Australian Tumbleweeds
Podcast into the wilderness
We’ll say this upfront, our punny little title for this blog post is unfair. The fact that Santo, Sam and Ed (that’s Cilauro, Pang and Kavalee) are now podcasting (subscribe with iTunes or with RSS), as opposed to being on Channel 7 or SBS or radio, isn’t because they’ve been banished for being crap, it’s because broadcasters and audiences are crap. Santo, Sam and Ed are merely following in the footsteps of The Sweetest Plum and countless others who’ve made good comedy shows that didn’t rate with whatever demographics are important. It’s a massive shame they got the chop, but at least we the audience still get to hear them on our iPods.
The Santo, Sam and Ed podcast, the first episode of which was recorded on Friday and uploaded yesterday, is, as you’d expect, 50 minutes of amusing chat. Surprisingly the show is less sports-focused than you might expect, with about half the episode looking at topical matters in the worlds of politics, current affairs and show business. Tom Gleisner, who joined Santo and Sam in their London 2012 Olympics show for Triple M Melbourne, The Rush Hour – Going For Gold, was also involved for part of the podcast and he’ll no doubt make appearances in future episodes.
After just one episode the format for this show is far from settled upon, apart from that it’ll be weekly, but given the make-up of the team it’s likely there’ll be appearances from people like Rob Sitch, as well as the odd sketch. A return of Tom’s quiz from The Rush Hour – Going For Gold would be a good idea too. And with comedy pretty much winding down (nominations in the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2012 will start soon!), it’s nice to have something to look forward to over summer – bring it on!
Hilarious Joke About How Sam Simmons Has Problems.
A little over two years ago now Sam Simmons briefly followed our page on Facebook. He made two comments on posts having a go at his work – “Wow you are so boring! Learn a new tune.” and “Bullllllshiiiiittttt” – and then asked us to stop harassing him, unaware that the problem was that he had chosen to follow us and so was receiving updates every time we made a new post. Soon after we explained this he unfollowed us, and we decided that he actually had a reasonable point: we didn’t like his work, so why keep on going on about it? His television career was seemingly over after jTV ended and his spin-off The Urban Monkey failed to make any kind of impact, so constantly bringing him up merely to hang shit on him seemed kind of petty. Our last post that examined his work in any depth was back at the start of 2010; since then we’ve limited our coverage to noting his (often funny) presence on various panel shows. Mostly because as far as television was concerned there wasn’t anything else to cover.
But now, all that’s changed! As this article reveals, Simmons has a new comedy series – Problems – starting on the ABC and man, has he thrown the gauntlet down or what:
”The first episode is really f—ing out there,” he says. ”It’s anarchic, subversive and dark. Lazy journalists are going to say, ‘It’s like The Mighty Boosh,’ but it’s nothing like the f—ing Mighty Boosh. That’s what they’ll write, though, because we can’t get our head around absurdism in this country.”
Because, you know, The Goodies was realistic comedy in the vein of When Harry Met Sally. And Shaun Micallef’s career has really struggled these last few years thanks to Australia’s complete inability to “get our head around absurdism”. What the fuck is Simmons talking about?
Tempting as it is to point out that simply calling some random shit “absurdist comedy” doesn’t make it so and an audiences’ failure to laugh at your work doesn’t mean they don’t get it, that can wait. Let’s instead look at the very first sketch in the very first episode of a show that, in Simmons own words, “is really f—ing out there”:
Lawrence Mooney: “Watched the sheepdog trials last night. Smart dogs.”
Anthony Morgan: “Yeah, I had one of them a few years back.”
LM: “Good dog?”
AM: “Best dog I ever had.”
LM: “Where is it now?”
AM: “Shot it.”
LM: “Aww”
AM: “Had to.”
LM: “Parvo?”
AM: “Nah, I was going out”.
Apart from the quality of the performers, we’re going to go out on a limb here and suggest there is nothing here you couldn’t have seen on a random episode of Comedy Inc: The Late Shift. Now, maybe Simmons – who is the star and wrote most of his own material, though the series is directed by “Mr Everywhere” Trent O’Donnell and has a team of writers led by Declan Fay – wanted to ease audiences into his “really f—ing out there” show with a fairly traditional gag. Make that a really traditional gag. Make that a gag you could see on Red Faces.
Surprisingly, only not really – our point of attack is that Simmons has claimed one thing for his show and delivered another, not that he’s delivered a bad comedy scene – we didn’t mind that bit. And as the episode goes on it becomes clear that Morgan and Mooney are easily the best things going on here. Largely because they’re making fun of actual stuff rather than just repeating phrases over and over again in different voices in the hope that comedy will magically spring forth. Simmons is keeping that gold all to himself.
When Morgan says later on in the episode that Mick Jagger is “not a fictional Australian’s arsehole”, it’s not a random comment: it’s the punchline to a comedy conversation that started with a decent idea (how many Australians do you have to hate to become un-Australian) then built on it (do fictional Australians count) with funny examples (I don’t hate Ned Kelly, I hate the legend of Ned Kelly) and comedy confusion (Mick Jagger only played Ned Kelly in a notoriously bad 70s film) before reaching the aforementioned punchline. Meanwhile, Simmons is playing a quiz show host offering as a prize a “sexual trout”, which largely involves him acting out sticking a fake fish up his arse. Though the bit where he sticks the fish head over his groin and calls it a cod piece was almost funny.
