Australian Tumbleweeds
Going for Bronze
After this morning’s “Aussie Gold Rush” at London 2012 it’s easy to forget the pain of last week, when sports fan hoping for Aussie Gold after Aussie Gold really needed a laugh. Hopefully they managed to tune in to Triple M Melbourne, where Santo Cilauro and Sam Pang were filling-in for James Brayshaw and Billy Brownless on the Rush Hour.
Rush Hour Going For Gold, Cilauro and Pang’s special Olympics-themed show, is now well in to its second and final week but it’s already proved to be comedic the highlight of the London 2012 Olympics. What makes it a good listen isn’t that it takes the Gruen Sweat approach of trying to highlight all the dodgy behind-the-scenes goings on, or that it offers much in the way of analysis of Australia’s (lack of) sporting success – it doesn’t even do anything particularly original in terms of comedy, well, not if you’re familiar with anything the Working Dog team have done for the past couple of decades – it’s more that it simply takes a major event, and wrings as many laughs and as much fun from it as it possible.
Unlike so many other radio programmes which include comedians in their team this is actually a comedy. There are some straight-ish interviews with sportsmen and women, and the odd visiting celebrity, but it’s mainly just a couple of experienced piss-takers raking through the news of the day, just as they did on Sports Fever!, and managing to make it something that even non-sport fans can enjoy.
If nothing else it’s worth listening to the quiz segment hosted by regular guest Tom Gleisner. From the dodgy buzzers to the hilariously incorrect answers, it’s a skillful and deceptively simple piece of radio. And we say “skillful and deceptively simple” because it’s one of those segments that, if asked, the team would probably claim was something they hastily cobbled together to fill in air time. They said this about most of the segues in The Late Show, though, and some of them were pretty funny, so it’s probably best not to get sucked into the modesty. And let’s face it, they probably do cobble it together to fill in air time, but it takes a lot of skill to cobble something together that’s that entertaining.
Apart from the quiz, there’s also the awarding of the Bronze Medals for the worst jokes in that day’s show, and the occasional cameo from Rob Sitch, so if you haven’t been listening why not download the shows from the Triple M Melbourne website right now.
The show is also, perhaps, testament to Working Dog’s drive to get their shows up anywhere they can. What was originally a World Cup soccer show on SBS (Cup Fever!) has gone on to be a weekly sports show on Seven (Sports Fever!) and is now this Olympics special series on Triple M. Where will this loose team/concept turn up next, we wonder? And why no Ed Kavalee this time ‘round?
A Twenty Year Old Corpse
Is The Late Show the most overrated Australian comedy of the last twenty years? The answer may surprise you: yes it is. Not only is it massively overrated, it continues to be overrated to this very day – which, considering we’re currently celebrating the twenty year anniversary of its initial airing on the ABC, gives you an idea of just how overrated it is.
Wait what? Isn’t this the show that Ben Pobjie recently stopped vaguely discussing half-arsed trends in television to praise? The show that popular TV blog TV Tonight gave a shout out to? The show the Australian Film Institute website recently saluted? The show that inspired the Champagne Comedy site, AKA the only Australian television comedy forum of note? Overrated? But Marieke Hardy loves it!
[pause for effect]
Okay, now that all the hard-core Late Show fans have stormed off to go hold their own “bring back Jo Bailey” style protest outside the front gates of Tumbleweeds HQ, we can wheel in the qualifier: The Late Show isn’t overrated in terms of quality. It’s actually really good – so good, in fact, it’s odd how many of the glowing testimonials that have surfaced in the last few weeks have barely addressed the actual quality of the show. Sorry, but calling it “an hour of precision chaos” doesn’t count. Or even really mean anything (we’d go with “tightly scripted but presented in a ramshackle fashion”, which might explain why we don’t work at Fairfax).
What is truly, massively overrated about The Late Show is its influence on the actual shape of Australian comedy. Largely because, despite what its’ fans will tell you, it had no real influence at all.
C’mon, if you want to talk about lasting influences, let’s talk The Comedy Company. When that clumsy sketch show beat 60 Minutes in the ratings in 1988 it literally changed the face of Australian comedy for the next two decades. And, if its wikipedia page is to be believed, gave the country the word “bogan” in the process.
Fast Forward, which along with its various spin-off ran for a decade, was a direct response / knock-off of The Comedy Company. Every single sketch show made in Australia since has used the Comedy Company formula – even The Wedge, close to two decades later, was basically a direct rip-off of The Comedy Company. The Comedy Company didn’t come out of nowhere, but it locked in a dull, lowbrow, producer-led formula that everyone’s looked back to since. And yet, on its 20th anniversary, where were the articles praising it? Where was the sappy “you changed my life and taught me to laugh” columns about a show that rated way better than The Late Show ever did? And let’s not even start on The Big Gig, which aired around the same time and had just as big an impact.
