Australian Tumbleweeds
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.
Down, down, shallower and down
Lowdown series 2 has just ended on ABC1 and it’s probably worth asking: why did they bother? The series never promised to be anything other than a light-hearted take on the tabloid press – an entirely reasonable approach to take, because it’s not like there’s heaps and heaps of scope for satire and comedy there – but to spend at least half the episodes re-creating various media scandals from the past couple of years suggests that, well, the writers weren’t exactly brimming with ideas when the commission came through.
Last week we saw Lowdown’s take on that time Gordon Ramsey had an on-air blue with Tracey Grimshaw. Was it funny? Occasionally. Did we learn anything? Nup. At least this week we saw Alex and Bob taken down a peg or two by Ben (Craig McLaughlin), one of their victims in the first ever episode of the show, so there was some poetic justice if not much hilarity.
One of the key problems with this series is that the characters have been as surface level as the plots. Alex only thinks about himself and lives entirely in the moment, Dr James is a shonky general practitioner trying his luck with alternative therapies, Rita is a nutty artist who annoys people…they all get themselves into various mix-ups and mildly entertaining plots, but there’s not a lot at stake. Far be it for us to suggest that Stupid Stupid Man, a sitcom set in the kinda similar world of men’s magazines, had any kind of glory days, but at least it had distinct characters who’d play off each other in half interesting ways. What was happening in Lowdown? A group of people who basically like each other get into some mild conflict which will be resolved fairly quickly. Cue not much laughter.
On roughly the same level of interest was that The Sunday Sun’s editor Howard Evans (Kym Gyngell) had a heart attack and collapsed at the end of tonight’s show. Will he live to edit another paper? Is it all over? Does anyone care? The writers seemed to be hedging their bets here, so they clearly have no idea if this series will return. But it’s hard to imagine there’s anything more to say about Alex Burchill and chums, and it’s highly questionable that the ABC green lit this series at all given that all the ideas seemed to have played out in the first season. Mind you, Laid is coming back, so anything’s possible.
Is Australian Comedy Sexist?
Short answer: yes. Or no. Maybe? Dammit, we’re going to have to think about this one for a moment.
Let’s back up for a second. Last weeks episode of The Hamster Wheel had a segment on sexism in the Australian media. Yay Chaser! Or perhaps not, as a few people have expressed some doubts about the suitability of a team made up of five white guys when it comes to talking about sexism. Remember when The Chaser first arrived on our screens with CNNNN and they had a female member of the team? First person to make a Charles Firth joke gets slapped.
The Chaser have been doing a pretty good job with their swipes at the Australian media with this series of The Hamster Wheel, and their take on the media’s rampant sexism was, to our eyes at least, more good work from them. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a wider problem with sexism in Australian comedy, but because we’re the type of people who think anyone should be able to make jokes about anything so long as those jokes are funny, we’re not going to start going on about how only some kinds of people should be able to make some kinds of jokes. Well, unless you mean idiots shouldn’t make offensive jokes purely for shock value, but, you know, duh.
Instead, lets focus on an aspect of the problem we can actually measure: is Australian television comedy dominated by men? To be fair, comedy isn’t like calling the football, where even the idea of giving a woman airtime still causes furrowed brows and dark mutterings down the pub and Sam Newman frothing at the mouth. While there are certainly greater obstacles in their path, there are female comedians on our televisions and female comedians have their own shows. Judith Lucy has another solo ABC series coming up. Marieke Hardy’s Laid went to two series. Robyn Butler was the lead in The Librarians and runs Gristmill with her husband Wayne Hope. Cal Wilson, Julia Zemrio, Felicity Ward, Celia Pacquola, Kitty Flanagan – they’re all funny. There was a Kath & Kim movie. Kate Langbroek is someone you may have heard of. Rebel Wilson exists.
And yet there’s little denying that men get all the good gigs. After starting out with a rotating guest roster, Gruen is now based around three men. The “all blokes” Chaser have been ABC fixtures for a decade*. The “27 episodes locked in before even one went to air” Randling features seven women and thirteen men. The “okay, this one’s a bit less of a sure thing” Unspeakable Truth has four guests – three men and one woman – on every week. Adam “everywhere” Zwar has created and starred in 24 half-hour episodes of television on the ABC in 2012, including hosting a show entirely about women giving out relationship advice. Think about that for a second: they needed to have a man hosting a show about women talking about relationships. So obviously Zwar got a woman to host the male version? Ah ha ha ha get out of here. Seriously, go.