Onto the next sketch, which turns out to be the backbone of the episode: Sam Simmons plays “Sam”, a guy who likes tacos too much. He makes tacos, eats one, then spits it up because they changed the recipe.Yeah, this is more like it. Like pretty much everything Sam Simmons has ever written, this contains the potential for comedy then completely throws it out the window because why write a joke when you can have fake footage of a bear trying to catch hot dogs in a river on a TV set in the background. Why write jokes, people? Jokes aren’t “subversive”. Making people laugh isn’t “dark”. Being funny isn’t “really f–king out there”.
Not that Simmons doesn’t know his stuff: “Sam” stands up, a coin falls out of his pocket and rolls down the back of the couch and hey presto, new sketch about the moths who live in his couch. It’s a smooth transition. Obviously, they’re people in moth costumes: slightly less obviously, this joke (or “joke”) was done in the previous sketch, where Sam’s cat was played by an actor in a cat suit.
Having people dressed up as animals is hardly original even in Australia in the last few years -*cough Wilfred cough* – but nor is it common enough for it to pass as just an unremarkable part of the background. To work as comedy, either this is going to be part of the landscape of the show – it’s a show about animals where the animals are played by people a la Wilfred – or it’s a once-off joke. Doing it twice in two back-to-back sketches looks like the work of someone who thinks a): people dressed up as animals is automatically funny and b): doesn’t have a whole lot of other ideas.
There’s a strand of comedy variously known as “monkey whimsy” or “animal whimsy” in which a comedian bereft of jokes or insight tries to get the laughs started by peppering things with wacky references to silly animals. You know why Simmons said that Australian reviewers would compare Problems to The Mighty Boosh? Neither do we. But it could be because Boosh star Noel Fielding is one of the prime exponents of “animal whimsy” and Simmons does seem to find animals hilarious.
[Simmons, a former zookeeper who started out on Fox FM as “the animal guy”, previously had a television series titled The Urban Monkey. Stage shows include Tales From The Erotic Cat and Where Can I Win A Bear Around Here. To be fair, he’s dialed back the animal titles in recent years, though he does seem to have animal ears and paws in the poster for his latest live show, About the Weather.]
The joke with the moths turns out to be a moderately “realistic” depiction of a crumbling marriage, only they’re, you know, moths. Sketch-wise they get a couple of turns, Simmons as the crap quiz show host comes back a few times – making the “it’s obvious what the real answer is after all these clues but sorry, the card says something completely different” joke (made famous by the “Moops” Trivial Pursuit answer in Seinfeld) twice in the same episode – there’s a repeated sketch about “Ultra Phil” in which an intentionally shit song about “Ultra Phil” is sung while a regular guy tries to get work done in his office, a fake ad where a woman who doesn’t remember being trampled by a police horse sets up a video portrait business (this sketch was kind of okay, but suffered from having the same tone as everything else in the show) and a supermarket loudspeaker says hilariously wrong things about a dead old lady in aisle three and a wild animal attacking people on the second level. Did we say hilariously? Predictably. We meant predictably.
Problems has a lot of problems, but the show’s biggest one is that everything bar the old guys is pitched at the exact same level of random LOL wacky. Running throughout the episode are cutaway gags that are basically a shot of a person in a situation while the voiceover says stuff like “Meanwhile in Freemantle, Glenn is learning to clap. He’s trying his best” (an old guy trying to clap and failing), “Meanwhile in [somewhere], Juliet has discovered that some babies are wankers” (over a woman holding a baby),”Meanwhile in Bunbry, Aflie has lost $400 on the skill-tester. He really wanted the bear” (man using skill-tester), “Meanwhile in Preston, Alex can’t find his backpack anywhere” (Alex is a schoolkid running in circles because his backpack is on his back). On a completely different show, these short snapshots could be a welcome change of pace. On this show, they’re just even more of more of the same.
Problems is not a sketch show on a theme because there is no theme past “random shit is wacky shit”. Sam’s obsession with tacos doesn’t say anything about anything past Simmons’ belief that repeating “especious secreto” over and over and over – sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted – is funny. Apart from a suburban setting that is largely set decoration, there’s no sense here that the show is trying to say anything about anything. At its most basic – and this kind of random wacky shit is pretty basic – comedy works because it’s unexpected. Random shit works because you don’t see it coming. A 27 minute sketch show that’s all random shit pitched at the exact same note – apart from the aforementioned old buggers – is pretty much the definition of “expected”.
Rather than insult Sam Simmons by comparing his show to The Mighty Boosh, let’s make a comparison that seems to be slightly more relevant: UK comedian Chris Morris’ 2000 sketch show Jam. Jam was “dark” and “subversive” and “really f—king out there” because, well, this: Jam‘s first sketch was about parents who were a): having sex with a local gay man to stop him having sex with their son, b): having sex with their son to stop him going gay, c): wanted a friend to take over having sex with the local gay because the dad couldn’t keep up the pace, d): were clearly insane and e): the friend just went along with it because the whole thing felt like a creepy dream. Simmons first sketch was about how he really loves tacos.