Obviously we’re not saying that the people behind The Late Show – Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tony Martin, Mick Molloy, Jason Stephens and Jane Kennedy (with Judith Lucy joining in the second series) – didn’t help shape Australian comedy. Two words: The Panel. There’s a show that steered the turnip truck of Australian comedy off a cliff and laughed as everyone followed close behind. Meanwhile on radio, Martin / Molloy opened the door for countless comedian-heavy double acts all the way through to Hamish & Andy. But The Late Show? What shows did it influence? What style of comedy did it inspire? Where is the raft of imitators? In what way was it not a complete and total dead end, the “ill-fated” Mick Molloy Show aside?
To be fair, the vanishing without trace of everything The Late Show stood for wasn’t entirely the fault of the (group then known as the) D-Generation. In many ways The Late Show was the culmination of their already decade-long comedy careers, the kind of show that could only be made by performers who’d honed their skills on television, on radio and in live performance and could do pretty much whatever it took to get the maximum possible laughs from an idea.
Putting together an hour of live material, sketches, pre-recorded material, vox pops, musical numbers and commentaries on commercials and Countdown clips, as well as re-dubbing television serials, sourcing old talent show clips and finding celebrities willing to make fools of themselves was a massive task; it’s no wonder no-one in Australia has tried anything similar since.
It also came at the tail-end of the comedy boom, and was the kind of show that really only could flourish with an audience already firmly up to speed with television comedy in all its many forms. Even at the time it wasn’t a mainstream hit – that would have been your Fast Forwards and your Tonight Live with Steve Vizards, not to mention your Hey, Dad!s – but the years of high-profile and much-loved comedies that had gone before had created enough of an audience for comedy that a show packed with in-jokes and personal obsessions with hardly any reoccurring characters (let alone catchphrases) could make its mark.
When people talk about the influence of The Late Show, what they’re talking about is its influence on them. It was a show that connected with its viewers* in a way that few Australian shows – but pretty much all its overseas counterparts because don’t tell us you didn’t notice it had pretty much the same format as the American Saturday Night Live (and to some extent Monty Python) – ever have. That’s because the format creates stars in a way few others do: it not only makes you laugh, it shows you the actual people who are making you laugh. The Late Show didn’t need reoccurring characters to succeed because the cast were the characters.
In regular sketch shows you occasionally get a glimpse of this when a performer cracks up – or “corpses” – during a take (yes, this is a link to Steve Vizard and Peter Moon corpsing on Fast Forward – and it’s no surprise that Vizard’s regular corpsing made him the most popular cast member of that show); in sitcoms and other pre-recorded shows you never see it at all. As for panel shows, there the tone is much more combative (everyone is fighting to get the biggest laugh) and the results much less impressive.
[it doesn’t always work: no-one corpsed harder or more often on Australian television than Daryl Somers. Though in his case his crack-ups weren’t so much an expression of sheer joy and enjoyment than the royal seal of approval.]
The Late Show was full of this stuff and it gave the show a real feel of a bunch of mates getting together to have fun. It certainly helped that they were some of the sharpest comedy minds in the country – the best remembered bits of The Late Show are either the extremely well-crafted stuff (Bargearse, The Last Aussie Auteur, Beware of Wog) or the incredibly slipshod stuff (Graham & the Colonel, Rob Sitch going off-book doing impressions, dodgy album covers), with the merely solid material in between largely overlooked** – but by coming across as themselves on television they also became personalities in their own right. Remember “Girls Just Want To Have Mick”? You didn’t see anyone writing about the sex appeal of Mark Mitchell.
Whether this chummy tone existed off-camera – and while everyone certainly seems to be friends now*** there were a lot of rumours about off-screen tensions and a hard-partying Molloy at the time of the second series – is beside the point; even at the time the whole “we’re just being ourselves” angle was clearly an act. Remember those “date” sketches with Tommy G and Jane when in real life Jane was dating Rob – something they went out of their way to conceal for years afterwards?
Whether the daggy atmosphere was manufactured to prop up the occasionally wobbly material or not, it’s clear that to an extent not seen since (making it another way it completely failed to influence Australian comedy) The Late Show turned its cast into much-loved television personalities. People might laugh at The Chaser or Chris Lilley, but (teenage girls aside), no-one loves those guys because those guys are always performing. They never let the audience in the way Rob and Santo would as they laughed at their failed jokes as Graham & The Colonel. Whatever the quality of the material you’re delivering, if you can do that – if you can let the mask slip and show yourself to be just an average guy who likes a laugh – then you’ve got fans for life.
Well, twenty years at least.
*it didn’t hurt at all that the audience for The Late Show was the kind of nerdy cool kids that grow up to either make comedy or work in the media.
