hardy was much more convincing at telling people she was one of Australia’s great comedy talents when she hadn’t written any comedy.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Critic

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Critic - Runner-Up: Colin Vickery (Herald-Sun) - 11.5%

News Ltd employs two kinds of television critics: the ones who actually cover television, and the ones who get angry about it on the readers behalf. Colin Vickery falls into the second category. That upcoming ABC series about all the “shocking” comedy moments from the past that don’t really seem even remotely shocking to anyone with a functioning sense of humour? Vickery is the person who decided – on the community’s behalf – that they were shocking. Not personally, mind you: he just slotted into a person-shaped groove and started spitting out the same “Young people are disrespectful to our cherished institutions!” guff his employers have been running since 1911.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Critic - Runner-Up: Ben Pobjie (Fairfax) - 31.1%

Here’s the thing about we critics: we all know that our opinions are just that – opinions – but if you constantly keep saying “who cares, it’s just an opinion” every time you state your opinion, you’re insulting your readers. They know it’s just an opinion: shut up and tell them yours so they can decide whether they agree or not. So if you’re Ben Pobjie running around constantly qualifying every opinion with “hey, it’s just my opinion”, you’re basically telling your audience “I think I’m so awesomely persuasive you idiots are going to think I’m your New God unless I explain that you’re free to disagree with me”. Or maybe Pobjie just doesn’t want to piss off any of his media buddies by standing behind his reviews when he says that they may have made a piece of television that’s less than utterly awesome. Guess we’ll never know, because to date he’s never dared hint any of his media chums have ever done anything that was less than utterly awesome. The technical term for that last sentence is “a fact”, by the way. Those tweets where he and Marieke Hardy give each other online warm fuzzies are pretty funny though. Hey, it’s just our opinion.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Comedy Critic - Winner: Jim Schembri (Herald-Sun) - 57.4% | Voter’s Comments: "On the upside, he wins biggest wanker." “The trademarks of his reviews are vitriol, borderline sleaze, quasi-homophobia and general condescension.” “Jim Schembri – you’re still a sad bitter little troll (and always will be).” – the Martin/Molloy website, circa 1998 | Last Year’s Winner: WORST COVERAGE OF COMEDY – The entire media’s refusal to accept that Angry Boys was awful

Aw, remember Jim Schembri? Notorious film and television reviewer who quit The Age after it was discovered he spent his spare time threatening anyone who mentioned his name online with legal action? A brief stint covering the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the Herald Sun brought him to our attention this year, though it seems his dalliance with News Ltd was a brief one: he’s currently the film critic/blogger for Melbourne station 3AW, which is owned by his former employers Fairfax. So don’t worry about Jim and his “controversial” opinions; he’ll be back shouting “look at me!” before you know it.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sounding Upcoming Show

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 – Worst Sounding Upcoming Show – Runner-Up: Please Like Me (ABC) – 18.5%

Perhaps our voter who described Josh Thomas as “The Tumbleweeds’ own Ben-Hur” is right – we here at Tumblies Central are blowing Thomas’ impact out of all proportion. Then again his six-episode sitcom Please Like Me is coming soon, and it’s so good it’s been delayed for at least a year and has been demoted from ABC-1 to ABC-2. Perhaps Thomas’ comedy genius is the Ben-Hur in the room?

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sounding Upcoming Show - Runner-Up: Chris Lilley's unnamed show (ABC) - 33.8%

We’re already hearing rumours that the reason why Chris Lilley hasn’t come up with a name for his new show yet is because it – and everything else he ever does from here on in – is just going to be called “Chris Lilley”. It’s not like anything else he’s done really needed separate names: same soaring theme music (written by Lilley), same awkward/offensive characters (played by Lilley), same scripts that veer wildly between schoolyard humour and blatant mawkishness (written by Lilley), same bloated run time as maybe three episodes of material is dragged out over eight or more weeks (edited by Lilley). Going by the way the ABC is hailing his return (announced for 2013 but come on: if he doesn’t even have a title yet, this is a 2014 release at least) on bended knee it seems the fizzle that was Angry Boys has been all but forgotten: hopefully his teen girl fanbase won’t have forgotten him too.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sounding Upcoming Show - Winner: Laid - series 3 (ABC) - 47.7% | Voter’s Comments: "Laid 3 edges out Lilley here, mainly because Chris's show could be about anything. Laid 3 will be similar to Laid 1 and 2..." "And I thought that the folk investing in a GI Joe sequel were misguided." "Lilley COULD be good, Josh might surprise with interesting writing but more Laid is just hopeless."