More relevantly, Morris’ show felt like there was an over-arching criticism of society taking place behind all the random LOL stuff. A sketch on Jam about a couple who decide to have sex with a creep to get a lower price on the house he’s selling – and then get an even lower price by basically selling a relative to him – was “really f—king out there”, but also had a point to make about the lengths middle class people will go to secure the right house. Of course, comedy doesn’t have to make a point. But if you’re trying to be funny by doing the unexpected, you really need to have some level of normal to work against. Jam worked because Morris and company put in just enough recognisable elements – overly protective parents, bargain house-hunters – to make the strange stuff work*. Simmons just wacks in the weird crap and it’s off to the races.
Perhaps the market for this show is people who are half watching the television, see Simmons’ antics out of the corner of their eye and go “ha, what a dickhead! He looks like an ironic sex pest”. The line “I am sorry about causing a racial sensation in an eating environment” is the kind of thing that could be funny coming from a well-established and engaging comedy character – George Costanza, for example, or Homer Simpson. Coming from “Sam Simmons”, a character adrift against a barely defined backdrop and defined by annoying behaviour, comedy racism, a desire for tacos and an ability to shout AND whisper, it’s nothing. It’s just nothing.
*Jam did have skits that were just strange for strangeness’ sake. But even then, seeing a fat woman up a tree getting wacked on the backside by a space hopper wielded by a crying man wearing a nappy while she lip-synchs to “Loving You” is an order of strangeness beyond anything in Problems.
Time for John Clarke & Bryan Dawe?
John Clarke doesn’t do many interviews, so it’s interesting that he was the subject of a long article on TV Tonight the other day.
EXCLUSIVE: Comedian John Clarke has paid tribute to former Current Affair host Jana Wendt for supporting his mock interviews with Bryan Dawe, more than two decades ago.
Wendt’s belief in the bold concept as part of a current affairs programme on a commercial network saved the pair from getting the axe. This year the duo mark 25 years together on radio and television.
Although the TV Tonight interview makes no mention of it, it’s worth remembering that a recent article in Crikey suggested that the Clarke & Dawe segment on 7.30 could be facing the axe. According to Crikey 7.30’s contract with John Clarke and Bryan Dawe ends at the end of this year, meaning the pair could only be on air for a few more weeks. In this context, the liberal quotes from Clarke talking about how the Clarke & Dawe segment was at odds with the commercial culture at Channel 9 in the 1990s, and how crucial Wendt’s support had been in keeping them on A Current Affair, seems almost like a plea to 7.30 host Leigh Sales for support. The Crikey piece gave no indication as to Sales’ likely influence over the decision, stating that:
…[the Clarke & Dawe segment’s] future is being keenly debated by heavy-hitters in Aunty’s news and current affairs department — including 7.30 EP Sally Neighbour and current affairs boss Bruce Belsham.
After a difficult post-Kerry O’Brien year in 2011, 7.30 has been turned around by Neighbour this year. According to Craig Mathieson’s recent article for Fairfax the show’s ratings have risen from lows of 500,000 at the start of 2012 to more than 800,000. Mathieson wrote:
Sally Neighbour’s 7.30 is producing strong current affairs for a younger audience. But instead of trying to pander to them with gimmicks, the show is offering timeless basics done well with strong interviews and newsworthy stories. But that doesn’t mean 7.30 should dispense with John Clarke and Bryan Dawe’s interview slot on Thursdays. The satirists were the best thing about the show in 2011, and should be allowed to share in 7.30’s revitalisation.
A recent interview with Neighbour for The Power Index also highlighted the drive to improve ratings for 7.30, particularly amongst younger audiences:
Increasing the show’s appeal to younger viewers has also been a priority: out are the interviews with ageing rockers, in are stories about a trampolinist with AIDS or a one-armed pole dancer.
In this context perhaps two men in their 60s doing in-depth satire is at odds with the rest of the show? Not that it should be…head over to the Clarke & Dawe channel on YouTube, which has more than 13,000 subscribers and is heading for 3 million video views – each of their videos gets thousands of views within hours of upload. And with the majority of Australian YouTube users being under 40 the pair’s work can’t be a turn-off for younger viewers. John Clarke may be worried about the future of the Clarke & Dawe segment on 7.30 (well, we assume he is, why else would he give TV Tonight the interview?) but the producers shouldn’t be – Clarke & Dawe are pulling the kind of audience they want. And if they’re foolish enough to dump them any number of media will be bidding for them – rival current affairs shows, radio stations, news websites – this time next year Clarke & Dawe could be regulars on anything from 3AW to theage.com.au. Breathe deeply. Everything is fine.
Gapping On
Has there ever in the history of Australian comedy been a show more aptly named than Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year? A Gap Year being, for those not in the know, a year taken off between serious, future-shaping pursuits so you can pissfart around and enjoy yourself without having to worry about the future arc of your career. And so it has proved to be with the Gap Year programs: Hamish and Andy, seemingly free of concerns about making a “proper” television program, instead pick a spot on the map and wander around looking for fun stuff to do that they can slap together in a… wait, what?