**This is also partly due to the massive edit job done on the essential but slightly disappointing Late Show DVD, which reduces many lesser sketches to a handful of jokes and loses a lot of the piss-farting around. There’s a clear divide between people who saw the show live (or have tracked down complete episodes) and those who’ve only seen the DVD.
***Apart from Mick and Tony, obviously.
Could barely give a Stuff
What with the Olympics period being a bit of a down time in the local TV industry, we’ve been back scouring the torrents sites for stuff to blog about. Or Stuff to blog about, because Wendy Harmer’s 2008 series of that name is available on one such site (and on a legitimate, but seemingly out of print, DVD).
If you disliked Myf Warhurst’s Nice (and as a reader of the blog we’re assuming you probably did) then you’ll also dislike Wendy Harmer’s Stuff…because they’re basically the same show. The main difference is that Stuff is less about personal memories and nostalgic themes, and more of a rattle around the living spaces of various ordinary Aussies. Their weird, wonderful, normal and non-existent possessions are all explored, and as you might expect the people in the series range from obsessive hoarders to people who’ve discarded as many worldly goods as possible.
One point of minor interest about this series is that some notable comedy personnel are involved – apart from Harmer, who created and presents the series, the director is Ted Emery (whose credits include The D-Generation, Fast Forward, Full Frontal, The Micallef Programme and Kath & Kim) and the producer is Laura Waters (responsible for Chris Lilley’s various series) – but despite their credentials the series isn’t remotely funny. Mind you, it isn’t really trying to be, it’s more of a lightweight entertainment show that in a previous era would have aired at 6pm rather than 8pm. Ah well, it’s least it’s not the bloody Olympics – is it just us who’re sick to the back teeth of that already?
Vale Hamish & Andy’s Euro Gap Year
Well, that’s Hamish & Andy screwed.
To explain further: like pretty much everything in life, once a comedian’s act stops growing it starts dying. Once you settle in to doing the same thing again and again, no matter how successful you are at it eventually people will get bored. It’s a great problem to have – plenty of comedians never find something that people will like enough to pay attention to, let alone get bored of – but it’s a problem none the less.
The trick, if you can manage it, is to find out what you do that people like then keep changing the way you present that to them. Working Dog found success with their smart, nerdy comedy back when they were the D-Generation doing the breakfast shift on Triple M, and in the two decades since they’ve largely stayed true to that sense of humour while making sketch shows, sitcoms, panel shows, theatresports and movies.
In contrast, Roy & H.G. did the exact same thing everywhere they went: talked in insanely over-blokey terms about sport. It worked for them on TV and radio until suddenly it didn’t and that was the end of that. See also Good News Week, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, the work of Chris Lilley, The Chaser (until they do their long-promised sitcom), the upcoming Kath & Kim movie, and so on – it’s so hard to even get it right once it’s no surprise that “when you’re on a good thing, stick with it” is the unofficial motto of roughly 97% of Australian comedians.
It’s not like commercial television encourages change and experimentation either. They want something that works and then they’ll run it into the ground and replace it with something else. So – to get back to the subject at hand – it’s perfectly understandable that Hamish & Andy’s Euro Gap Year turned out to be nothing more than the boys doing their greatest hits: street pranks, visiting unusual locations and having a wander around, a bit of studio banter, another stunt or competition, see you next week. After all, after the wobbly ratings of last year’s Gap Year they were lucky to be invited back at all: trying something risky was clearly not going to be on the agenda.
So now they’re screwed. Oh, maybe if they serve up another few years of hit shows Nine will let them try something different. But it doesn’t seem much of a coincidence that they’ve done all their work for Nine on the other side of the globe; with the way’s Nine’s run these days, if they were any closer to home you’d expect them to get roped into doing bits on The Block or hosting a cooking show until they’re just another one of Nine’s roster of “stars”. Commercial television now is almost completely in the format business, not the star business. Hamish & Andy have a format that works: no further correspondence will be entered into.
For Australian comedy as a whole, this is a great thing. Having a local comedy that rates well on commercial television makes it – in theory at least – possible that we might see more local comedy on commercial television. Even better, having a good comedy show* rate well makes it at least slightly more likely that when the next shithouse comedy show turns up on commercial television and promptly fails, people will realise it failed because it was shithouse, not because it was an Australian comedy.
For Hamish & Andy… well, hopefully after Nine’s drained the life out of them they can try something different somewhere else. Until now they’ve shown an admirable commitment to at least occasionally stretching themselves comedy-wise – if only by giving Ryan Shelton on-camera work – so there’s always a chance this retreat to safe territory is only temporary. And if not – if all they have left now is a few more years worth of Gap Year followed by a return to radio where they’ll slowly fizzle out – it was fun while it lasted. Even if it really should have lasted a lot longer.
*Sorry, we forgot to mention that we actually enjoyed Hamish & Andy’s Euro Gap Year. It wasn’t exactly demanding or classic stuff, but the guys are likable and funny and the show played firmly to their strengths. We probably wouldn’t want to see another series of it, mind you.