It’s not exactly surprising then that the news of a planned third series of Laid resulted in much wailing and gnashing of teeth. What was surprising was that this rumoured third series wasn’t being rumoured by the ABC itself, but by Film Victoria, who announced in their fiction funding decisions for 2011/2012 that they were giving Producer Andy Walker and writers Marieke Hardy and Kirsty Fisher the amount of $18,208 to develop a third season. We’re not experts on television development, but having already made two series of Laid, surely the show had been “developed” about as much as it was going to get? More importantly, considering up to that point – and at every point afterward – there’d been no word whatsoever from the ABC about their having the slightest interest in making a third series of Laid, why give them money to develop something there was no demand for? Not only had the show – written by the people collecting the development cash, so they can’t exactly claim ignorance here – wrapped up every single dangling plot thread by the end of series two, but its ratings had been so amazingly poor (three words: worse than Randling) that bringing it back yet again would have been little more than a signed confession by the programming department that they didn’t give a shit if anyone watched the ABC. But if you can find a funding body willing to give you a year’s worth of dole payments to “develop” a television show that’s already been a proven failure, good on you.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Best New Comedy

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Best New Comedy - Runner-Up: Woodley (ABC) - 15.0%

If you want to do something different, Woodley is how you do it. That’s not to say it was an unqualified success by any stretch – it probably either needed to be stand-alone antics a la Mr Bean or to be a proper serial, not a sitcom that reset almost every week – but it did feature someone who generally knows what he’s doing being given the chance to do it for an extended period. We probably didn’t need eight episodes of it either – a telemovie would have been perfect – but again, it was worth a shot in our books. Mind you, if there’s a second series we’re going to start kicking the furniture.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Best New Comedy - Runner-Up: Scumbus (10) - 21.7%

Not everyone liked Ed Kavalee’s no-budget telemovie Scumbus, presumably because they’re dead inside. Oh, alright: it didn’t have an ending, a lot of the scenes went on too long and almost all the female cast seem to have been hired on the basis that someone involved with the production was trying to pick them up. But despite all that, it had a surprisingly large number of moments that were kind of funny. Both the leads were dickheads in their own way, the other characters were actually varied (seriously, was there any difference at all between Roo and any of the other hipsters on Laid?) and for something that cost no money, having 80% of it take place in a caravan actually worked out pretty well. Man, that Peter Hellier song at the end was arse though.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Worst Sounding Upcoming Show - Winner: "Mad As Hell (ABC) - 63.3% | Voter’s Comments: "Not being on Wednesday nights definitely helped." "Dare one say it was better than Newstopia? Yes, because really good sketches, I guess!" "Woodley was something fresh and new, whereas Mad As Hell was more of the same from Micallef. But it was brilliant, and although there was no Kat Stewart or Nicholas Bell, the return of Roz Hammond and Francis Greenslade to Shaun's side more than made up for it." | Last Year’s Winner: The Bazura Project (ABC)

If the only problem you had with Mad as Hell was that it was similar – okay, very similar – to Micallef’s SBS series Newstopia, then realistically you should have been dancing in the streets for this series’ ten week run. Very smart and very, very funny, Newstopia was the kind of show that should have run for a decade; now reborn on the ABC as Mad as Hell, hopefully it will. C’mon here people, Micallef and company (especially writers Gary McCaffrie and Michael Ward) are putting together pretty much the only comedy coming out of Australia that could remotely be considered “world class”, thanks to their ability to be funny (on pretty much any level they choose, from word play to gunplay to Micallef raising a well-timed eyebrow) and make a point – even if that point is “why is that woman wearing a riding outfit?”. Micallef has found a format that works for him and if he wants to ride it into the ground for the next twenty years, hey, that works for us too.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Best Comedy

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Best Comedy - Runner-Up: The Hamster Wheel (ABC) - 25.8%

It’s uncertain whether The Hamster Wheel will return this year (although Julian Morrow and Craig Reucassel are due to host a new consumer affairs program called The Check Out) and that would be a shame because it’s been a consistently funnier series than The Chaser’s War on Everything, thanks to better research and the almost complete absence of pranks. Focusing on the media seems to have brought out a much-appreciated mean streak in the team which we hardly ever saw in their political work: presumably the ABC’s insane desire for “balance” when it comes to attacking politicians held them back in a way that doesn’t apply when it comes to sinking the boots into commercial current affairs shows and newsroom clichés.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Best Comedy - Runner-Up: Clarke & Dawe (ABC) - 27.4%

For once the three finalists in this category were satirical programs – a welcome change after a number of years in which quality satire has been at a premium on Australian TV, with 7.30’s Clarke & Dawe being the lone standard bearers. Many were outraged at the ABC’s plans to axe the veteran duo’s long-running weekly segment, but it now looks like Clarke & Dawe will stay on air (just not on 7.30) so that’s something.

Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2012 - Best Comedy - Winner: Mad As Hell (ABC) - 46.8% | Voter’s Comments: "A bit too close to Newstopia but still far and away the funniest show on TV." "Micallef reading the phone book would win" "You give Shaun Micallef a television show, it will be extremely funny. I guess that's why you land it on Friday night for ten weeks while Randling gets the plum spot for twenty-six. And try and get rid of Clarke & Dawe." | Last Year’s Winner: The Bazura Project (ABC)

The winner of this category was always going to be Mad As Hell, a sketch show which brilliantly combined the surrealism of The Micallef Program with the satire of Newstopia. It will be back this year and is sure to be one of the TV comedy highlights.

Usually here is where we’d make our predictions for 2013, but it’s already been announced that Spicks & Specks is coming back: we can’t top that.  Remember this announcement from the ABC?

After seven years, 277 episodes, more than 150 special guests, and thousands of questions, Australia’s favourite music quiz show Spicks and Specks will come to an end in 2011, as host Adam Hills and team captains, Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough, decide to call it a day.

We’re still waiting for the press release announcing its return that begins:

After seven years, 277 episodes, more than 150 special guests, and thousands of questions, Australia’s favourite music quiz show Spicks and Specks will return to our screens in 2013, as we realised that host Adam Hills and team captains, Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough had nothing to do with the show’s success really and… c’mon guys, Spicks and Specks! It’ll have the same opening music and set! What more do you want?

The Best of Randling - It’s horse piss! | M: Sexual references, poncy language and brief comedy | The Best of Randling - $29.99 (ONO) | Features all your favourite comedians refusing to appear on it! And the ones you hate begging Denton for one last chance! | Classic Moments: * A montage made entirely of the ABC logo at the end of the closing credits. | Special Features: * The letter from ABC management to Andrew Denton confirming the axing the series. * Unedited version of episode 4 (seven disc supplement, $79.99). * Rare still of Andrew Denton not looking like a smug git. * Unaired Albanian pilot of the show 'The Funny Word Game'. * Original storyboards for Andrew Denton's head. * Video diary of preparations for RandFest, the official Randling fan convention planned for 2013. * Randling re-imagined in Lego. * Rare print of a 'The quiz show just got fun-er-er' billboard poster without a cock and balls drawn on it.

Australian Tumbleweeds 2012 – voting is almost closed

Okay, so your chance to vote in this year’s Tumbleweeds Awards is almost over, and if you haven’t voted by now* there’s a good chance you never will. Which, let’s be blunt, would be a massive mistake on your part.

Let’s explain: some years it’s pretty clear that Australian comedy just stank up the place and these awards are just making it official. Other years there was enough good stuff around that avoiding the bad was surprisingly easy and we’re just making sure the stinkers don’t crawl away unnoticed. 2012 fell into neither category.

Instead, 2012 was a year full of crap that people are already talking up as some kind of new Golden Age. Don’t believe us? Check out the fine work of TV blogger and radio commentator Steve Molk:

Snuck under the radar: The return of Australian comedy to TV – particularly the ABC
(Notable mentions: Santo, Sam & Ed’s Sports Fever [Ch7/7mate]; Southland [Ch9]; Can Of Worms [Ch10]; Laid S02 [ABC1]; The Strange Calls [ABC2]; The Unbelievable Truth [Ch7]; Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight S02 [ABC1]; Mabo [ABC1]; Episodes [Ch9]; Good Game [ABC2].)
Problems. A Moody Christmas. The Warehouse Comedy Festival. Kane and Disabled. The Hamster Wheel. Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell. The Strange Calls. Woodley. Laid. Agony Uncles/Aunts. Outland. Danger 5. The Roast. Audrey’s Kitchen. Even Hamish & Andy’s Euro Gap Year. It’s building and we’re well overdue the return of good Australian comedy to our screens – the crop we received this year was plentiful and we want more. MORE, DAMMIT – MORE!!!

Far be it for us to point out that there was roughly the same amount of Australian comedy on our screens back in 2011** and that the overall improvement in quality was pretty much non-existent (basically, we lost Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation and gained Randling), even though that’s pretty much our job here. More importantly, who in their right mind wants more of Laid or Problems? Oh wait, this is the guy who’s website is “Challenging opinions of today’s TV” – presumably he meant to write something like “Challenging your opinions of today’s TV” – and yet his preview of Problems contained this example of Olympic-level fence-sitting:

“this sneak peek at Problems offers us an insight in the level of risk the ABC took in commissioning the series and just how well it’s going to pay off.”

Of course it “offers an insight”. So does literally everything else that had anything to do with the show, up to and including a photo of an empty set. If you’re going to be a critic and not just the network’s friend, you yourself have to offer up your own insights. It also helps if they’re not the same as every other fence-sitting critic (you didn’t like Randling? Uh yeah, that bandwagon left six months ago) and they don’t involve you tweeting at every television personality you can find trying to make friends with them.