Yeah, okay: the current two-part Hamish and Andy series is not actually called Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year. It is, in fact, Hamish & Andy’s Caravan of Courage, dusting off the title they gave to their in-Australia wanderings back when a): they had a daily radio show and b): made television specials for Channel Ten. Okay, well, whatever: they’re still wandering around the countryside looking for the strange and unusual so they can crack a few jokes about it and be on their way.
On the one hand, what’s wrong with that? They’re only on television a few times a year – ten hour long episodes in 2011 and (we think) seven hour episodes leading up to the London Olympics followed by the two 90 minute Caravan of Courage episodes. Hey, it’s almost as if they signed a contract to provide ten hours of television per year instead of just filming their wacky adventures until they ran out of wacky adventures to film. Acting like a slightly more comedic version of The Leyland Brothers plays to their strengths as comedians too: they’re likable guys, they have good chemistry together, and seeing Hamish taunting Andy after Andy’s just eaten a giant bug is about as funny as a scene where someone eats a giant bug is ever going to get.
On the other hand, enough already! After their half-hearted attempt at a talk show during the first series of Gap Year failed to set the ratings ablaze, they’ve retreated to a “travel all over the countryside” formula that was already looking a little threadbare back in 2009. There may not be a limit to the crazy guys and oddball situations they can uncover across the globe, but it’s certainly starting to feel like there’s a limit as to how many times they can expect us to watch it.
They’re still doing a good job of what they do. They’re still funny, likable guys. Still, there comes a point – very, very soon now there will come a point – where more of the same stops working. Oh, with the kind of ratings they’re pulling in now they can keep doing Caravan of Courage / Gap Year television for the next ten years. But unless they start trying to mix things up now, that’s all they’re ever going to do: every time they suggest something different (if they even want to try something different now), the network execs are going to frown and shake their heads and remind the guys that the last time they tried something different it didn’t really work out so maybe it’s time to drive around Tasmania looking for giant robot sheep, okay?
Whatever your opinion of Hamish Blake and Andy Lee, it’d be a shame if all they ever did from here on in was more of the same. They’re the only current comedians popular enough to actually make a stand-alone comedy series work on a commercial network: fingers crossed one day they’ll make a series that involves slightly more than just them standing in some guys homemade lightning-proof “coffin” while he fires bolts of electricity at them.
The Scumbus Has Something For Everyone
There’s a theory that says the perfect length for a comedy film is somewhere just south of 80 minutes. Any longer than that and you need to start adding non-comedic story and character elements to keep people watching, as there seems to be an inbuilt intolerance for silly antics once they drag on much longer than an hour. Good news: once you cut out the ads, Ed Kavalee’s long gestating self-financed movie Scumbus goes for just on 70 minutes. So that means it’s completely free of all that annoying “character development” and pointless tacked on serious drama rubbish, right? Right?
Ha, tricked you – it totally is free of all that stuff! In fact, even for a year that’s been surprisingly full of big-screen comedies – yeah, sorry we never reviewed Housos versus Authority, turns out it was the kind of unmitigated turd that didn’t deserve the slightest wiff of publicity oxygen, even if our review would have been so astoundingly negative it probably would have qualified as some kind of hate crime – Scumbus is without a doubt the funniest Australian feature film of 2012. So obviously it was screened only as a telemovie at 9.30 on a Saturday night on Channel Ten.
Actually though, this also works in its favour. Being “merely” a telemovie means Scumbus doesn’t have to try to be a “proper” movie, with the associated serious crap and character development and blah blah blah. It can just sit back, relax, and play pretty much everything for laughs. Which, as we’ve mentioned before, is what you want in a comedy, right? Not to mention the fairly limited range of low budget locations – at least half the movie takes place inside a caravan – plays a lot better on television that it would trying to compete on the big screen with Skyfall.
The story is simple: Tommy (Ed Kavalee) and Jesse (Toby Truslove) are flatmates who are also cops. How Jesse became a cop is a mystery, as he’s a borderline sex predator-slash-shit musician-slash-party guy-slash-sleazebag-slash-party drug vacuum. So yeah, this is Truslove’s funniest and most likable performance by far this year. Tommy is much more of a goody goody, but because he’s partnered with his incompetent best mate – who gave Tommy’s badge to a guy at a nude carwash because he “needed it” – his career is going nowhere. This is bad because he has a massive crush on detective Amy (Samantha Tolj) – though it seems it’s more his desire to be a detective than her supposed interest in only dating detectives that’s getting in his way there.
Having failed once again to secure any kind of promotion, Tommy is now going backwards: their boss (Glenn Robbins) has just demoted him and Jesse to working out of “The Scumbus”, a police caravan in a carpark in a suburb that seems to consist entirely of back lanes. This is not a good gig. The previous Scumbus cops (a genuinely scary Henry Nixon and an astoundingly thick Tony Martin) seem more than a little dodgy and local pimp-slash-drug-dealer-slash-cop-slasher Adam (Lachy Hulme) isn’t exactly happy to see them on his turf. How we get from here to a drug-fuelled party in the Scumbus with a bunch of girls Jesse met on an on-line dating site and some guy who seems to be a porn cameraman is a little hard to explain.
Much of what’s fun about Scumbus is the way it actually wants to just be a comedy. That is to say, there are no morals to be learnt here: in one scene where Jesse discovers an online hook-up is actually an excuse for Dave Hughes to watch someone get on with his wife, the usual result would be for Jesse to storm out in disgust. But why? She’s hot and he’s a sleaze. So here he just shrugs and gets back to work. Result: comedy.