Gonna Make Ya Sweat ‘Till Ya Bleed
What’s that you say? The Olympics is nothing but a massive marketing exercise thinly disguised as a sporting event? SAY WHAAAAAAAAAAAohfuckoff. Yes, once again the smug arseholes behind and in front of the camera at the Gruen sweatshop are back to tell us the fucking obvious – and just to warn you up front, this post is going to be a bit sweary because Gruen is just that kind of show. That is to say, fuckin’ shithouse.
Once upon a time, the Olympics meant great comedy like The Games. Then it meant a few decent laughs like The Dream. Now it means a bunch of advertising fat cats sitting around patting each other on the back at how much money their industry is making from the Olympics. So yeah, you probably could call us a little bitter. Though not nearly as bitter as we should be.
With Gruen‘s obsession with letting us know the tricks of the trade, here’s one they seem to have missed: you know you’re watching a shitty “comedy” show when not only do they have an audience laughing away to let you know it’s funny, they actually cut away to show you the audience laughing just in case hearing them laugh wasn’t enough to get you kaking your daks at home. And fuck, does Gruen love cutting away to a hysterically laughing / recoiling in mock horror audience.
Everything they have to say here is old news, because in the run up to the Olympics there’s no news to cover aside from “isn’t it crazieee the lengths the IOC will go to in their efforts to protect the Olympics brand? Huh? Huh?” So if you read a newspaper, watch the news or use the internet – you know, like everyone who’s the kind of person who’d watch a Gruen show does – you already know all this stuff. And the show actually admits that all these issues are already being covered by regular media. So why the fuck are we supposed to be watching this again?
Maybe it’s the insights into advertising? One of the Ad Hack panel members revealed that “There is this wonderful curve every four years where you know ad spends are going to go up… it’s great for business.” Clearly not the business of keeping viewers awake. Shit, can’t the smug advertising sods on the panel utter two sentences without smirking at how rich every single thing discussed on the show is going to make them? You just know Denton is itching to do a special on the mining industry just so he can have Gina Rinehart on the panel counting money in front of the audience.
This insufferable smugness wouldn’t be a problem if the show was funny. Yeah, you know where we’re going with this. When Wil Anderson says after they’ve played a quote from Sebastien Coe “I didn’t hear a word he said, he’s so dreamy”, it’s not a joke. It’s not anything. It’s just a line to justify Anderson’s presence. And when he describes the IOC’s refusal to allow advertising inside the stadium as “it’s like they’re a prostitute that won’t kiss on the lips”, it sounds like a good line until you actually think for a single second about what he’s just said, at which point it just feels kind of creepy. Here’s a clue why: Anderson makes it sound like having some kind of limit is a bad thing.
Actually, that’s pretty much the case with everything that happens on Gruen: it all seems to make sense right up until the second you actually pay attention to what’s being said. For example, towards the end of episode one Anderson out of nowhere looks into the camera and says “Gruen Sweat: a little bit of decadence you can have every day” What does this mean? Sure, they are identifiable words in a seemingly grammatically correct order, but what does it actually mean? If it’s a parody of an advertising slogan, where’s the joke?
Even when they do make actual identifiable jokes they fuck it up: you know that Zoo Magazine cover where Australian Olympic shooter Lauryn Mark is standing there in her bathers holding a gun? You know, the one Mad as Hell made a “you can’t show swimmers with shooters, but you can show shooters in swimmers” joke about last week? Yeah, Gruen made the same joke this week. Insert your own “but isn’t advertising all about repeating the same thing over and over and over” joke here. And again here.
They’re even repeating jokes within the fucking show. After showing a clip involving a swimmer spriuking some food or another, Anderson made some comment about the swimmer jumping into the pool directly after eating and drowning. Only less funny than that. Then during the panel discussion one of the Ad Hacks said “It’s kind of surprising the mum didn’t say wait twenty minutes before you go in”. Cue Anderson sneeringly saying “Uh, that’s kind of the joke I made before”. Cut to everyone in the studio laughing loudly at this hilarious blunder while everyone at home goes “what, we’re calling the dud sentences that clunk from Anderson’s mouth jokes now? And then telling them twice?”
[more importantly, considering the rapid-fire, way-too-obvious, mood-mangling editing that takes place throughout Gruen – and for that matter, Denton’s other show Randling, which was no-fucking-joke asking questions about paint chart colours this week – if they were worried about doubling up on jokes they could have easily cut it out. That’s right: Gruen is a show that actually thinks having people make the same joke twice is worth your time]
As for the non-hilarious content, it doesn’t take long for it to become clear that pretty much all the horrific excesses being mocked here are actually all the fault of the advertising industry. The major sponsors have to go flat out making people’s lives a living hell to prevent all the other companies that aren’t major sponsors from sneaking in and getting a free ride advertising their crap. Gruen‘s response to the mess advertising is making of people’s daily lives? “Isn’t that interesting”.