The important thing is, whatever our issues with him Molks is one of the more high profile online television critics in Australia and he’s telling you that 2012 was a great year for Australian comedy. He’s not alone:  how else to explain Fairfax claiming that the best Australian comedy program of 2012 was Agony Aunts / Uncles? We’ve ranted about this debacle before, but seriously: if that’s the highwater mark for the year, then the year was spent in the stinking remains of a drought-drained swamp.

So let’s be blunt: if you don’t vote in this year’s Tumbleweeds, you’re saying you have no problem with what these people are putting out there. They’ve already had their say about the state of Australian comedy in 2012, and the obvious sacrificial lamb aside – that would be Randling, a dud so massive even Australian television critics had to acknowledge it – they liked what they saw. First class stuff all round guys, pat yourselves on the back for a job well done. “The crop we received this year was plentiful”. Certainly sounds like a big thumbs up to us.

We, as usual, would beg to differ. We certainly hope you do too.

 

 

*Your online voting form can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumblies2012votes

**That Fairfax “best and worst of 2012” TV list actually complained about the lack of Australian comedy on our screens in 2012. C’mon guys, you can’t both be right!

Australian Tumbleweeds 2012 – voting now open

Voting is open in this year’s Australian Tumbleweeds 2012. Now in its 7th year, the Australian Tumbleweeds hails the failures (and occasional successes) of this nation’s comic talent.

Your online voting form can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumblies2012votes

You have until midnight on Sunday 6th January 2013 to vote. Please only vote once. Full rules and instructions can be found with the voting form.

The winners will be announced on or about Australia Day.

As always, the official Twitter hashtag is #tumblies.

Death in voices

While you’re thinking about your nominations for this year’s Australian Tumbleweeds Awards, we want to draw your attention to this blog about the “Royal Prank” and the consequent suicide of Jacinta Saldanha. It highlights some of the issues we’ve been thinking about over the past couple of days, including the culture at Austereo radio stations that seems to be as much, if not more, to blame for Saldanha’s tragic death. You can lay blame the DJs, or the producers, or management, or the hospital’s patient privacy policy, but the real problem is the source – and unfortunately it’s the hardest to fix.

Britain’s Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press, sparked by the News International phone hacking scandal, shows us that while it’s not exactly a waste of time investigating the problems with the culture of an industry or organisation, there’s also not much you can really do to change it. A week or so after Leveson’s report was published Britain’s tabloid reporters were harassing Saldanha and her colleagues about the Royal Prank. Why? Because it’s how they get the stories to attract the readers to buy the newspapers they write for.

Similarly, in Australian commercial radio the job of the DJs is to come up with content that will keep the audience listening and phone pranks involving famous people are very much that. Sure, they get lawyers to look over anything that might be controversial, but in most cases it’ll be fine. If the Royal Prank hadn’t resulted in a suicide it’d be largely forgotten by now, even if the Police and ACMA had still decided to take an interest in it.

Audiences are pretty annoyed, of course, although probably not the regular listeners to 2Day FM to whom the station’s content is rigorously targeted. Sponsors may be withdrawing due to public pressure online, but once the fuss settles down they’ll probably come quietly back and everything will be back to normal. The problem, as the above-mentioned blog from The Preston Institute says, is the Austereo culture, and it’s unlikely to change: “I think they’ll just continue to live out their Mad Men fantasies, down another drink and continue to manage the PR.”

More likely to do some damage to Austereo are the hacking group Anonymous, who Mumbrella reports have made threats against the company. But any actions the group take are unlikely to result in the ongoing cultural change needed at the organisation. That would require an unlikely-to-occur mix of swiftly falling ratings, decreased sponsorship revenue, a courageous management team and attitudinal change amongst the station’s key demographics, and Anonymous’ incredible hacking skills can’t deliver that.

Well, It’s A Good Thing We’ve Never Liked Prank Calls Then

Earlier this week we were discussing whether to bother with a post on the prank call 2DayFM radio presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian made to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge, AKA Kate Middleton, was being treated for morning sickness. We decided against it because prank calls are crap, 2Day FM is the sluice tray at the bottom of the commercial radio slops bucket and what little Australian media interest the call attracted had basically fizzled out by the end of the day anyway.

With the death – a reported suicide – of the nurse who was the initial victim of their prank, the situation has changed a little. For one thing, this article on Fairfax’s website now seems a little dubious:

AS PRANKS go, it has caused offence right to the very top. The Queen, Prince Charles, Prince William, sections of the British public, the British press, royalists across the world and even a bewildered corgi or two.

