Australian Tumbleweeds
Monday Roast
We’ve been sent another press release!
ABC2 and The Comedy Channel on Foxtel have taken a bold step towards massively increasing the level of local content on Australian TV by screening The Roast News Update for two minutes each night, Monday to Friday, at 8:28pm on ABC2 and 6:28pm on The Comedy Channel.
Each episode of The Roast offers a highly condensed, satirical take on the day’s headlines, as interpreted by a young team of non-journalists. Director Nich Richardson calls the program “a less-farcical version of the regular nightly news, and one of Australian television’s few scripted comedies – other than Parliament Question Time”.
The press release goes on in this vein, adding the detail that the 50th episode of The Roast will air tomorrow night, so congratulations to them.
We’ve seen the odd episode of The Roast over the past few months and haven’t been that impressed. Imagine Good News World meets mainstream satirical stand-up meets an over-ambitious student revue and you’re kinda there. You may also remember Nich Richardson as the host of WTF! a daily two minute comedy show created by Chaser alumni Charles Firth which aired on GO! in 2010. Anyone who remembers WTF! will spot the similarities between the two shows.
Broadly speaking, we’re in favour of newcomers getting a chance to try out ideas and gain experience in a low key timeslot, on a low key channel – 8:28pm on ABC2 and 6:28pm on The Comedy Channel is certainly that. What’s disappointing is that The Roast seems to be a re-make of a not terribly good show. Yes, The Roast has more of a news and current affairs bent than WTF!, which focused more on celebrity, but the concept and execution are basically the same. Not that the concept for either show couldn’t work – the bigger problem here is the execution, i.e. the material, which needs to improve before this goes from being “that thing after Doctor Who” to “must watch”.
The House Always Wins
Just to cap off a week of Randling posts, let’s pause to note the fact that – unlike, oh, every other Wednesday night ABC comedy show in living memory – Randling is now being repeated on ABC1 Friday nights in prime time (9.30pm to be exact). Wow, who would have thought the demand for a show that lost half its’ viewers in three weeks would be so great the same episode needed to be shown twice in three days? Presumably if you don’t start watching it now that it’s on twice a week they’ll simply start showing it three times a week. Hey, they can show it 24/7 if it’s what it takes to make it a hit. AND DENTON ONLY HOSTS HITS.
Let’s just posit an alternative here: when serious people start calling for Randling to be dropped – again, lost 400,000 viewers in three weeks – the ABC are going to pull out the “combined” rating figures across the week for Randling (being shown twice in the same week means both figures can be added together). “What are you naysayers talking about – Randling is a hit,” they’ll say, pointing to figures more rubbery than a mobile condom warehouse, “look at how well it rated across the week”.
Bollocks to that. They could have turned Strictly Speaking – you know, that exciting public-speaking based gameshow no-one watched – into a ratings “hit” if they’d played it five or six times in a week. This isn’t a case of the ABC repeating a popular show by public demand; this is a case of them trying to disguise a dud by playing funny buggers with the figures. If only they’d hired some funny buggers to make the damn thing in the first place…
The Future Of Australian Comedy Is Here At Last
We may have been a bit hard on the ABC of late, what with all that pointing out that their current Wednesday night “comedy” line-up is not only a bit shit but currently rating like people have realised it’s actually a bit shit. Don’t worry though, we’ve just been forwarded a press release letting us know that when the current drek winds up it’s all clear sailing ahead:
MYF WARHURST’S NICE
STARTS WEDNESDAY JUNE 13 AT 8PM, ABC1
Myf Warhurst (Spicks and Specks) returns to ABC1 on Wednesday June 13 at 8pm, with her own six-part series Myf Warhurst’s Nice. The series will take viewers on a cultural crusade to explore some of Myf’s favourite things from her youth in music, food, fashion, photography, art and design.
The series embraces cultural icons of the past and takes a closer look at what surrounds us – the stuff you’d find in your own living room rather than in a gallery or museum. It’s a celebration of all the things that are just, well… ‘nice’.
Like all of us, the fabric of Myf’s youth has gone on to shape her tastes today. Over six themed episodes, Myf will explore everything from the awkward family portrait to the humble dim sim, to questionable fashion choices and an unhealthy obsession with cheesy love duets.
