Australian Tumbleweeds
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – The “What Happened To That?!” Award for Comedies Which Failed to Appear
Looking over the TV listings this year, the one thought that repeatedly came to our minds is “please Australian networks, hold back on the quality shows for a while, we can barely cope with the ones we’ve already got”. And somehow they heard us, so while classics like The Renovators, and the one about cooking ,and the other one about cooking, and the third one about cooking ran for week after week after week, the occasional comedy series that actually sounded like something we’d like to see was quietly pushed back to the grim meathook future of 2012.
Okay, the one comedy series we really did want to see (the ABC assures us the other two nominees will screening in February) was pushed back to “yeah, nah, we’re not going to be making that one, thanks”. Exactly why remains a minor mystery, though we’re willing to blame everything on Nine right up until the moment John Clarke and Ross Stevenson come out and say “we had a lot of trouble coming up with ideas”. Which, considering Clarke’s been talking up doing a sequel since at least the 2008 Olympics, seems a little unlikely. Let’s not forget the classy way Nine treated most of their 2011 comedy output either: if The Games: London Calling actually had happened, an 11pm timeslot by week four would have been firmly on the cards.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, THE “PISSING ON THEIR LEGACY” AWARD, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 6:30PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Most Deservedly Axed or Shunted-Round-The-Schedules Program
Sometimes a show’s just gotta go. Live From Planet Earth and Good News World were instant failures and their respective axings weren’t much of a surprise, even if the latter’s took a long time coming. Hungry Beast on the other hand managed to last three series, which is pretty good for a show of its type and quality. Those involved were really lucky to have been chosen for it, making their howls of protest when the show was axed seem more than a little disingenuous.
The result of this category, however, is far from disingenuous. More a sledgehammer-obvious statement of 100% dissatisfaction.
Live From Planet Earth isn’t exactly a surprise winner in this category – its name will be a byword for comedic failure for decades to come – but it’s debatable that it was more deserving of the chop than Good News World. Good News World was an equally poor program which also got slaughtered on social media, it just happened to stay on air because it was on a lower-profile network who currently have a policy of sticking rigidly by any new show…until it’s obvious even to them that they totally messed-up.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, THE “WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT?!” AWARD FOR COMEDIES WHICH FAILED TO APPEAR, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 6:00PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Most Irritating or Pointless Cameo / Guest Appearance
A special guest appearance from a well-known face should be a show highlight. Unfortunately special guests these days seem to be there purely to earn some easy coin or revive their careers. Don Burke’s appearance on Can of Worms had all the hallmarks of someone attempting the latter – you could tell by his swearing and attempts to shock. Julia Morris has much the same tactic when she’s a guest, except she’s less about swearing and more about being a gabbling loud-mouth.
Mistakenly, The Joy of Sets gave over a third of its airtime to a special guest. This should have been a showstopper, sadly it just stopped the show. Dead. Instead of hilarious behind the scenes insights from an industry figurehead we got Deborah Hutton talking about…oh, we forget. Even Pete Smith with his decades of TV experience and noted wit didn’t manage to shine. Those who went to the recordings say they were great and that the guests made the show. Which for us begs this question: what happened in the edit?
Julia Morris turning up anywhere – even that short film festival / self-promotion carnival she runs – is irritating and/or pointless, but to be irritating and/or pointless in comparison to Good News World? That’s a far more impressive achievement than her victory on The Celebrity Apprentice.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, MOST DESERVEDLY AXED OR SHUNTED-AROUND-THE-SCHEDULES PROGRAMME, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 5:30PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Worst Themed Comedy
Australian comedy has a hard enough time getting laughs when absolutely anything is fair game: why would you purposely limit the targets you’re swinging at? Which is why, on even the briefest of examinations, it’s clear that while all three shows in this category claim to have firm targets in sight, they always just end up cracking jokes about anything they feel like. And good on them for it. If they’d just get around to cracking funny jokes, they might have something worthwhile to offer.