But, in Australia, those who are well practised in this art of japery said on Thursday that the British outrage over the phone call made by the 2DayFM radio presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian to the private hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, was being treated for morning sickness, is what makes it so good

Actually, let’s quote a bit more in case it gets taken down:

Asked about the royal stunt, Julian Morrow, from The Chaser, said on Thursday: ”It’s funny and I think Austereo was fairly silly to apologise.

”Prank calls are really legitimate and there’s plenty of really good ones. There’s a particular skill you apply in each case … they got through, it worked, that’s fine.”

Even radio presenters from rival stations were praising the duo’s stunt during the week. Michael ”Wippa” Wipfli, from the Fitzy and Wippa show on NovaFM (owned by DMG Australia), said Greig and Christian deserved credit for the fuss their prank has caused.

”Three cheers to them, I think they’ve done an amazing job … the joke went really well, they should have aired it,” he said on Thursday. ”Anyone that doesn’t laugh at this story, and works in the media, is just angry they didn’t do it themselves. They’ve done well, I take my hat off to them.”

Wippa, who performs regular radio pranks with his co-star Fitzy (including impersonating Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe in calls to the Chateau Marmont) said the 2DayFM call would have initially been about amusing listeners with funny voices and corgi sounds but the comedic approach would have changed dramatically when the nurse went along with it.

”It’s one of those things where the joke paid off,” Wippa said. ”The prank was there, they conned the person. They managed to convince a person that it was actually the Queen. The gag is they would be in disbelief that they actually managed to convince someone.”

Despite the official public apology from Austereo, Greig and Christian were said to be privately delighted by the global reaction. Their names (and the 2DayFM brand) have made headlines across the world, particularly in Britain, where the world’s most notorious tabloids have declared their outrage.

Yeah, in hindsight that probably doesn’t look good.

The question that will no doubt be asked in the coming days and weeks is, are pranks legitimate comedy if this is the result? Not that that’ll be the right question to ask: at this early stage we have no idea how cause and effect has worked in this case. Was she being hounded by the British Tabloids? Was she under pressure at her job? What was her prior mental state? What was going on in her personal life? At the moment we – and by “we” we mean “the kind of media commentators who rush to pass judgment on this kind of story” – have no real idea past various unsubstantiated news reports. We may never know: for one thing, it’s hardly likely her employers – or her co-workers, or the royal family, or anyone else – will now openly admit they put pressure on her in the wake of her falling for this prank.

Usually at this stage we’d pause to consider what effect this tragedy will have on the world of comedy. There are always forces – shadowy, sinister, no-fun forces – looking for a way to whip up outrage against comedians as a way to exert their own moral authority. But despite the cement-mixer loud volume of the initial hand-wringing, in this case it’s already perfectly clear what effect it will have on comedy (or more realistically, “comedy”, what with of-course-it’s-not-bullying pranks being pretty dubious laugh-getters in our book): bugger all.

2Day FM has been playing shit pranks on their listeners – insert joke about Kyle Sandilands’ entire career here – for years now, and nothing thrown at them so far seems to have dented their desire to give the bottom of the barrel a right seeing to. Remember all the outrage when they interviewed and named a 14 year old rape victim live to air? Remember how that changed everyt… oh right, nothing at all changed. They’ll make the appropriate noises, throw the presenters under a bus (while presumably the producers only get a rap on the knuckles and management not even that), dial it down a little over the non-ratings period and come back next year like nothing ever happened. Like nobody even died.

We don’t cover “comedy” on commercial radio here much any more, mostly because commercial radio comedy has – is there a stronger word than “devolved”? – into a slurry of giveaways, shouting and naked abuse. Which, if the ratings are any guide, some people seem to enjoy. Whether the end result is particularly healthy for those involved – this is hardly the first suicide linked to the Austereo network, after all – clearly those cranking the handle at this particular sausage factory aren’t all that concerned.

Vale All And Sundry Chaser Projects

In some circles it’s become increasingly fashionable to suggest that The Chaser’s best years are behind them. Yes, we have boring friends. Also: say what now? When exactly was this golden age of The Chaser meant to have taken place exactly? Those two years when The Chaser’s War on Everything threw increasingly desperate and pointless pranks on screen week after week as it staggered towards a finish line that must have seemed a thousand years away? The controversy-marred third season, which succeeded only in whipping the tabloid press into a frenzy over a sketch that felt half-baked at best? The first season of The Hamster Wheel, which in hindsight was a show unsure of itself and best described as “mildly uneven”? Or those election specials where they snuggled up to various politicians and gave the vile turds who seek to run every aspect of our lives the opportunity to pretend they’re in on the joke? Run for the shadows, run for the shadows, run for the shadows in these golden years.