Along the way, Myf meets some familiar faces including; one of her personal heroes Kenny Rogers; TV Chef Peter Russel-Clarke; food journalist Matt Preston; Chicko Roll poster girl Danielle Scandrett; portrait photographer Douglas Kirkland; iconic artist Ken Done; art aficionado Steve Vizard; Myf’s perm idol Craig McLachlan; artist and designer Jenny Kee; celebrity hairdresser Edward Beale; the face (and voice) of Copperart Pete Smith and host of the UK TV series ‘Bargain Hunt’ Tim Wonnacott, plus many more.
Here’s a sneak peek at what happens when Myf gets to live out a dream 25 years in the making – to sing a love duet with Wa Wa Nee’s Paul Gray … http://bit.ly/ISSH3o
Myf Warhurst’s Nice is a That’s Nice Productions/ABCTV co-production. ABC TV Executive Producer: Kath Earle; Director: Aaron Smith; Series Producer: Susie Jones.
6 x 30min.
Just when you thought dragging out bland relationship chit-chat over twelve half hour episodes was taking the piss, we’re now being promised an entire half hour on dim sims. Oh and Steve Vizard talking about art. What, Richard Fidler wasn’t available to talk about sand castles? Austen Tayshus didn’t feel like discussing cowboy boots?
While you’re here, click on that link in the press release. Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you to get back… okay, while it’s fresh in your memory – what exactly was the point of all that? It’s basically a straight, not-all-that-good duet between Myf and some guy almost no-one remembers. Presumably the idea is that we’ll be super happy and excited for Myf as she gets to sing with one of her heroes, but for that to work we have to be so amazingly focused on how awesomely great Myf is that we simply don’t give a shit that what we’re actually seeing contains no real entertainment value whatsoever.
It’s more than a little unfair to be discussing a show we haven’t even seen yet, but bugger it: whatever Myf’s charms this simply doesn’t look like prime time material. We know this because NOTHING the ABC has screened on Wednesday nights this year – with the possible exceptions of half of In Gordon Street Tonight and Woodley and maybe a third of Outland – has been prime-time material. Their 2012 comedy output to date has consisted entirely of crap that should have either been put on Sunday afternoons or shunted over to ABC2. Or better yet, not given the green light in the first place: who the holy heck thought another series of Laid was a good idea?
*
We interrupt this rant for a quick look at last night’s ratings:
It wasn’t a good night for ABC1 despite starting out well with ABC News (951,000), then 7:30 (687,000), Wild Life at the Zoo (538,000), Randling (491,000), Agony Aunts (332,000) and Laid letting down the team on just 262,000.
That sound you hear is the world’s biggest toilet flushing just for the ABC. Randling has lost almost half its’ audience in three weeks; Laid has performed about as poorly. Even Agony Aunts has shed a hundred thousand viewers in a week. If this was happening on any other network, we’d be seeing a very rapid return indeed to the Wednesday Night Movie. Or just a whole lot of static.
The fact that the next big line-up change to the current crop of ripe turds is a show seemingly built around the concept of a likable television personality wandering around an op shop for six weeks shows just how adrift from the concept of actual “comedy” the ABC currently is. Not only are these shows deliberately aimed at no-one who actually watches television, it was obvious from the outset that the only way this story could end was in headlines like DENTON SPELLS RATINGS DISASTER; ONCE POPULAR HOST DEAD IN DITCH. Randling, let us remind you, was promoted as a “word-based gameshow”. A phrase that conspicuously fails to contain a single synonym for “entertaining”.
There’s meant to be better stuff in the pipe – well, The Chaser are coming back – and maybe Offspring on Ten is luring away some traditional ABC comedy viewers. Big hairy deal: through sheer incompetence the ABC has pissed away whatever value their Wednesday night line-up may have had in terms of audience loyalty. At this stage you’d expect someone to get the sack for such a consistent string of foul-ups and blunders; give it another week and we’ll start demanding it.
We’re Bashing Our Heads Against a Brick Wall Over Here
Sometimes it’s good to take on board opinions diametrically opposed to yours to broaden your view on a subject. Other times you find yourself reading something that’s just plain wrong. Guess which is which with regards to The Sunday Age‘s Melinda Houston and her most recent write-up of Randling?
Everyone, including the audience at home, is settling into the rhythm of this new word quiz show, meaning it’s more “funerer” by the week.