[something to pay attention to: for a 21st century comedy there are a lot of “cute girl” roles, and all the “cute girls” look roughly the same. This isn’t exactly a return to the days of Alvin Purple – sorry guys, no nudity here – but this does feel like a film made by guys in their late twenties: if not all the jokes work, at least you can look at the girls! Who occasionally seem to suggest they may have been cast by a casting director who met them in a nightclub. But considering they’re all playing the kind of girls you’d meet in a nightclub, it’s win win! And before you put on your outrage hat, the character of Amy actually gets to make some good points about the kind of “nice” guys who don’t just ask out girls they obviously like, so it’s plain just about everyone here is a bit of a loser.]
There’s a great comedy cast here – Ryan Shelton does fine work as a creepy cat-obsessed cop, no-one’s better than Robbins when it comes to avuncular authority figures, Martin has a solid line in comedy stupidity and both Hughes and Peter Helliar in one-scene cameos are funnier than anything either has done in years – but there’s real variety in the characters too. Hulme is both a serious threat and pretty funny when he isn’t waving a knife around, Christian Clark as Tommy’s douchebag rival for Amy is a first-rate comedy smarm-artist, and again, Nixon is more frightening than the entire cast of Underbelly:Razor. Kavalee gives his nice guy character the occasional sex pest vibe too: this isn’t a story where a nice guy somehow can’t get the girl, it’s a story where the nice guy gets in his own way when it comes to the ladies because he can be a little bit creepy. Which is a lot funnier than the first option, and a lot more realistic too.
Scumbus does have its flaws. The ending is a little muddled thanks to an addition of an out-of-nowhere comedy bit that drags on too long – though the comedy song involved is pretty funny – and if it isn’t already clear, if you’re after anything more spectacular than a couple of people trading barbs in a caravan this is not the movie for you. If, on the other hand, you like to laugh, consider this review a ringing endorsement of what is one of the comedy highlights of the year: if a DVD release (or at least, an encore showing) isn’t on the cards, we might have to consider going into the bootlegging field ourselves.
Unfunny ho hum
Making the audience laugh loudly and frequently should be the principle objective of any comedic work, right? Yet in the decade or so since The (UK) Office we have seen a fundamental change in the nature of sitcoms and how many people judge them. These days a sitcom is as likely to contain dramatic scenes and plots as it is comedic ones, with reviewers often viewing this as a positive.
Take The Strange Calls. Reviewing it in The Australian, Graham Blundell described it as “affecting in its low-key, oddly earnest way; not laugh out loud funny but endearingly funny.” In a similar vein, Dan Barrett writing on the Televised Revolution blog said: “The Strange Calls is a fun series. While not laugh out loud funny, the show is a charming smile inducing half hour that will do well in building a loyal audience.” While neither reviewer was raving about the series (and why would they) the lack of “laugh out loud funny” wasn’t viewed as a negative either.
Both reviewers went on to discuss the director’s use of Coolum Beach as a location and the quality of the acting in far more detail than the quality of the comedy, reflecting the fact that high production values and a focus on realism are more likely to be the hallmarks of the contemporary sitcom than the laughs, and that many commentators don’t question this. Yet can anyone seriously imagine a TV reviewer calling a drama “not edge of your seat dramatic” and it not being taken as a negative? And why is it assumed that a comedy is still a good comedy when it’s not very funny?
Part of the problem, perhaps, is that comedy is harder to review than drama because everyone laughs at different things. Most people can agree that a TV drama works better if it has good production values (i.e. the sets look realistic, the camera work is smooth, the lighting allows you to see the actors at key moments, the editing doesn’t jar, the director’s brought it all together in a way that allows you to follow the storyline, etc., etc.), but as to what’s funny and what isn’t…some people laugh at surreal gags, some people prefer crude gags, some people want all comedy to be satirical, and someone somewhere found Live From Planet Earth hilarious – there’s no objective way to critique it.
Which kinda leads us to a situation where many reviewers end up writing about comedy as if it were drama (i.e. commenting on the realism and slickness of the production) and consequently turn their noses up at any comedy that is actively trying to be funny. Add to this the relatively recent trend for making comedy like you’d make a drama – i.e. with non-comedic scenes and plot lines – and you get less laughs in comedy and people accepting that.
Over the years we’ve questioned both the trend for making realistic sitcoms and the lack of criticism of this style of sitcom for the simple reason that we believe that comedy should be about laughs and that the introduction of dramatic elements and other flourishes of realism hasn’t improved sitcoms, yet ours seems to be an unfashionable viewpoint. We’re not saying that all traditional comedies (i.e. shows with laugh out loud jokes peppered throughout the dialogue, and over-the-top/unrealistic characters and performances) are great – they aren’t, see Housos – but they’re more likely to make you laugh out loud. Even in The (UK) Office it’s notable that the most memorable, loved and funny moments were the ones that were silly or un-naturalistic, scenes such as the stapler in jelly or David Brent’s dance.
We find ourselves agreeing with the following point made by Ben Pobjie in his review of The Strange Calls for Fairfax:
It’s all very well to have realistic depictions of suburban life and explorations of the difficulties of raising a family but sometimes you need grossly unrealistic depictions, and Crocker with a hose and an iPhone.