So let’s just say we reckon The Chaser of 2012 is at least as good as it’s ever been. While The Unbelievable Truth was yet another comedy panel show, it was at least a comedy panel show that didn’t stink up the joint. Seven showing back-to-back episodes was too much of a moderately good thing and we’re not going to pretend it didn’t have its fair share of dud segments (hey look it’s Scott Dooley) but unlike just about every other Australian comedy panel show in recent memory, laughs were had.

It was great to see The Umbilical Brothers on non-children’s television, Kitty Flanagan is always good value, the Chaser members who appeared as guests held their own, Sam Simmons’ style of comedy actually worked for us for once, and overall – due perhaps to coming out of Sydney, and thus being unable to fall back on the increasingly worn-out Melbourne comedy regulars – the show felt a little fresher than we expected going in to what was, after all, yet another comedy panel show.

Part of the credit has to go to host Craig Reucassel, surprisingly enough*. It’s taken The Chaser team a very long time indeed to actually get comfortable in front of the camera – and by comfortable we mean “comfortable enough to relax and have fun rather than just say the words and move on” – but here he actually seemed like a host willing to chip in and try and few jokes of his own to move things along. Sure, the whole thing could have been tightly scripted, but it looked a lot more relaxed than the usual Chaser deal, and that’s what we picked up on.

Over at The Hamster Wheel, our long held dream of a series that was nothing but the “What Have We Learnt From Current Affairs” segments from The Chaser’s War on Everything has finally come true. Frankly, the fewer traditional sketches they do the happier we are – for whatever reason, their sketches and fake news bits rarely fire, though they had a few winners – and this year they largely integrated that side of things into longer segments tackling one or another area of Australia’s rubbish media. And it worked! Largely because Australia’s media really is rubbish and making fun of them is both completely justified and a well that never runs dry, but generally they had good points to make and they made them well. Oh yeah, and it was funny sometimes too.

[something else that worked was their increasing use of bit players – we’re guessing they were their research team, as we recognised Lee Zachariah from The Bazura Project on camera every episode and he was listed in the credits as a researcher. Having non-core Chaser people turning up in the short one-joke cutaways that they increasingly peppered their segments with opened up the show and provided some much needed front-of-camera variety. And one of them was a woman!]

The other biggish change was they picked up the pace. A lot. How do we put this tactfully? For a variety of reasons (they’re not professional actors, for one) The Chaser are a team that works best when they’re putting a lot of material out there, not when they try to draw comedy out of a few jokes. Appearing in a year when Shaun Micallef  – who can (together with his team) get 90 seconds of solid comedy out of one idea – this was more important than ever, and The Chaser really stepped up and fired those jokes out there at a rapid rate.

In previous years we’ve had our usual whinge about The Chaser doing the same thing over and over and over without ever stretching themselves or surprising us. After this year, if they wanted to do a ten week series of The Hamster Wheel (2012 version) for the next decade or so we’d be happy with that. They finally seem to have figured out what it is that they do best, and they’ve decided to do the best job of it that they can. We’re still waiting on that sitcom from them, mind you…

 

 

 

*As The Chaser’s frontmen, Chris Taylor and Craig Reucassel haven’t always brought the energy with them. Where Andrew Hansen has displayed flashes of dry wit, Chaz has felt like a tightly wound comedy machine and Julian Morrow has been “the brains” of the organisation, Chris and Craig have seemed a little too much like the guys who are there simply because it’s a solid gig. Maybe that decade of hosting has finally rubbed off, but Reucassel on The Unbelievable Truth and the duo (together with Morrow) on The Hamster Wheel finally came across as guys actually having fun in their jobs. Considering The Chaser has never really traded on its members personalities – they’ve always just been “themselves” in front of the character rather than playing larger-than-life comedy characters, so they’ve had nothing to hide behind – this newfound ease is a big leap forward.

 

 

[Agree that The Chaser had a good year? Think we’ve lost the plot and the “Chaser Lads” should be put out to pasture? The nominations for the 2012 Australian Tumbleweeds Awards are now open – our online nominations form can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumblies2012noms]

Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2012 – Nominations now open

Nominations are now open in the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2012. Now in its 7th year, the Australian Tumbleweeds hails the failures (and occasional successes) of this nation’s comic talent.

Your online nominations form can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumblies2012noms

This year we have decided to reduce the number of public-voted awards, and to introduce a new Special Awards category for exceptional under-achievement in the field of Australian comedy. You may suggest Special Awards or Special Award recipients as part of the nominations process. The Special Awards are in the gift of the judges and their decisions are final.

You have until midnight on Friday 14th December to nominate. Please make no more than 4 nominations in each category. Full rules and instructions can be found with the nominations form.

Voting will start on Sunday 16th December and close on Sunday 6th January 2013, with the winners announced on Australia Day.