Putting aside all right-thinking people’s instinctive violence towards a TV critic who uses a show’s made-up promotional words as a positive in their reviews, how to reconcile this with the actual ratings? According to fellow Fairfax writer David Dale, they show that Randling is “proceeding down the plughole of history“:
Week 1: 10 RANDLING ABC1 859,000 264,000 276,000 153,000 66,000 100,000
Week 2: 18 RANDLING ABC1 621,000 153,000 200,000 112,000 73,000 83,000
(the first figure is the national figure, followed by the ratings in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. We’ve attached the first week figures to show just how steep the drop-off from week one to week two was).
Just to rub it in: over 200,000 people didn’t come back after episode one. One quarter of the audience tuned in and went “nope”. Those aren’t people who might jump on board after hearing the show’s become more “funerer” – they tried it and didn’t like it. The only way to win them back now is by making radical changes, and considering the show has already been filmed (all 27 weeks worth), it’s not like Denton and the Randling crew can take on board any feedback they might be getting.
The most positive reading of Houston’s review is that while a quarter of “the audience at home” stopped watching after one episode, those left behind are getting into the swing of things. Presumably by week twenty there’ll be only a half dozen people watching Randling but they’ll be really, really into it. Though where Denton is going to find five other people who love him as much as he does remains a mystery.
The other Australian comedy Huston is big-upping is, of course, Laid 2. Again, it’s worth quoting her in full (because it doesn’t seem to be online):
It’s a little bit Keystone Cops on Laid this year as Roo maniacally chases down gruesome little Marcus in an effort to (a) sleep with him and (b) cure herself of her killer lady parts. In tonight’s ep, after a touching if less than perfect reunion with her beau Charlie, she’s stalking Marcus once more. But despite the rather circular nature of the action, this is still a fabulous night’s entertainment, largely thanks to the captivating performances from Alison Bell and Celia Pacquola. We don’t often get to see a couple of ladies holding the floor in Australian comedy; to see the two of them do it so well is particularly gratifying.
At least she’s not even pretending to claim it’s a ratings smash, probably because even by week one it was obvious that, to again quote Dale, “the second season of Laid turned out to be a ratings disaster.”
Week 1: 27 LAID ABC1 424,000 106,000 144,000 90,000 36,000 48,000Week 2: 32 LAID ABC1 336,000 69,000 128,000 57,000 36,000 47,000
Ouch.
Instead, Huston says that Laid is worth your time for the double act of Bell and Pacquola, because “we don’t often get to see a couple of ladies holding the floor in Australian comedy”. Two words, one ampersand: Kath & Kim. You know, the biggest Australian comedy hit of the 21st Century? To be fair, that was a while ago now, so… well, The Librarians had Robyn Butler interacting with all manner of women, Roz Hammond especially. And isn’t Laid currently followed by Agony Aunts, which is wall-to-wall ladies “holding the floor”?
It’s one thing to say Bell and Pacquola are a great double act – though then you’d have to address the fact that they don’t seem to be having all that many scenes together in this series of Laid – it’s another to pretend that seeing two women being funny together is so rare it alone makes the show “a fabulous night’s entertainment”. Yes, there are loads more men than women at pretty much every level of Australian comedy, but funny women aren’t so rare they should be supported on the basis of their gender alone. That way lies Kate Langbroek.
Slightly more interestingly, Laid is clearly so bad even Houston is forced to address at least one of its many faults: “the rather circular nature of the action”, AKA nothing ever fucking happens. Week one’s introduction of the sleazebag with the magic penis held out the hope that this second series might come up with a few fun twists and turns. But it seems Marieke Hardy thought “magic penis”, put down her pen, and decided she could write the rest of the series by transcribing chit-chat with her friends and sourcing comedy catchphrases from the internet. So just like everything else she’s written for TV then.
When it was first announced that Shaun Micallef’s new show Mad As Hell would be airing Friday nights at 8pm, we were worried this was the ABC dumping one of its brightest comedy prospects in a timeslot not exactly on the radar of most comedy fans. Now it looks like they’ve done Micallef a massive favour. Thanks to what can best be described as “fucking shit up”, the ABC have destroyed whatever value the Wednesday night comedy timeslot may have had as far as attracting an audience: from here on in, it’s every show for itself.
Laughing at The Boss’ Jokes
A brief glimmer of hope came when watching Randling last night – before we realised wait, we’re watching Randling – with an increasingly rare appearance of one Anthony Morgan. Hurrah! It’s always far too long between television gigs for this particular funnyman (he moved to Tasmania around a decade ago), which prompted us to wonder exactly why he’d come out of semi-retirement to appear on what could charitably be described as “a word-based game show”. And then we figured it out: Morgan had been a regular on Denton’s “ill-fated” talk show on Channel Seven back in the 90s. Morgan was doing a mate a favour.