And this is true whether you agree with the rest of Pobjie’s review of The Strange Calls (he likes it) or not. Comedy is there to make the audience laugh and, generally speaking, comedy comes from hyper-realism or surrealism rather than realism. People may laugh because something is true, but they’re laughing at an exaggerated truth. A show with realistic characters and serious plots, such as the romantic subtext between Dan and Cora in A Moody Christmas, would be better off being a drama. Not that Dan and Cora’s yuletide flirting makes for very good drama so far, but the short comings of dramatic subplots in sitcoms could fill a blog on their own… and may very well do so in the very near future.
Vale Randling
Here’s the thing: on the day after the final episode of Randling aired we went through all the major metropolitan newspapers looking to see on which page they announced the winner. A 27 week prime-time competition featuring many of Australia’s premiere comedians and social commentators had all been building up to one big result: of course this was going to be seriously front-of-the-paper newsworthy.
And so we looked and looked and looked. And found nothing. Not one single word about who’d won the Randling trophy the night before. How could this be? The winner of Masterchef is basically front page news. Prime time talent shows get almost daily updates. Even goings on in the Big Brother house receive serious news coverage and they’re a pack of nobodies; Randling was hosted by Andrew “much-loved” Denton. What was going on? Why wasn’t this being treated as news? And then it finally dawned on us.
No-one gave a shit about Randling. Not one single. Solitary. Squishy. Shit.
It wasn’t just the mainstream media either: a quick check of the twitter hashtag #randling reveals a heavy dose of jokes about the show’s endless run on the ABC and its predictably shitty ratings. A google search for “Randling winner” reveals the grand total of one story on the result. It fizzled out and pretty much everyone on the planet was more than happy to sweep it under the carpet for good.
Let’s just lay it out there: Randling was a disaster for the ABC. A ratings flop on a massive scale, it has become synonymous with failure, a catchphrase for television so dull and drawn-out its continued presence on our screens was less about simple incompetence and more about giving the finger to the very idea of airing television that people might want to watch.
It should have been pulled by week eight and every single executive responsible fired, while host Andrew Denton should be so ashamed of his failure to create something fitting even the broadest dictionary definition of “entertaining” the next time he’s seen in public should be sixty years from now when a televisual salute to Elle McFeast accidentally features a snippet of footage showing the back of his head in the distant background. And even then there should be such an outcry that this utter failure of a compare had somehow snuck back onto our screens that the very medium of television itself should be shut down completely and every remaining TV set kicked in by donkeys. Though to be fair, this would be the distant future and no-one would be watching television as we know it anyway. Mostly because people still remembered how Randling was so determinedly crap.
Randling wasn’t just bad television. It was bad television anyone could see coming from a mile away. Let’s say it one last time: “Word-based game show”. How was this a television show? How was this prime-time viewing? How was this such a sure-fire hit that all 27 episodes were filmed before a single one went to air? How hasn’t someone been sacked for this massive cock-up? Let’s run through the obvious issues:
*The Concept: the days of bunging on cheap and cheerful space-filling programming in prime time and expecting people to tune in are over. It just doesn’t work any more. What was the last panel show that worked on any network? Gruen? Which basically just added panel chat to the always successful World’s Wackiest Commercials format anyway. There’s just too much competition out there – the internet, TV-on-DVD, better shows on other networks whether live or recorded earlier – for a show that just looks thrown together on the cheap to attract viewers, unless there’s something really special going on. Basing it on sports, music, unusual information: sure, that might work. Words? How’s get fucked sound?
*The Format: Who in their right mind thought even for a second that the one thing comedy game shows needed was a serious level of competition? Randling had quarter-finals when it should have had “let’s keep the funny guests coming back”. The rigid structure meant that changes couldn’t be made to make the show more entertaining once it started, because with a locked-in scoring system any changes would have disadvantaged those who played under the old rules. Pretty much the only advantage that comes with a 27 episode run is the ability to fine-tune the show once you start to see what works and what doesn’t: Randling couldn’t even manage that.
*The Host: Andrew Denton, while no doubt a charming and wonderful person in private, comes across as a smug git on television. He’s not likable, he’s not funny, he’s not good at treating people as equals. Here’s a concept: warmth. Denton doesn’t have it – well, he has human levels of it, just not game show host levels. He was clearly drafted in to host when it became clear that without a “name” host this show didn’t stand a chance; just another bonehead move leading to the long slide to the failure dump.
* The Cast: It’s a long time ago now, but when Spicks & Specks first aired it featured a cast of nobodies. Myf Warhurst was a Triple J presenter; Alan Brough was a New Zealand comedian and actor only known in Australia to the handful of people who’d seen Tony Martin’s film Bad Eggs. They were the opposite of wheeling out a bunch of ready-made celebrities and viewers warmed to them because they discovered them and felt ownership towards them. Randling featured teams we were supposed to support and cheer on but the team members didn’t need us: they were television personalities before Randling and they’d remain so afterwards. Put in a sporting context, a team’s supporters always feel more strongly towards players who’ve come up through the ranks than they do towards blow-ins who made their names elsewhere. Look, it’s a member of The Chaser and the host of First Tuesday Book Club! Let’s watch those shows instead.