Paul McDermott is a great comedy host. He’s charming, he’s expansive, he’s got a great singing voice. He’s not someone who comes off all that well when he has to share the spotlight though, so one of the many, many mystifying choices that came from turning the stale Good News Week into the failed Good News World was to have him conduct bogus interviews and appear in sketches. And then there were all the other mystifying choices which would take at least three thousand worlds to list here so let’s just boil them down to “give Sammy J & Randy their own show and fire everyone else out of a cannon”.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, MOST IRRITATING OR POINTLESS CAMEO/GUEST APPEARANCE, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 5:00PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Worst Coverage of Comedy
Ah, for the good old days, when the Australian media would desperately latch onto the slightest whiff of controversy about a show or comedian and never let go until someone was sacked or taken off air for a few weeks. These days even Marieke Hardy having to cough up $13,000 for “outing” the wrong man for being responsible for a disgusting hate blog barely rates a mention. Of course, the Fairfax press couldn’t say enough good things about her or her series Laid, so maybe that’s a bad example. But if the Murdoch press couldn’t find it in their hearts to seriously rally the troops around a comedy where a fake PM had fake sex on a real Australian flag, the sun had clearly set on the days when the Chaser were (metaphorically) spitting on sick kiddies with every sketch.
To be fair, there were a few reports on the ratings slide for Angry Boys, but for the most part the media had so firmly jumped the gun with their praise of Chris Lilley (remember that story in The Monthly calling him a genius? How about the one in The Age calling him a genius?) before Angry Boys aired they couldn’t point out the fact it was a flop without looking like they didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s interesting to note that while the claims that Lilley is a genius are still loud and strong, the example now used to back that claim up is the older (but ratings-winning) Summer Heights High. Man, there must be a lot of commentators out there praying that Angry Boys turns out to be a blip in Lilley’s career and he re-connects with audiences when his next series arrives in 2018.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, WORST THEMED COMEDY, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 4:30PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Worst Non-Broadcast Comedy or Comedy Product
Last time we checked, The Bolt Retort’s most viewed clip on YouTube had 1,623 views. The second most viewed clip? 206 views. So presumably not only did those 1,400 people not go back for a second look, they all came over here to vote for a (in our opinion, pretty funny) five minute show by Shannon from The Bazura Project pointing out inaccuracies in Andrew Bolt’s show The Bolt Report. Hey, we just report the winners, we don’t pick ‘em.
Remember that time Libbi Gorr had Mark “Chopper” Read on her ABC talk show? We do. Oddly, we couldn’t find any mention of that in The A to Z of Mummy Manners, her twee guide to making friends with the parents of children your children are friends with. Seriously, why bother? Most parents we know just want someone to look after their brats for a few hours, not a freakin’ soul-mate.
Marieke Hardy makes a living by talking about herself. At the heart of everything she says and does in the public eye is the conviction that it’s interesting because she’s the one doing it. Maybe she’s right? 50,000 twitter followers can’t be all wrong. Or even all actual people.
The continuing rise of Marieke Hardy is no doubt a delight for both Ms Hardy and the large number of people who wish they were her. For those trapped in an outdated way of looking at books, newspaper columns and television – as something providing the public with more than just the author’s efforts at self-promotion – it’s all a bit of a puzzle. Writing a book about your various mildly salacious relationship escapades (group sex, hiring prostitutes, etc), putting a picture of yourself on the cover, then inviting those you’ve written about to comment suggests levels of self-absorption barely sustainable by people who’ve actually achieved something with their lives. And we’re talking here about someone whose greatest achievements to date involve reviewing books on television and flashing their breasts.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, WORST COVERAGE OF COMEDY, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 4:00PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Worst Contribution to Radio Comedy
Over the years we have resigned ourselves to the fact that the comedic aspirations of commercial radio stations extend no further than idiotic yammering and prank calls. Matt Tilley is of course the ultimate exponent of this, successfully combining the two on an increasing number of Austereo breakfast shows. Over in Adelaide, Rabbit from the SA-FM breakfast show is doing much the same.
Hughesy & Kate of Melbourne’s Nova are more focused on the yammering side of commercial radio comedy; trying to grab attention with their loud-mouth tomfoolery as their half-listening audience spoon cereal in to their mouths, gets the kids organised or travel in to work. As such it is hard not to interpret Ed Kavalee’s decision to leave their show as cut and dry editorial comment. Making films that never seem to appear in cinemas or appearing on a sports panel show has got to be better than hanging out with them.