This revelation went a long way towards explaining a somewhat creepy vibe hanging over the Randling set. Sure, it was kind of obvious that Denton would be calling in a few favours to put together such a heavyweight – in Australian mid-range television performer terms – cast. There are newcomers and up-and-comers and Wendy Harmer and Dave O’Neil and Rob Carlton and lot of the contestants probably could be pretty funny in a show with a format that allowed them to be funny. Presumably a lot of them jumped at the chance to be on TV with Denton; it’s just as likely that Denton asked a few to come on board and help him out.
So what? This is the way television works. Only thing is, this isn’t a long-time comedy veteran calling up a few mates to see if they want to appear on his new show. This is one of the more powerful producers in the land giving them a call to ask if they want the chance to help him out and get in his good books. More importantly for those of us at home, this isn’t happening behind the scenes: the guy they want to help out – the guy who, if he likes them, could slot them in as the next host of a Gruen Transfer-style hit and literally make them a star – is the host of the show. A show that isn’t just some cosy chat show, but a game show where he asks the questions, he makes the jokes, and he hands out the points – points that seems to actually mean something, if all the talk of ladders and finals are any guide.
This bizarre focus on scoring, by the way, is why all the increasingly desperate talk about how this kind of show requires time to bed down, settle in, get snuggly, rug up and drop a couple farts before somehow magically coming together as a hilarious half hour around week four is complete tripe. Oh, it’s often true this kind of show needs time to bed down. But that process involves making changes, which Randling can’t do. Why? Because unlike every other comedy game show since the dawn of time, Randling has made a big deal of the scoring. There are going to be QUARTER-FINALS: the scoring is not to be messed with.
[“but hang on, isn’t Denton the final judge as far as hanging out points? And wasn’t Denton’s actual no-fooling wife, Jennifer Byrne, on just last night? Doesn’t that make the entire idea of having a fair and unbiased scoring system a sick pathetic joke?” Well spotted, mysterious voice from the ether]
So they can’t change the show in any substantive way, because if they did then what happens to the scores of the first few teams? “Sorry guys, all the games now involve physical challenges… yeah, we know those guys didn’t have to do it, but, uh, SLIME ATTACK!!” You can’t have a scoring system that runs across twenty-odd weeks and change the nature of the show halfway through… well, you can, but then you have to throw the whole “scoring” thing in the bin – which is going to make those quarter finals pretty awkward. And if by week seven Randling is suddenly getting contestants to play “physical Scrabble” involving carving letters out of potatoes and frying them into a tasty meal that also spells out the name of Winston Churchill’s favourite brand of cigars… well, at least something on the show will be a joke.
Anyway, what this means is that Randling is a show where the host in a very real sense has the future job prospects of everyone else on-camera in the palm of his hand. Which, and forgive us if we’re off target here a little, doesn’t exactly sound like a formula for relaxed fun. Who knew the definition of Randling would turn out to be “on-air job interview”?
The upshot of all this is, Randling is a show where the guests want to please the host rather than the audience. And why wouldn’t they? The ABC certainly does. Unless you think anyone else but Denton could have gotten a “word-based game show” up in a prime-time slot on the ABC for 27 weeks. Unless you think anyone but Denton would have been given free reign to make a show so amazingly drawn-out and dull that it makes even Letters & Numbers look like an explosion in the excitement factory. Unless you think anyone but Denton would think a show where the contestants seem constantly on edge and afraid to do anything that might put them offside with the smug, self-satisfied, last-laugh-getting host would be anything but a grim, dispiriting ordeal deserving of nothing more than a quick and unmourned demise.
Laid 2: Face/Off
When a series such as Laid gets renewed, the conversation around it changes a little. No longer is it sufficient merely to attack it for being a complete and utter waste of time, for clearly by being renewed the ABC have indicated that they want it to be a complete and utter waste of time. If the ABC wanted decent and funny shows about people in their 20s, they would have renewed twentysomething; if the ABC liked the first series of Laid enough to order a second, it’s now their fault that we’ve been given a second series of pointless, unfunny, bland, erratic television. What was a massive flaw in series one becomes par for the course in series two and so our attention must drift elsewhere.