It’s not. It’s boring and unpleasant and excessive and hateful and all manner of other negative terms, which in the hands of an even halfway competent comedy team would be a gold mine. But Gruen isn’t about comedy. It’s not even about informing you about advertising; seriously folks, advertising likes to think it’s amazingly complex and subtle but after 50-plus episodes even a show as shit-fumblingly kak-handed as this one has pretty much covered it.
Gruen is all about selling you the idea that you’re too smart to be sucked in by advertising. Of course you’re too smart; you’re watching a show that lets you in on advertising’s secrets, aren’t you? No matter that the “secrets” being revealed are basically “advertising is everywhere”, which even non-Gruen viewers may have already picked up on. No matter that the show is basically a showcase for how awesome the advertising industry is – look, it’s even willing to poke fun at itself! No matter that it’s a proven fact that advertising works best on people who aren’t suspicious of it, and the easiest way to make people let down their guard around advertising is by making them think they’re too smart to be sucked in.
Here’s the real story: you’re not too smart and you are being sucked in. If the ABC board had the slightest respect for their charter this crap would be pulled off the air for violating the “no advertising” line because this is nothing but an ad for how great advertising is. As for those of us who think advertising is a soul-destroying cancer eating at what remains of the heart of the artistic impulse in our society and therefore deserves nothing but our scorn and contempt, we’ll be over here watching old episodes of World’s Wackiest Commercials. At least that shit was worth laughing at.
Great Comedy Mysteries of the 21st Century #17: The Wedding Party
So back in 2010 the opening night film at the Melbourne International Film Festival was Australian big-screen comedy The Wedding Party, in which Josh Lawson agrees to a fake marriage with Isabel Lucas even though he’s deeply in love with Kestie Morassi. Wait, we mean those actors play characters who’re doing all that, the actors themselves are just doing acting stuff. Anyway, for a slightly more coherent take on what’s going on in the film why not try here.
You’re back? Good. More eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that the “coming soon” Empire story we just sent you to is dated July 19th, 2012. Wait, you mean the film that played opening night film at the Melbourne International Film Festival two years ago still hasn’t been released? Surely that Empire story is announcing that this rare example of Australian movie comedy is due out any day now then… oh, it’s st to be released sometime “later this year”. Hmm.
A clue as to why it’s taken so long to be released could be that it doesn’t seem to be very good: reviews at the time ranged from not very positive to heavily mixed to “a bit odd” (which contains the line “a dynamic debut filmmaking team has been born” – uh, not yet they haven’t). None of which is exactly encouraging when it comes to big-screen comedy in this country, though reviewers have been known to be wrong and a lot of editing can happen in two years.
So at this point we’d usually blame its’ extended stint on the shelf on Australia’s well-documented hatred of seeing Australians trying to be funny on film. For every even slightly successful big screen comedy there’s a dozen that bombed spectacularly or vanished without trace. But earlier this year the equally wedding themed A Few Best Men actually did pretty well at the box office. That’s got to be a positive sign, even if everyone who saw A Few Best Men did so because they desperately needed to see Rebel Wilson in a wedding-themed comedy post-Bridesmaids and they couldn’t wait until Bachelorette comes out. So what’s the hold-up?
We don’t know. That’s why this one’s filed under “comedy mysteries”. It looks tolerable – let’s not forget, Big Mamma’s Boy was filmed and released between The Wedding Party‘s first appearance and today so the bar isn’t set all that high – and it’s got enough of a name cast by local standards to draw at least a few passers-by into the cinema. Is there something going on here we’re missing? Did a cast member commit a horrible crime that passed us by and they’re waiting until the media firestorm dies down? Is Josh Lawson box office poison after Any Questions For Ben? Is Adam Zwar box office poison after Agony Uncles? Is Bill Hunter box office poison after dying in 2011? Answers on the back of a postcard please…
Fancy a McFeast?
These days Lisbeth Gorr is just another media personality. She hosted a failed chat show a few years ago (Nine’s The Catch-Up), she’s put out a couple of children-themed books (mind you, which female personality of a certain age isn’t dabbling in that area?), and she’s got a show on 774 ABC Melbourne. But if you ever wondered how she got to where she is (Hint: it was in the guise of “Elle McFeast”) you can head along to a reasonably well-known torrents site and download some of her 90s comedy work, or buy them on this DVD.