The more hit-and-miss slots seem to be more evenly divided. Laid, Outland, Mad as Hell, Twentysomething, The Bazura Project, The Strange Calls, Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey, In Gordon Street Tonight, Woodley, Myf Warhurst’s Nice; it’s not a 50/50 split across the board, but there’s enough variety there to at least suggest that the imbalance often comes down to individuals rather than automatic bias. Obviously more men are getting shows up (and getting panel show gigs), but it’s not a total lock-out like it currently seems to be with the more permanent, higher profile gigs. And any similarities between this situation and legends of a so-called “glass ceiling” are, no doubt, completely coincidental.
The problem with any sweeping generalisations is that Australian television comedy is such a small field at the top that a handful of people can make a big difference. If Wendy Harmer wanted to do a solo ABC television show, it at least seems likely that she could. If she and Judith Lucy and Myf Warhurst and Robyn Butler and Marieke Hardy all did shows on the ABC in one year and Kath & Kim came back to Seven, that’d look like a very good year. Especially if Chris Lilley came along and did another show where he showed the kind of insights into women we got with Ja’ime and Gran and Jen Okazaki and… oh right. Sorry.
So, with the problem somewhat clumsily identified, now for the fun part: laying blame. And the guilty party may surprise you: Andrew Denton. “Not ABC production stalwart and loveable host Denton,” you may or may not cry, “he’s so lefty and right-on and cuddly and everything we adore about the ABC – he can’t possibly be anti-woman! Look, he even married Jennifer Byrne! Nice of him to give her a job as a panelist on Randling, wasn’t it?”
And yet the facts speak for themselves: who gave the all-bloke Chaser their first shot on the ABC? Denton. Who allowed the Gruen franchise to basically become a male locker room dominated by Wil Anderson, Todd Sampson and Russel Howcroft (in contrast, the non-Denton Spicks and Specks had Warhurst as one of the three regulars; The Glasshouse had Corrine Grant as one of the three regulars; GNW had Claire Hooper and previously Julie McCrossin as one of the three regulars)? Denton. Who hosts and produces Randling, a game show that features two thirds male contestants? Denton.
[that last example might seem a little harsh, considering we cut the ABC some serious slack earlier for only getting near enough with their gender balance. But Randling features enough non-comedian guests to make it clear Denton and company weren’t just drawing from the already male-skewed comedian pool. If it was a show that only featured top-notch comedy talent then perhaps you could argue the gender imbalance comes down to who was available at the time. But it doesn’t, and once you start drafting in internet celebrities and the like, why not have fifty percent women?]
What else has he produced? :30 Seconds? Ground breaking salute to a white man’s mid-life crisis there. The Joy of Sets? No women (though to be fair, it was built around an established comedy double act). David Tench Tonight? That didn’t even have a human host! As for Hungry Beast, of the 19 original presenters, only six were women. And that was a show supposedly out there looking for new talent. You can’t see us but rest assured, the head shake we’re currently doing is a very sad one indeed**.
As always, what do we know? Maybe Denton has no say in how the shows he produces are actually run. Maybe various faceless ABC types are telling him who audiences want to see. Maybe he just thinks he’s putting the best possible talent on air. Maybe he just can’t find enough female comedians to put on his shows. Maybe despite having two of the three shows currently showing in the ABC’s Wednesday night comedy timeslots (with Denton prodigies The Chaser in the third), Denton and his production company Zapruder’s Other Films doesn’t really have any influence on the amount of women in comedy on the ABC. Let’s just keep moving that buck along folks, nothing to see here…
* Something else worth considering: perhaps part of the problem – if you consider The Chaser to be part of the problem – is that the ABC have kept The Chaser on board as their resident satirists for the last decade. Shaun Micallef aside, they’ve had the field to themselves pretty much since 2002 – an extremely long run for a comedy team on the national broadcaster. As this run seems set to continue and it’s unlikely any of them are going to spontaneously change gender any time soon, those unhappy with this situation may continue to be so for a while yet.
** But what about Zapruder’s Q&A knock-off for Channel Ten, Can of Worms? Isn’t that now hosted by a woman? Sure – but as Chrissie Swan is a pre-established Channel Ten personality (after her work on The Circle and Big Brother) and is replacing the show’s original (male) host, we’re going to suggest her appearance has less to do with Zapruder’s original vision for the show and more about Ten wanting changes before giving it a second series.