Likewise, when the unstoppable promotional onslaught from the Fairfax press that greeted the arrival of the first series of Laid has become a mild shrug of indifference to series two, another bone of contention gets thrown out for the dog. The totally disgusting and completely egregious displays of sucking up that appeared in the pages of The Age week after week as Fairfax staff fought for the right to tell us how amazing Fairfax employee and Laid creator Marieke Hardy was have largely been replaced by bugger all, presumably due to a combo of Laid series one not being all that popular and Hardy herself having to cough up a hefty sum after somehow managing to libel someone on the internet. So again, our focus moves on.
What remains is a show that manages to remain the completely pointless and borderline-creepy-in-its-attitudes-to-sex mess it was last time around while also somehow managing to come just that tiny bit closer to a show that might, with major structural and casting changes, actually work. If you think there might be a compliment somewhere in that last sentence, you’re right and we’re just as surprised as you are.
Laid 2 sees all our annoying, vapid, drivel-spouting friends back – yes, even the one they tried to suggest letting you know was back would violate some kind of last-season cliffhanger, to which we say if you’re going to do a cliffhanger do it right and have everyone in a bus that goes off a cliff and explodes and then DON’T COME BACK – only this time… well, it’s more of the same. Except that in the kind of logic that makes you want to nail bits of wood to your forehead then headbutt a circular saw, where last series Roo had a vagina that killed, now we have a new sleazebag comedy character with a penis that “heals”.
How this magic penis knows what parts of you to “heal” – it’s not like every woman he roots turns into a supermodel with a Stephen Hawking-level IQ, so clearly some flaws are beyond its magic thrust – remains as much a mystery as how Roo keeps pulling those gormless faces without someone kicking her head off. And the fact that most of what makes him such a sleazy scumbag are attitudes that are simply opposed to Roo and company’s hipsterdom is just another example of this show’s relentless opposition to anything or anyone existing outside the confines of the innermost of inner-city locales. But at least he’s markedly different to all the other cool kids! At least he sparks some minor conflict! At least he’s a semi-plausible source of character-based comedy!
The biggest lesson to come out of Laid is that it’s a lot easier to go around being hailed as a genius-level writer when no-one’s actually seen anything you’ve written. The hyperbole around Hardy has taken some serious blows over the last year, with Laid turning out to be one of those shows where everyone who feels they have to say something positive – that is to say, every professional TV critic in the land – ends up praising the acting while remaining tactfully silent on the way the plot made no sense, the episode to episode continuity was a mess, the characters were erratically written and the conclusion was plucked out of nowhere and answered nothing.
In that light, the ABC’s decision to almost immediately greenlight a second series was probably a blessing for Hardy. Without the pressure to come up with a second series she might very well have cut her losses, gone back to various media frippery for a few years until the accepted wisdom around Laid was that it was “under-appreciated” and “overlooked” and – well, go dig up any post 2008 references to her seemingly unflushable quasi-drama /blatant Secret Life of Us knock-off Last Man Standing, you’ll get the idea – before returning to television to once again show us she’d learnt nothing from her mistakes.
Instead, she’s found herself in a corner she can’t get out of by flashing her boobs. While you wouldn’t want to say she’s stepped up and proved us all wrong, the grey flavourless slurry that is Laid 2 does now occasionally manage to feel like something you might watch voluntarily rather than by accident. It’s still not actually funny in any way shape or form, but at least now it feels like the possibility of actually laughing at something on screen is there. Maybe.
In A Word: Rubbish
Is there anything more insufferably cringeworthy than announcing to the world your ‘love of words’? Those who gigglingly formulate DISCOMOBULATED and KUMQUAT with their fridge magnets and then expect a round of applause for this public display of their lexicographical lustings surely remain, second to men who put ‘bore water’ signs on their lawns, the most punchable people on the planet. Some go one step further, however, and devise entire quiz shows based on their self-congratulatory linguistophilia, of which Randling (which began tonight on ABC1) is the latest in a long and woeful line.
Fridge magnets were, in fact, enclosed as part of Randling‘s press release, ensuring that all reviewers were (literally) playing the game well ahead of the show’s debut.
Even before I watched the first ep, I was randling away merrily…
gushed Melinda Houston in the Sunday Age. (And yes, she did use the word ‘ep’. No doubt the suffix ‘isode’ had fallen down the back of her vegetable crisper.)