Amongst the shows on offer is Breasts (1996), one of McFeast/Gorr’s better known specials, in which she, well, spends an awful long time in fruit shops handling melons. Clunkingly obvious metaphors aside, it’s actually quite a good, funny show, even with irritating 90s celebrity Kate Fisher pouting and pushing her norgs in the camera every 10 minutes. And for a show which is more than a touch influenced by Andrew Denton’s The Money or the Gun, right down to the sequences where McFeast (or sidekick Mark Warren) run up to people in the street and ask them provocative questions, it’s much more insightful. In fact McFeast and Warren are far better than Denton in lots of areas, mainly because they manage to be charming, funny and informative whether talking to the public, celebrities or experts. And for a show which could very easily have been sleazy or gratuitous, Breasts manages to both show a lot of tit and keep things warm and interesting (in a non-sexy way).
Less successful is the special Sex, Guys and Videotape (1994) which looks at male sexuality and safe sex. It’s very reliant on male celebrity talking heads discussing “the issues”, and like Agony Uncles is full of comedians and personalities either trying to be funny or failing to come out with an interesting insight. A better watch is a special on The Whitlam Dismissal (1996) which re-unites political figures from both sides of politics and manages to prompt a then 85-year old Sir John Gorton into some sexual innuendo-laden discourse with Elle. There are also a few interesting details about The Dismissal which are turned into some decent comedy sketches (and after years of Good News Week we never thought we’d describe anything involving Mikey Robbins as “decent”, but it was).
Somewhat more niche are some segments from sports comedy show Live and Sweaty (1991-1994), including a look at Collingwood’s “controversial” loss in the 1979 VFL Grand Final. Those non-sport fans who remember Live and Sweaty will recall that the show was full of ultra-niche segments such as this, and despite some amusing moments it’s really something for those with an interest in the topic. A sequence with James Hewitt, Princess Diana’s former lover, has a potentially broader appeal, but fails to work as intended. Hewitt is hired to give McFeast a riding lesson and the sequence is clearly designed to get him to give her somewhat more than that…except he remains a perfect English gentleman throughout, making McFeast look fairly try-hard and Hewitt look pretty stuck-up, neither of which is terribly funny.
But overall the work of Elle McFeast/Lisbeth Gorr is good, and it’s not hard to see why she was probably the most successful Australian female comedian of the 90s. You could argue that there were funnier female comedians of the era, but we can’t think of any who got as much solo TV work as she did. In fact, we can’t think of any female comedians who’ve had that level of success in this country since – and we say that whilst running serious risk of this post become another one of those that debates about female comedy. So, we’ll end by pointing out one of the other quite good things about Elle McFeast: unlike, say, the Hungry Beast team, who aimed to do both comedy and serious reportage but never managed to do either well, let alone the two combined well, Elle McFeast proved that it’s more than possible to get it right. Watch Breasts to see what we mean.
A Presumption of Shared Humanity
If you’re going to be a comedian, you have to make a choice: do you make comedy designed to appeal to the masses, or do you follow your heart? On the one hand, appealing to the masses seems like the smart way to achieve mass appeal but idiots will call you a sell-out; on the other, following your heart is how all great art is made but there’s a chance you have the heart of a pretentious wanker (or worse, Julia Morris). How to create a deeply personal work that connects with everybody?
In recent years in Australia the very idea of comedy having mass appeal has been so ludicrous comedians and their supporters have almost automatically fallen back on the line “does it matter if these shows find a large audience so long as they’re good?” They have a point too: in theory if you make an extremely funny comedy people will flock to it no matter what that comedy is about. The Games was about Olympic management; Cheers was about a collection of lonely drunks; Fawlty Towers was about a man completely unsuited for hotel management.
In practice though, ignoring your wider audience to follow your heart often leads to shows like Laid. That is to say, shows that expect the audience to come to them. The idea that if you do something intensely personal it will become universal thanks to our shared humanity is a good one, but only if you’re able to actually articulate and express something universal.
[When Louie CK makes a new friend on a trip to Miami then screws it up on Louie, the thing that’s universal isn’t the culture of Miami, it’s the thrill of being somewhere new and making a new friend and then screwing it up because you’re a klutz; when Roo on Laid discovers her ex-lovers are dying, the thing that’s universal isn’t the ex-lovers dying, it’s the friendship between Roo and EJ. Except that where Louie is about the awkward nature of human interactions in general, Laid is about a specific someone having their ex-lovers die because of their cursed vagina… which isn’t exactly an universal condition. Oops.]
Anyway, the real rejoinder to the “who cares if anyone’s watching, we’re making art over here” argument – apart from time itself, because if you don’t pull in an audience no-one is going to remember you long enough to acclaim you as art – is the work of one Shaun Micallef. Game show host, tonight show host, news parody host, sketch comedy host and creator of one of the broader sitcoms in recent Australian history, there’s almost no mainstream format he hasn’t tried. But once he’s inside the format – formats that decades of television have refined down to give them the broadest possible appeal – he delivers comedy that’s extremely individual*.