As always, the official Twitter hashtag is #tumblies.

 

Two Times The Love!

While we’d like to thank everyone who sent in cards and letters over the last few hours congratulating us on taking over the role of Head of Comedy at the ABC, bad news: we didn’t get the gig. It’s an easy mistake to make though, considering this was one of the main planks of today’s announcement of the ABC’s line-up for 2013:

we welcome the return of Australia’s favourite music quiz show SPICKS AND SPECKS – but it will be no cover version

Remember when we said this back in March?

1): Bring back Spicks & Specks. Okay, the horse has pretty much bolted here. So why the hell didn’t they keep the show going and just change the host? It was extremely obvious from the second In Gordon Street wasn’t a massive car crash that Hills was going to bail on S&S. Fair enough too, he’d clearly had enough. But let’s be honest: unless you are a relative or close personal friend of Hills, he’s not exactly irreplaceable. He’s a moderately handsome host who can come out with ABC-level quips. Two words: Will Fucking Anderson. Or pretty much anyone else, including your local postie. Yes, he was good at his job. His job was hosting a musical quiz show. IT’S NOT THAT HARD. Just look at the UK, where they have loads of this kind of long-running show and think nothing of swapping out hosts when need be.

We’re not saying an idiot could do a better job of running comedy at the ABC at the moment. We’re saying that we’re idiots and even we could see the ABC had fucked up big time by kicking Spicks and Specks to the curb when they did. So we guess we might possibly be saying that idiots could maybe do a better job than the current crew. Ouch.

Then there’s this, which is a direct quote from the fancy big book proper TV journalists were sent today outlining the future of the national broadcaster:

“…drum roll… Chris Lilley is back… but if we told you any more, we’d have to kill you”

You don’t have to be a moron to recognise that line as the stock-standard “we don’t know either” cover-up. You also don’t have to be a moron to know that Chris Lilley has not made a show and brought it to air in under a year since 2005. So we’re going to call it: whatever Chris Lilley is working on will not be seen on Australian televisions in 2013. But thanks for keeping us posted.

Otherwise the comedy line-up is pretty much what you’d expect: all the high profile stuff looks crap, all the decent stuff has a blanket thrown over it. In the former pile we have The Agony Guide to Life – yes, Agony Uncles / Aunts is getting another go, which shows you just how disastrous this year was for the ABC – Joe Hildebrand is back with… something, they don’t even have a name for it because presumably RACE-BAITING was taken… the pointless “comedy” gameshow Tractor Monkeys looks set to follow firmly in the footsteps of every single other ABC comedy gameshow not called Spicks and Specks, It’s a Date is Peter Helliar’s chance to do for romantic comedy on television what he did for it on the big screen with I Love You Too (did we ever mention how that films co-star Peter “Game of Thrones” Dinklage had Helliar take out all the dwarf-tossing jokes before he agreed to do it?) and everything else is reality programming we’ll probably end up covering because there’s fuck-all else on for months at a time.

Oh, in Chaser news, there’s this:

The Chaser’s Julian Morrow and Craig Reucassel will give consumer affairs an extreme makeover in THE CHECK OUT

But we also think there’s a pretty good chance The Hamster Wheel or something like it will return in the second half of the year – after all, they didn’t announce its return at the 2012 launch either.

On the positive side, Gristmill’s Upper Middle Bogan looks promising and we’re pretty happy there’s going to be a second season of Twentysomething.  We’re also happy but also somewhat puzzled that there is no mention anywhere here of Josh Thomas’ long-promised sitcom Please Like Me, first announced at the ABC’s 2012 launch. Guess they’re keeping it under wraps for a surprise attack later in the year.

Shows that are coming back include Adam Hills’ talk show, at least two separate flavours of Gruen (Nation and Planet), Audrey’s Kitchen – which is a pleasant surprise, as it was one of the stronger efforts from Working Dog in recent years – and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. Which is as good a segue as any into the other big announcement in Australian television today…

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A lot of people have asked us over the last year or two why we bother reporting on anything that appears in The Age‘s television supplement, The Green Guide. We do so because while in theory they’re part of a large and credible news outlet worthy of our attention and respect, in actuality they have no idea what the hell they’re doing. For example, this week they released their annual “Best and Worst of the Year in Television” issue and hooly dooly is it a five star shocker.

They didn’t have separate categories for drama and comedy* – their best show of the year is Homeland, which seems to suggest they have extremely short attention spans and / or realised they couldn’t not give the number one slot to a show airing on commercial television even though Australian commercial television in 2012 basically took out ads saying “we just don’t give a fuck about quality” – so oh ho ho ho what classic show do you think they reckon was the best Australian comedy in 2012? Coming in at number eight:

Agony Aunts / Uncles (ABC1). Superbly cast, terrifically edited local series that provided frank, funny answers from a diverse group of men and woman. Has made stars – and landed a heap of work – for it’s breakout participants.