The thing with Randling is that it’s neither a geeky Letters and Numbers-style quiz nor a copper-bottomed Micallef-quality comedy show. Afraid of wearing either intellectualism or humour too visibly on its sleeves, it all amounts to very little: a pottage of half-remembered rounds from other quiz shows good and bad (My Word, QI, Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, Spicks and bloody Specks), the result inevitably feels scattershot and half-hearted. The ‘words’ gimmick is itself fairly tenuous, especially since nobody involved seems to have any particular linguistic dexterity. You’d think, for a start, that a quiz show about words could manage to get the lyrics of its theme tune to scan.
So if it’s not a quiz or a comedy, what is it? Well, it’s a sports show. Thank God You’re Here had a bizarre habit of treating its ad-libbing comics like sweat-drenched pentathletes, and Randling does much the same. It’s not just the barely-tongue-in-cheek-enough-to-be-funny team blazers and the tatty trophy, or the AFL ladder-style scoreboard (which looks more like a spreadsheet, grimly reminding us that we have another 26 weeks of randletime to sit through), or indeed the tiresome mic-in-the-face post-match interviews over the closing credits: it’s the fact that the entire show is taken so goddam seriously as a competition. A competition at which viewers are invited to patriotically cheer, rather than simply titter. The inevitable implication is that failure to ‘randle away merrily’ is some kind of unAustralian thought crime.
Host Andrew Denton (who himself is a fan of words, but probably doesn’t hear ‘no’ very often) opened the first show by giving us the definition of the word ‘randling’ itself. The obvious thing to do here would be to announce a different erroneous definition at the top of every show, with the meanings becoming increasingly convoluted and ridiculous as the series wears on. ‘Now ‘randling’, of course, means…’ could become his new catchphrase. They could also cast the teams in the style of Wacky Races, with duos of fogies competing against hipsters, or thicko couples battling against brainboxes. Have some fun with the whole thing. Maybe call it The Cunning Linguists if they have to. But no, Denton’s too boring for that. That’s the kind of thing a comedy show might do. This is comedy-sport, and it seems all jokes have to be approved by the TV equivalent of the International Olympic Committee. Go team panel-show!
The whole enterprise is clearly an attempt to fill the gap left by Spicks and Specks, which you’d think wouldn’t exactly be difficult. Replace a mediocre music quiz aimed at people who don’t give a toss about music with a mediocre word quiz aimed at…well, you get the idea. Unfortunately, such is the sheer neediness and desperation on display that it’s hard not to will Randling to failure, and harder still to forgive the on-message reviewers who obediently sing from the Church of Denton hymn-sheet.
Vale Agony Uncles; or The King Is Dead, Long Live The Queen
Sometimes a show succeeds despite itself. While Agony Uncles may have positioned itself as a source for all that hard-hitting relationship advice men have secretly been crying out for, our straw poll of people who’ve actually watched the thing boiled down to two separate results: every man we spoke to thought it was a crap show populated by smug and smarmy wankers humblebragging about their sexual conquests – and so they watched as little of it as possible – while the two women we found who’d watched it thought it was hilarious because (and they both used the exact same word) the guys on it were “dickheads”.
It’s always tricky to try and guess the intent of the people behind a creative endeavour, especially one that proved to be as muddled and unfocused (in intent if not format) as Agony Uncles. So let’s just say, judging by the serious fashion in which every single man on the show imparted his just-down-from-the-mountain “advice” about women and relationships (even when they were telling a funny story, this was a show that took its’ funny stories seriously), it’s possible to conclude that this “they’re all dickheads” result was not the one Adam Zwar and company intended.
Still, you take your laughs where you can get them and even a stopped clock is right twice a day if you’re too lazy to just chuck the damn thing out. Yes, the show’s many flaws were obvious right out the gate: where Agony Uncles‘ obvious inspiration Grumpy Old Men featured, well, grumpy old men griping about the state of the world today – a world that, in a lot of ways, they are no longer an active part of, thus disarming their criticisms and making them easy to enjoy as moaning from no longer powerful-figures – this featured men in the prime of their lives talking earnestly about something central to their emotional well-being. Even if they’d been hilariously witty (and they weren’t) or shockingly insightful (and they weren’t), they wouldn’t have been very funny. Unless, it seems, you just thought they were dickheads.