Micallef may have embraced the mainstream when it comes to formats – his one sitcom was “married lawyers tackle silly cases”, not “hipster girl discovers her ex-lovers are dying” or Outland‘s “gay science-fiction fans hang out” – but his actual comedy contains some of the most obscure and unusual references you’ll find on Australian television. Mad as Hell recently featured an extended riff on the Peter Sellers movie Being There; who even remembers that film today? George Formby isn’t exactly a current reference, yet Micallef sang the 1940s Formby comedy song “When I’m Cleaning Windows” to fill space at the end of an episode of Welcher & Welcher.
“A Shaun Micallef show” is actually a pretty broad remit: he likes wordplay, physical comedy, absurdity, pop culture references, pulling faces, silly character names, news jokes, political satire, pulling a gun on his audience, and so on. He’ll throw anything at the screen if he thinks it’ll get a laugh and he knows enough about how comedy works to give jokes room to breathe. He’ll get a laugh with a raised eyebrow; he’ll also get a laugh by having two equestrians angrily wrestling on his desk while he tries to introduce the next segment.
While Micallef has a firmly developed sense of humour (and he’s not willing to mess with it; these days he’s almost never seen doing anything outside his admittedly broad comfort zone), what he is willing to do is work to find the easiest way to bring audiences into his world. Time and again he’s done his best to remove obstacles to people getting into his shows, to the point where now the least interesting thing about a Micallef program is the format. If you could figure out a way to let Micallef do what he wants to do on a home renovation or cooking based reality show, chances are he’d be on it like a shot. It’s almost as if he actually wants as many people as possible to watch his comedy.
In recent years we’ve seen way too many comedies where the niche interests are up front – ones that seem to say “this is what we’re about, take it or leave it”, with audiences usually choosing the latter**. Micallef clearly has his own obsessions (old comedy for starters), but he takes care not to let his personal interests overwhelm his comedy. He’s not going to make Micallef’s Wacky World of Movie References any time soon. The joke is usually simply that the reference is to something out-of-place and unusual; if you actually get the reference the joke is funnier, but it still works if you don’t.
These references personalise the material too: for example, Micallef’s chair on later seasons of Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation said “Tyrell Corporation”. If you got the Blade Runner reference that was fine, but there was no joke there past the joke of having the host of a mainstream game show sitting in a chair that made an obscure movie reference. Micallef likes Blade Runner; we all have favourite films; the personal becomes universal.
*Yes, we know he works with a regular team of collaborators, including writers Gary MacCaffrie and Michael Ward, and performer Francis Greenslade. When we say “Shaun Micallef”, we mean “Shaun Micallef and friends”.
**We’re also aware that his decades of experience have earned him a level of trust other comedians don’t have: he can say “I want to make a cooking show” and producers know it’ll be a funny cooking show. Less experienced comedians have to pitch show ideas that are “funny”, even if it means by episode three the hilarious concept is burnt out.
Audrey’s Kitchen
Premiering tomorrow tonight on ABC1 in the not terribly good timeslot of 6.25pm is the new Working Dog series Audrey’s Kitchen, ten 3-minute episodes based on their 2010 parody cookbook Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan Summer, and featuring Heidi Arena (Dawn from The Librarians) in the title role. Audrey Gordon is a British TV chef and cookery writer who takes a “no nonsense” approach to food; in Audrey’s Kitchen she presents a series of simple and delicious recipes in her own unique style.
Audrey’s Kitchen gets the look and feel of a real cooking show just right, from the slightly irritating soft jazz in the background to the unrealistically stylish home kitchen filming location. But while the recipes are also real to life (in that you could actually make them), Audrey isn’t – initially she comes across as a more homely Nigella Lawson, but as the series progresses it becomes increasingly clear that she’s a racist snob who hates, or at the very least is hugely intolerant of, the rest of humanity. Some of her less savoury utterances include tips on feeding the elderly and children – the latter is pure Working Dog gleeful silliness and a particular highlight.
A few months back we reviewed one of Working Dog’s recent efforts Any Questions For Ben?, a disappointing and bland film which quite rightly made a quick disappearance from cinemas. In that blog we put forward our theory that there are several types of Working Dog project – the gag-heavy, script-led efforts of Tom Gleisner, the mildly comic but stylish-looking work of Rob Sitch, the casual piss-farting about of Santo Cilauro, and the commercially-minded formats ripe for flogging overseas. Audrey’s Kitchen has the Gleisner style all over it; it’s like a rich and complex dessert, small in size, gone in a flash, but chock full of the good stuff. And as such it’s one of those shows that’s worth watching again to pick up more of the detail –did she really suggest adding a “light vajazzle of pomegranate seeds” to that dish?
Audrey’s Kitchen may succeed in restoring your faith not just in Working Dog but in Australian comedy itself. It also suggests a possible model for future scripted shows: give comedians old and new a small number of 3-minute timeslots to do whatever they like, and see what happens. The reason so much scripted comedy in this country is crap is because there aren’t many people who have a decent amount of experience of making it anymore – where are team sketch shows for new writers to get work on, for example.