On the one hand it is hardly worth analysing the work of Matt Tilley. He is basically just a man putting on stupid accents and trying to make someone get angry by bullying and haranguing them. If you find that sort of thing funny you’ll be pleased to hear there’s lots more of it coming up in 2012. We, on the hand, have been somewhat disturbed to find ourselves nostalgic for the days when Merrick & Rosso would leave a message on people’s answering machines from Dr Sarkis Kockoff – at least there was wordplay in that one.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, WORST NON-BROADCAST COMEDY OR COMEDY PRODUCT, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 3:30PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Worst Overall Channel / Network for Comedy
All three commercial networks have been doing their best to make Australian comedy a no-go zone for years now. Ten may have made a concerted effort to at least show some comedy, but Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation has trapped Shaun Micallef in an increasingly tired game show and Good News World was an insult even to the fans of its previous, almost as dull and predictable incarnations. Seven left comedy well alone in 2011, which isn’t going to get any complaints from us after the string of rapidly cancelled quasi-game shows they tried in previous years, and Nine… well, their heart was in the right place.
Nine tried to get into the comedy business in 2012 in a way no commercial network had tried in more than a decade. They hired big name stars, they promoted the hell out of them and they put them on in prime time where people could actually see them. Unfortunately, they did all this on Channel Nine, the oldest-skewing of the networks and the one where viewers – families and old folk, in the main – had the least possible interest in being made to laugh. Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year kind of worked, thanks to a massive pre-existing fanbase and a general likeability that didn’t scare the oldies away; nothing else really stood a chance.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, WORST CONTRIBUTION TO RADIO COMEDY, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 3:00PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Worst Overall Comedy
In previous years many of the results thrown up by the Tumblies have been dismissed as simply the scowling of haters opposed to anything mainstream or popular. Unfortunately for those people, the main players in this year’s awards were high profile, well-promoted ratings flops, suggesting that – for once – our voters and the mainstream are on the same page. Self-serving tripe that seems to have been put together more to stroke the egos of the creators or fulfil some regulated programming need doesn’t seem to have put bums on seats in 2011; turns out people actually do want to watch comedy that’s funny after all.
What, it seems fair to ask at this stage, is Chris Lilley trying to do? Usually with a comedy show answering that question is simple: it’s supposed to make us laugh. But for large stretches of Angry Boys it was obvious that Lilley didn’t want laughs – in fact, laughing at Gran’s Alzheimer’s announcement (for example) would be exactly what he didn’t want. This is hardly new or original in comedy – the end of both Blackadder Goes Forth and the second series of the UK Office pulled off the same trick – but those shows used sentiment as a twist ending, adding a surprise layer to a previously purely comedic character. Lilley puts sentiment at the heart of his characters from the outset. Presumably it’s some kind of achievement to make an audience care about a senile old lady or loutish teen who is clearly played by a 40-ish man in a wig: it’s just not an achievement in comedy.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, WORST OVERALL CHANNEL/NETWORK FOR COMEDY, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 2:30PM EDT.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2011 – Worst Film Comedy
Snowtown is what Australian film does best: a grim tale of bogans murdering each other. Well, okay, it’s not what Australian film does best – it’s more that it’s what the people who make Australian film like to think they do best. Go on, go enrol at a film school and tell everyone you want to make light-hearted romantic comedies. We’ll wait here.
Big Mamma’s Boy was a return to the classic wog comedy that… wait, wasn’t there a wog comedy just last year? And wasn’t that the only real candidate for this award then? Surely it’s the Vietnamese’s turn by now?
Here’s a test: have you ever heard anyone tell a “little Johnny” joke? Do you even know what a “little Johnny” joke is? Because we don’t and we’re supposed to be experts in this kind of Ocker down home Aussie comedy thing. And by “experts”, we mean we’ve listened to our fair share of King Billy Cokebottle.
In yet another dire year for Australian big screen comedy, Big Mamma’s Boy basically wins here by default. That’s not to say it didn’t have problems: in 2011 a romantic comedy where the lead rushes to get married largely to prove he isn’t gay isn’t so much hilarious as offensive. But it least it tried. Mostly it tried to see how many times it could get away with the old “It looks like he’s getting a blow job – BUT HE’S NOT!!” joke, but when it comes to getting laughs from Australian film that’s still a big step up from the usual pile of dismembered bogans.
THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT CATEGORY, WORST OVERALL COMEDY, WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT 2:00PM EDT.