So what was the point of all this, apart from getting host /creator Zwar a paycheck? Apart from being a sop to a pissweak version of “celebrity culture”, what is meant to be interesting about having attractive, financially well-off, socially successful men talk about relationships? These aren’t guys who are getting it wrong, they aren’t getting it amazingly right either (then this’d be a show about how to pick up chicks) and they certainly aren’t particularly self-aware; for example, while no doubt they had preferences when it comes to women none of that mattered (or at least, they weren’t really mentioned) because when it comes to picking a mate “it’s ladies choice”.
Really? No-one connected that with the also expressed “it’s not a good sign when a woman approaches you” view to conclude that ladies are only allowed to choose from the men offered to them? Presumably that insight into the raw prawn women get partner-wise was being held over for the upcoming Agony Aunts (about which more later).
These weren’t men so famous that anyone wants to know what they think just for the sake of it and they weren’t so sharp or funny that their insights into anything had merit on their own. Agony Uncles was television-length rather than actual television, the kind of thing that simply exists without purpose or value.
Agony Aunts, on the other hand – and yes, thanks to a buddy with a time machine we’ve seen the first episode – is slightly different. For one thing, it features Denise Scott and Judith Lucy, who’ve been tackling this sort of area in their stand-up for a few decades now. They know what they’re talking about and they’re funny with it: big tick there. Wendy Harmer is also present, which is kind of the same thing only not as funny. The cast as a whole seem slightly more aware, which lifts the material as a whole a little.
Don’t worry though, Zwar somehow manages to come off as even more creepy with his “tell me how to LOVVVVE!” voice-over here, especially as he actually has his wife in front of the camera this time. And of course, just like the previous version this features plenty of cliches getting a dust-off. Men are hunters? Women like their men to be financially successful? Stop the press, I want to throw it at someone. Basically, whenever Sarah Wilson comes on just wack yourself in the face with a Sunday tabloid.
[actually, one of the big problems with this series is that it’s just not shocking and offensive enough. Anyone who’s ever spoken to anyone else about sex and relationships knows that people have insanely horrid and disgusting preferences when it comes to getting a root, and yet all this series serves up is bland “stay away from crazy women” and “men with cash are more attractive” pap. Where are the hilarious yet creepy fetishes? Where are the shocking yet arousing tales of asked-for abuse? These people don’t seem to have actual relationships; they barely even have bunkmates.]
The real question of course is, why are we getting twelve weeks of this stuff? There’s barely enough insight from the men & women combined to fill a half hour special. Let’s say it again: they’re not famous enough to be interesting in their own right. They’re not experts in this area – no more than anyone else – so what they have to say isn’t informative enough to be useful. They take it too seriously to be funny – a few of the female comedians excepted and even then not always – but the show is too flippant to make their comments hang together as anything remotely serious. Even “tepid” is too strong a word to describe this crap.
Randling is a Word Based Game Show. The word is Denton.
If you like comedy and didn’t have reason to dislike the inordinately smug Andrew Denton before now, thanks to a recent interview he gave to Fairfax, now you do:
In a perfect world, Denton says, Randling would have been a companion piece to the popular music-trivia show Spicks and Specks.
But two weeks after pitching Randling to the ABC, the producers of Spicks and Specks announced their intention to wind it up at the end of last year. Randling now has Spicks’ ”Broadway” slot on Wednesday night.
”It’s not ideal to come after Spicks and Specks, which has been so loved,” Denton says. ”We’ll have to find our way through the clouds of comparison … with every show, it takes a while for the audience to find its feet as much as the show.
”I’d prefer Spicks was still on, though I understand why they made that decision.”
We’ve gone on here before about how important Spicks & Specks has been to the last few years of Australian comedy. Short version: by ratings its arse off at 8.30pm then finishing at 9 while every other network was screening hour-long shows from 8.30 to 9.30, it meant anything running after it got a all-but-guaranteed ratings boost that made it – and Australian comedy in general – look more popular that it probably really was.
We bang on and on about this because ratings are important in television: without the security of that solid Spicks & Specks lead-in, many of the ABC comedy hits of the mid 2000s would have been flops, and therefore many of the ABC comedies of the late 2000s would never have happened. So of course Denton wanted his word-based game-show to have that hit-making slot. It’s only fair really…. until you realise that while most Australian comedy series on the ABC run six weeks (eight at most), according to the preview information we’ve seen Randling is scheduled to run for 27 weeks.
