Australian Tumbleweeds
Good News Weak – Geddit? See what we did there? Ha!
Ten’s experiment turning the tried and tested and tired Good News Week into the shiny new sketch-tastic Good News World worked out pretty much as well as you would expect. If you think you’re detecting a little sarcasm there, well done: Good News Week was stale, worn out hackery when Ten bought it back as a stop-gap program in 2008 when the US writers strike looked like it was going to cut off supplies of cheap US shows, and while it was initially greeted as the return of a long-lost friend ratings-wise, viewers soon started drifting away.
[sidebar: If television networks had the slightest clue as to what they’re supposed to be doing, the initial ratings success of both the GNW and Hey Hey it’s Saturday revivals would be a massive blaring signal that there’s a market out there that wants to see live or semi-live comedy built around people just messing about – and their rapid ratings decline would be just as big a signal that people want to see fresh faces doing the messing around. Funnier faces wouldn’t hurt either]
And so we get Good News World, which is basically the exact same GNW / Glasshouse / Sideshow / GNW again jokes we’ve been yawning through since 1998, only now some of them are told in sketch form! Still, the format is a good one – it should be, considering it’s pretty much the same one used by every show of this stripe in this country since at least The Late Show in the early 1990s (if not the 70s and Saturday Night Live) : opening monologue, news desk parody, fake interview, sketches, a musical number or two, rinse and repeat until the end credits come up.
Unlike Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, which often feels like it features five or six segments all doing roughly the same thing, this format breaks things up enough so that even when the jokes are pretty much all the same at least the setting is different enough to make them feel kind of fresh. Fresh turds in this case, because in case your eyes glazed over back at paragraph two, THEY ARE THE EXACT SAME JOKES GNW HAS BEEN DOING SINCE IT STARTED. And we’re using the term “joke” advisedly here, considering they’re almost entirely stale political references combined with the word “knob”.
Don’t worry though, because the three GNW regulars are back and if anyone knows how to sell this tired hackwork passed off as fresh material… they abandoned this ship a long time ago. Claire Hooper still looks like a rabbit stuck in headlights – if she and Dave Hughes had a baby together they’d have to keep it in a lead-lined box because its gaze would turn men to stone – Mikey Robbins is a jolly fat man who’s no longer fat or jolly or able to do anything that falls into the category of “comedy” and Paul McDermott is a decent musical comedian promoted way above his abilities.
Let’s be generous here: as a host, McDermott can deliver a monologue well and his musical numbers are… okay, they’re all the same but he has a nice voice. He’s just not a generous performer by any stretch: when he’s on stage he wants the laughs and he works with the audience (eye roll? check. knowing smirk? check), not the other performers. So doing sketches and fake interviews as the new format requires him to do results in a bunch of scenes that only serve to remind us that gee, Paul McDermott is really smug for a man with not that much to be smug about.
As for the new cast members, Cal Wilson is rapidly using up the goodwill she earned by being funny once upon a time on Get This, Tom Gleeson provides the same level of pointless “I’m here everybody – surely that counts for something” he does in everything, and Akmal Saleh must have fans somewhere but we’ve never met them. Or anyone who has met them. Or anyone who doesn’t visibly sag upon being reminded that he exists.
At least – a very, very least – Sammy J and his puppet sidekick Randy work well together and present material that goes (a little) beyond the GNW tradition of tired political dick jokes. They can’t save GNW, but they do provide a slight uptick in quality when they’re on-screen together.
But who cares? GNW and its variations have been stinking up Australian television for well over fifteen years now and if this version fails another one will pop up on the ABC within a year or so and feature the exact same tired faces gurgling out the exact same shithouse jokes ripped off from all and sundry. It’s not that the audience actually wants to watch these shows – they all fizzle and die in the ratings soon enough – more that television executives seem to think that a): Australians want political comedy, and b): political comedy involves people putting on shit wigs and telling crap “children’s stories” about whatever the current scandal / crisis is. Satire!
So let’s set the record straight. Australians don’t want political comedy. They just want comedy FULL FREAKING STOP. Telling a shit joke but changing “an irishman” to “Tony Abbott” doesn’t make it funnier, it just makes you look lazier. Good News Week / World / Whatever uses its topicality as a crutch – “of course our jokes aren’t that great, we’ve had to rush them out to keep them topical”. Right. Because Tony Abbott’s speedos and Osama Bin Laden are topical.