6.25pm on a Saturday isn’t a great timeslot, and there’s no guarantee that comedy shorts like this will get much attention on iView either, but as Audrey’s Kitchen shows it’s more a question of quality than quantity when it comes to good comedy.
July 2012: A New Golden Age?
It might be hard to spot from beneath the cloud of gloom and despair that hangs over the Australian televised comedy scene, but at the moment we have two – count ’em – decent local comedy programs currently airing on Australian free-to-air television. We’ll spare you the suspense: we mean Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell and Hamish & Andy’s Euro Gap Year.
You can disagree with us, but you’d be wrong: both shows feature highly competent and experienced comedians (albeit with very different styles) putting out weekly shows that, while not exactly ground-breaking, are the kind of skillfully made and well-targeted laugh-getters we don’t see anywhere near often enough. And one of them is on commercial television! When was the last time this happened?
Actually, while that wasn’t a serious question, let’s do the math: the ABC hasn’t had a really strong comedy series on since Very Small Business, though let’s cut The Chaser some slack with their post War On Everything efforts. Either way, it doesn’t matter: the ABC never has two good shows on at once, because one is always Gruen-related or Chris Lilley or Randling or The Glasshouse or The Sideshow or Lowdown or Outland or Laid or even Woodley. Some of which aren’t really bad – they’re just weren’t consistently good.
So first we need to look to other channels. Commercial networks: zero. But SBS had Newstopia in 2007-2008, so if the ABC had anything decent on during that period, there’s our previous Golden Age right there.
(yes, we realise we’re setting the bar amazingly low here. We’ll get to why in a moment)
Good news; Very Small Business DID overlap with the final series of Newstopia! Not only that, before VSB was the second and much improved season of The Hollowmen. Of course, no-one was calling that a Golden Age, because a Golden Age requires more than just a series of decent programs across a variety of networks. A real Golden Age requires comedy to not just be good, but be seen to be good, to be an up-front part of the national discourse in the same way that reality television is now.
And there’s that gloom and despair again, because that isn’t going to happen. The last time it did happen – the comedy boom of the late 80s – there was no internet, no DVDs, only four television channels, Daryl Somers was moderately funny, and so on. Short version: all that happened before many of today’s comedy fans were born.
Today thanks to the proliferation of media platforms, television itself isn’t even at the heart of the national discourse. The only way it can manage to wrangle even part of the spotlight now is by manufacturing must-see “events” like reality show finals. Nothing else on television – not news, not current affairs, certainly not drama – matters all that much any more. And apart from a few isolated moments, it’s not like comedy ever really did.
So we have to adjust our scales. First thing to go: media attention. After all, it’s not like Australian comedy hasn’t had plenty of that in the last few years. But the media landscape has changed too, and comedy only attracts attention now if the increasingly struggling and desperate mainstream media can use it to attract attention to itself – which means stories about outrages and plenty of them. When was the last time a comedy show got any non-promotional media attention, unless it was for falling ratings or some community group kicking up a bogus stink?
Second thing: mainstream attention. After all, what’s mainstream these days? Thanks to the internet and DVDs and [insert new social media fad here], the idea of everyone marching in lockstep through a banner that reads WE LOVE YOU, HEY HEY IT’S SATURDAY is long dead. Okay, dead since 2009. Many people we know are watching and loving Mad as Hell; we know plenty of people who wouldn’t call themselves hard-core comedy fans who are really enjoying Euro Gap Year. It’s not everyone, but the only time “everyone” ever watched the same show was when there was nothing else on.
This isn’t to say comedy should turn it’s back on attracting a wider audience. Part of the problem with the ABC’s Wednesday night line-up this year is that it’s lacked shows that were a): good and b): of interest to a general audience. And declining ratings are always a bad sign, whether it’s from a high point or a low one – they mean people are trying a show and deciding they don’t like it.
[interestingly, if these figures are correct, it looks like Mad as Hell on the non-comedy night of Friday is outrating both Randling and Nice on the traditional ABC comedy night of Wednesdays. It seems the problem with the ABC’s Wednesday night line-up isn’t shifting viewing habits or changing demographics, it’s that people just don’t want to watch the shows the ABC is serving up then.]
But it’s important to realise that the goalposts have shifted. It’s easy to believe that comedy is dead or dying in Australia – Lord knows we feel like it is often enough – and it’s certainly got more than its fair share of problems today. Fortunately, so does Australian television in general; been enjoying a lot of high-quality local drama lately? How about insightful current affairs? Decent US sitcoms? Any UK comedy that doesn’t involve Ricky “rerun” Gervais?
Today’s comedy scene isn’t a new Golden Age. But it’s closer to being one than you might think.