Basically, Denton wanted to fuck over every other Australian comedy on the ABC in 2012 (okay, apart from Woodley, which aired at 8pm, and Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, which will air Friday’s at 8pm) by locking up the only decent comedy timeslot for his word-based game-show from now until November; that is to say, the end of ratings season 2012. That’s his right, of course. He’s only doing the best by his word-based game-show to wish it the best possible timeslot.
We, on the other hand, are well within our rights to find the fact that his word-based game-show will now have to win viewers based entirely on its’ word-based merits pretty darn funny. And the ABC are well within their rights to be quietly shitting themselves that they’ve given a 27 week commitment to a game show that is, above all else, word-based. After all, we all know how much Australians love their words.
A bit too raw?
Yesterday we got an e-mail from one of our readers, Patrick. Amongst other things, Patrick wrote:
Tom and Alex interviewed the 2012 Raw Comedy winner on Monday on their triple j breakfast show. The winner is a trio called Lessons with Luis and they interviewed Luis.
Aside from winning Raw, Luis also currently has a Golden Gibbo nominated show at MICF and got a 4 star review from Schembri. I’ve seen the show and one of his Raw heats and it’s quite a different act (a bit Tim and Eric maybe) but very funny. It killed at the Raw heat and the show at MICF was very good.
Basically Luis is a character based act (check out vids on YouTube), sort of awkward anti-comedy, which admittedly didn’t translate very well on radio in the interview on JJJ. The interview is quite awkward and stilted but it sort of spirals downwards when Luis sings a song about cats. Tom and Alex don’t really handle this character very well.
At this point (at the end of the interview) Tom Ballard calls the act shit, questions whether JJJ should be supporting Raw and brings up how he himself didn’t win but “shit like this gets through”.
It was pretty condescending and unsupportive of comedy in my opinion. Interesting also given that JJJ are supposed to be supporting/fostering young comic talent (Luis I’m guessing is about 20). Interesting also as this is pretty out there, alternative comedy, hence the Golden Gibbo nom, yet Ballard, a very well known and influential comedian, wrote it off as shit. Surprising. There was a subsequent Twitter backlash towards Lessons with Luis.
Anyway, I’m not sure what to make of it, but it’s on the Monday 16th Tom and Alex podcast about 14 mins in if you’re interested. Seems to fit in the topic area of the site.
As regular readers of this blog know we don’t really cover live comedy – largely because we don’t often get a chance to see it – but when there’s a media shitstorm about live comedy, we’re right in there. So here we go…
First up, we haven’t seen the live show Lessons with Luis. But we have watched the YouTube videos, listened to the Tom and Alex interview, and heard from several other sources – including this online review – that the show was really good. Here’s what we’ve concluded:
- Lessons with Luis is an act which probably works best in a long-form, live format. Viewed in isolation (i.e. in 1 minute YouTube videos, or as part of a short radio appearance) Luis’ knowingly poor gags and deliberately lame songs seem, well, poor and lame. But in the context of an hour-long show Luis would have lots of time to set the scene and establish his character. Lessons with Luis is probably one of those shows that becomes more and more enjoyable as it goes along and you start to get it.
- Ballard wasn’t entirely wrong to describe Luis as “shit”. Like we said above, in isolation the cats song is shit. And Luis’ banter on Tom and Alex wasn’t exactly side-splitting.
- Calling Luis “shit” on live radio was wrong. It’s not that we care too much about the fact that Ballard, one of the most high-profile personalities on the radio station which sponsored Raw Comedy, slagged off the winner of Raw Comedy on that radio station – he’s got a perfect right to hold and express whatever opinions he likes, and indeed it’s quite refreshing that he’s diverted from what we imagine is the company line – it’s more that as a professional comedian Ballard should have known better than anyone that Luis is an inexperienced, surreal character act who was struggling a bit on what was probably his most high-profile radio appearance to date. Whatever happened to showbiz people helping each other out for the good of the show? Or is it everyone for themselves these days, and bugger the show?
- Ballard is being contradictory. To us (and others we’ve spoken to) Luis’ act seems a bit like Sam Simmons’, and Tom and Alex have Sam Simmons on their show all the time. We don’t find Sam Simmons funny, but Tom and Alex seem to, so why didn’t they get Luis?
Have you seen the live show Lessons with Luis? Did you like it or hate it? Is Tom Ballard a thundering dickhead for what he said? Let us know, leave your comments.