*Everything else: it’d be easier to list what did work on Randling only then you’d be looking at a blank screen. The questions were boring and idiotic: seriously, “Shakespeare Character or Car”? The pace was plodding at best: the necessity to ask both teams the same question for scoring purposes meant that ideas best suited to a 90 second bit ran four or five times as long. The teams were basically identical: news flash – there are people in the world outside of comedians and hipsters between the ages of 30 and 55. The show lacked vitality: the host of a game show is meant to be the most high-energy member of the on-air cast, not the least. The editing was painful: reportedly episodes would take more than twice their on-air time to be recorded then be chopped down into “highlights packages” that felt erratic and disjointed. And above all else, the very concept itself was astoundingly, jaw-droppingly boring.
And yet this ran for 27 weeks in prime time on what was once the ABC’s highest-rating night of television. Randling sure did fuck that into a cocked hat. It’s difficult to conceive of a show so disdainful of entertainment, so actively contemptuous of its audience, so committed to reminding you that “television” does not care whether you live or die. Fortunately now, we don’t have to: Randling is gone and it’s not coming back. If it had a grave we’d piss on it.
Gruen: Brings Your Ancestors Back From The Dead
What is there left to say about the Gruen series of programs that we haven’t already groaned out while lying on the floor of a grimy pub toilet splattered in our own vomit? You all know the drill: we complain that they’re nothing but advertising for the very idea of advertising presented by a comedy knob fronting a panel largely comprised of sweaty advertising shills and soulless mercenaries that’s then edited into near-incoherency with a side serve of audience cutaways to convince you that somewhere someone remotely human found this crap funny. And then it rates its pants off.
Clearly they’re doing something right. The old adage about no-one ever going broke underestimating the intelligence of the average viewer comes to mind. Because Gruen in all it’s forms is truly shithouse television on every single level. It’s not informative, unless you find the news that advertising and promotion drives many big public events surprising – which, considering said big public events are literally covered with advertising, would suggest you haven’t really been paying attention to said big public events. In which case why do you even care how they’re funded?
The “insights” Gruen offers into the world of advertising and public relations can pretty much be boiled down to one line: “advertising works”. That’s because the show is a willing hostage of the advertising industry. Imagine a series about the wonderful world of petrochemicals where the solution to every single energy problem was “use more petrol!”: that’s the relationship Gruen has with advertising. The idea that advertising could be bad, or that shutting the fuck up rather than ceaselessly trying to promote everything all the time could be the way to go, never gets a look in.
So the panel ends up largely trying to defeat each other in a game of “who’s the biggest fucknuckle”. There’s no real debate going on, just various ad types pitching their various different approaches to an advertising dilemma because THAT’S ALL THEY KNOW HOW TO DO. We’re not saying a show about advertising should end every segment with someone shouting “Fuck advertising” – that’s the job of the viewer at home – but for a show whose defenders are always talking up its supposed intelligence, the fact that every single issue they discuss always ends up being solved by more / different kinds of advertising kind of suggests a limited intellectual range. Not to mention it’s really, really, really boring.
Here’s an idea: why not get the people who hire the people on Gruen to come in and talk about advertising? Oh, that’s right, they don’t like to talk about the fact the people on Gruen are basically contractors hired by companies to to their bidding. Advertising isn’t really a field where creative giants bestride the Earth hurling down thunderbolts of genius; rather, they pitch ideas to faceless corporate types who pick and choose depending on what they think suits their business best. Because that’s how advertising actually works. And if Gruen isn’t about how advertising actually works, what good is it?
[remember on Get This when they’d make endless yet never not funny jokes about “idea mining” and “blue sky sessions” and “sizzle” and “cut through” and all that crap? That’s how advertising is made. And yet oddly, for a show that supposedly lifts the lid on the world of advertising, the fact that lots and lots of ads are made by smug hateful douchebags so oily they leave snail trails everywhere they go never seems to rate a mention]
As far as entertainment goes, we did already mention “boring”, right? Let’s throw “repetitive” in there as well. Sure, Gruen has expanded its scope to cover pretty much everything that takes place in any form of media (in what was basically a confession that the show is just the same thing over and over again – otherwise why would they need to broaden their scope?), but again – we did mention “repetitive”, right? – all that’s happening is you get the exact same perspective on events over and over again. What’s that? Advertising solves everything? Wow. And that’s the deep stuff: half the fucking show is them just identifying advertising! “See those giant words on the side of that building? That’s advertising!” [audience gasps in astonishment].
With Gruen Planet done for 2012 – oh yeah, that’s why we’re talking about it now – it’ll be interesting to see how the 2013 version copes with the departure of Russel Howcroft now that he’s going to be Executive General Manager of rival network Ten. Oh wait, who are we kidding? Gruen isn’t going to let a little thing like a conflict of interest so big it can be seen from orbit – even when you’re orbiting fucking Mars – get in the way of their little circle jerk.
This is a show, lets not forget, that not only shows commercials on the “commercial-free” ABC but is basically one giant commercial for the very idea of advertising. Who cares if their good buddy Howcroft now literally works for their direct competitor; everyone on this Godforsaken show from episode one has been working for a rival network. They work in advertising; other networks run ads. If the idea of running ads on the ABC came up for a vote, do you seriously think any of these guys would vote no? Do they look like guys who don’t like making money to you?