Putting aside the fact that the Green Guide staff thought that in 2012 there were only seven shows better than Agony Uncles / Aunts on Australian television – which is not exactly a decision designed to engender trust in their mental facilities- every single point they make is provably wrong just by watching five minutes of the actual show. Here, we’ve made a list:

* “Superbly cast”… with a whole bunch of creator / host Adam’s Zwar’s comedy mates up to and including his own wife. If you weren’t passably attractive and under 40 you’d better be a big name or talk a lot of crazy sex stuff or you were nowhere to be seen.

*”Terrifically edited”… actually, the rapid-fire editing and constant cutting between talking heads did a really good job of making the whole show feel like a shallow bowl of plain mush. It was a collection of soundbites, not a narrative.

*”Diverse group of men and woman”… see “superbly cast”, only while you could argue about the quality of the cast (such things being subjective), calling the B-list comedians and Sunday paper talking heads here “diverse” is a bigger joke than any of the ones the guests cracked.

*”Has made stars – and landed a heap of work”… for Lawrence Mooney.

(not that their love of the show was really all that surprising – it was basically the same soft opinion / relationship material The Age runs all weekend every weekend)

After that, we pretty much gave up on the rest of the list (even if The Hamster Wheel came in at number nine because “Nobody comes close to doing what the Chaser lads do on Australian TV”… apart from Media Watch, the Gruen shows and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell, of course), but we did keep on skimming just to see whether our current front runner for fave comedy of the year Mad as Hell placed, just so we knew where we stood with this list. Surprise! Turns out our position regarding this list wasn’t so much standing as sitting on the toilet looking for something to wipe our backsides with:

20. Why we’re torn about Shaun Micallef Is Mad As Hell (ABC1)

For: Federal politics has been certifiably bonkers this year – bleak, joyless farce. But for 10 weeks, at the apex of the carbon tax battle, Shaun Micallef’s wilfully perverse news satire provided a weekly dose of pleasurably silly mockery. There were always incidental pleasures in the characters’ names (especially Veronica Milsom as reporter Xanthe Kalamazoo), but highlights played on headlines: Francis Greenslade’s softly menacing union official; Tony Abbott’s ”national hairnet tour”; the dance choreographed to Craig Emerson’s ”Whyalla Wipeout”. I loved best the jokes at the expense of Fairfax and the future of print – especially the skit where the fish-and-chip shop wraps the flake in an iPad.

Against: The people spoke and the ABC listened, which is how Shaun Micallef was given a chance to flex his muscles as a writer, performer and avowed news junkie in this eponymous current-affairs satire. But anyone who saw his earlier go-around on SBS, the inventive, cheap and cheerful Newstopia, quickly realised that a polished production and overplayed gesturing didn’t value-add. There were some bright spots – enough, evidently, for a return season next year.

That was 20 in their Worst Shows of 2012 list. Seriously. And the worst thing they seem to be able to say about it is that it’s kind of like Newstopia, which they seem to have enjoyed. No-one tell them The Footy Show is the same old shit year in year out, their heads might explode.

Now, we know full well these lists are largely about shit-stirring – or “trolling”, as the people on Today Tonight like to call it. We know the point is to say controversial things to get people paying attention to you. And we have no problem with that when it’s done online, or when it’s a columnist speaking their mind. But when a supposedly reputable source of television coverage – a place people are meant to be able to go to for reviews of television shows that will give them a serious idea of what the writer thinks is worthwhile viewing – tries to pull off the kind of wacked-out shit that this list does (AGONY UNCLES / AUNTS WAS THE BEST AUSTRALIAN COMEDY SHOW OF 2012 EVERYONE!!), all we hear is the sounds of them flushing the shredded remains of their credibility down the toilet.

If the Green Guide wants to start basing its approach around saying controversial / bizarre / hilarious shit to get attention, it’s going to have to become a lot more entertaining. Because as it stands, it’s not smart or funny enough to stand as a decent read on its merits and it sure as shit can’t be taken seriously as a source of quality reviewing. Who would have guessed the days when Marieke “I made a completely superfluous second series of Laid and it didn’t make the worst shows of the year even though it rated worse than Randling” Hardy would give glowing reviews of shows on the ABC while actually working for the ABC would seem like a golden age?

 

 

 

*they did have a sidebar complaining about the overall lack of Australian comedy on television this year, seemingly unaware that it was actually one of the better years for Australian television comedy – in quantity if not quality. Guess what they meant to say was “Any year without a series by Chris Lilley doesn’t count”.