Australian Tumbleweeds
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…
*
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”.
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.