In case you think we must be joking – after all, there’s no way the ABC would let the General Manager of a rival network appear as a regular on one of their shows, let alone a show that supports and promotes the lifeblood of his rival business – check this display of abject grovelling out. Oh, and to answer the question you’ll come away asking, the “reason” the ABC can’t quite figure out is “Ten won’t allow their newly-appointed General Manager to appear as a regular on a top-rating show on a rival network. Because they’re not fucking stupid.”:
Ten has not officially revealed whether Howcroft will continue in his on-air roles on the ABC’s Gruen programs, hosted by Wil Anderson and produced by Andrew Denton’s production company, Zapruder’s Other Films.
However, an ABC spokesperson has indicated that all signs are positive that Howcroft will remain with the program.
“He is with us for this series, which finishes in October, and while we haven’t confirmed the line-up for next year our understanding is there is no reason to think he won’t be able to continue with us.”
It is, without a sliver of reservation or a moments hesitation, a complete and perfectly formed five star fucking disgrace.
C&D Music Factory
So on Wednesday while doing our usual browse through the lists of upcoming DVD releases in the desperate hope that someone will finally bring out a Newstopia collection – or more realistically considering our tastes, a Let Loose Live / Live From Planet Earth box set with cast & crew commentary – we noticed something a little odd: there’s no Clarke & Dawe DVD scheduled for Christmas 2012.
It’s only been since 2009 that Clarke & Dawe have been releasing DVD collections of their weekly segment on The 7.30 Report / 7.30, but since the bumper 2009 “best of the last twenty years or so” collection every year around Christmas they’ve released a collection of their year’s work. Before that they did script collections in print form and presumably they sold well because they kept doing them: considering they followed the 2010 DVD collection with a 2011 one, presumably they sold well enough too. And why wouldn’t they? They’re ideal Christmas gifts for dad, in that even if you don’t pay much attention to your dad’s tastes chances are he likes this kind of thing because it’s kind of funny and kind of about politics and looks slightly more thoughtful than socks.
So why no DVD announcement yet? The clock is ticking down towards Christmas DVDs pretty quickly (both The Hamster Wheel and The Unbelievable Truth have their DVDs announced and scheduled for December, for example) and to us at least this would seem like a no-brainer. Then yesterday we saw this:
John Clarke and Bryan Dawe have been satirical stalwarts of the ABC. Now they’re at risk of being boned, according to whispers in Aunty’s Sydney corridors.
For the past 12 years, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe’s mock interviews have been an ABC institution — an oasis of satire in a sea of oh-so-serious news and current affairs. Each Thursday night you can bank on them showing up, at around 7.55, to take the piss out of whichever politicians or other public figures have been in the news that week.
Well, you used to be able to. For the last two weeks, 7.30 watchers have been denied their weekly satirical fix — and there’s no guarantee the duo will be returning to our screens next year. Within the ABC there’s no topic more sensitive right now than what to do about Clarke and Dawe.
See this? This is our “not really that surprised” face. That’s because, after flailing about for a while after the departure of Kerry O’Brien, the former 7.30 Report seems to have found its stride. and once a show finds its stride, it’s hardly surprising that some of the people behind it’s “success” – oh, it’s not like anyone gives a shit about it in the real world, but in ABC terms it’s a big swinging dick – figure it’s time to display even more of the skills that have taken the show to the top. In management terms, if the new team can’t take credit for its success, what’s it still doing on the new team’s show?
[As for whether they’re still a success, why would the ABC have kept on releasing DVD collections of their segment if they weren’t popular? If management wants to ditch a popular segment to go in another direction, is “less popular” really a direction they want to be heading in? Get This fans may be having flashbacks at this point]
Now see this? This is our “not really that worried” face. That’s because this kind of thing often – not always, but often – works out roughly along these lines: the popular but no longer “fresh” segment / newspaper column / whatever gets the boot. There’s an outcry from the surprisingly large old audience, while someone else swoops in to offer the segment / column / whatever a new home (in this case it could be anything from The Project to Seven’s Sunday to 60 Minutes, not to mention all manner of radio options). The new home isn’t a perfect fit but it’s good enough to be a constant reminder of how the much-loved segment was cast aside by the bag of dicks who thought it was past its use-by date. And then the much-loved segment returns to its previous home, everyone’s happy apart from the dillweeds who thought it was a good idea to kick it to the curb in the first place.
Of course, this might not happen. This whole story could be a beat-up from someone noticing Clarke & Dawe have been bumped a bit recently, unaware that they’ve been bumped every now and again for as long as their segment has been running. Or maybe Clarke & Dawe really are now unpopular, out-of-touch old farts that no-one will miss, and 7.30 will be a much improved show with them.
But if the ABC does decide to ditch Clarke & Dawe, it seems likely (if they want to continue) that they could continue their segment somewhere else. And if they do, it’s only going to make 7.30 look bad for letting them go. No doubt there are a bunch of gun hotshots at the ABC annoyed that the all-new 7.30 features a holdover from the old regime; it’s just that anything they decide to replace it with is only going to be a whole lot worse.