There’s no reason why a topical weekly political sketch show shouldn’t work on Ten. Simply sack every single person involved with Good News Week and start from scratch. Unless you’re willing to do that – unless you’re willing to say “we actually want to make a show that isn’t just the same old crap served up in a slightly different bowl” – then all you’re doing is taking the piss. And shouldn’t that be the show’s job?
Bad news, world
Crikey’s Laugh Track blog reported the other day that a promo video for the upcoming sketch show Good News World has been released on Facebook. Good News World, in case you’ve been trying to block out its existence (and this is something we do advise), is the revamped version of Good News Week, which promises to be “somewhere between The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, and a hostage situation”.
“Judging by the trailer that they posted on Facebook, I’m gathering the television audience is the latter” writes Laugh Track’s Matt Smith. Quite.
But how can we convey the true horror of what’s in the promo video? Let’s start with these five words: Akmal Saleh as Colonel Gaddafi. Now here’s some more words, or more accurately a question: Is that a Masterchef parody written in the style of the Class Sketch? We can only hope that when the show’s actually broadcast the references will be slightly more up to date, as in not references to people who may be dead by the time the show airs, or not parodies of shows which finished up weeks ago. You know, like the program’s inspirations The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live might do.
As for the material being funny, well, that’s pretty unlikely. Perhaps the show’s fatalist of flaws is that the cast is almost entirely made up of people with virtually no decent sketch comedy credits to their name (Skithouse, The Comedy Sale, The Wedge, The Sideshow) – we haven’t seen this many hacks on the one show since the Hey Hey reunions.
Which is pretty sad for us here at Tumblies HQ, because if there’s one thing we’d like to see more of on television it’s locally-made topical sketch comedy – the kind of comedy that really nails it when it comes to politics, popular culture and everything in between. If we see any of that kind of comedy on Good News World we’ll be the first to laugh and applaud. More likely, this will be Live From Planet Earth awful, with not even Ben Elton’s topical stand-up or the one joke in Girl Flat to make up for it.
Vale Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey
Tonight sees the final episode of Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey, and what have we learnt? For starters, it’s now impossible to put a show on television that doesn’t start off with a reminder about previous episodes. What was all that about? Sure, it’s a journey, but it’s not like each step built on the previous one, so… oh wait, the show didn’t actually have an opening credits sequence (just a title card), so these “previously, on…” moments clearly took their place. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
Tonight’s episode sees Lucy off to India in search of enlightenment, cheap plastic surgery (not really) and a footpath where she won’t be blocking some guy on a scooter. As with the series as a whole, the episode is split between Judith’s gag-heavy, somewhat distant voice-over and her actual experiences on the ground, which are much more immediate and affecting. She’s still a great interviewer, willing to listen to her subjects’ answers and then build on them: if nothing else, ABC radio should snatch her up for a regular gig pronto.
Lucy’s best-selling autobiography from a few years back The Lucy Family Alphabet either created or revealed a solid fanbase of people interested in Lucy’s quest for personal growth, so it’s hardly surprising that this series has pretty firmly gone down that path. It does mean though that those of us more interested in her comedy have been slightly… disappointed isn’t the right word, as the series as a whole has been far from disappointing. But there’s a lot of totally straight travelogue material in this episode as Lucy tours India and much of it, while interesting, isn’t funny.
Nor is it meant to be, of course, and much of the strength of this series has come from seeing someone whose first response to pretty much anything is to crack a gag push past that impulse and take things seriously. Seeing her authentically moved by giving an offering to the Ganges river isn’t exactly thigh-slapping stuff, but it is part of what makes Spiritual Journey worthwhile television.
Not that we care about any of that mystical touchy feely crap here. No, we’re all about the laffs. Which is why it’s only fair to point out that, unlike the fairly even balance of the preceding episodes, this one’s mostly on the serious side. Even Judith’s final summing-up (as she returns to the breakaway Catholic Church seen in episode one to deliver the homily) leans a little more on what all this exploring has meant to her and a little less on busting out the gags. She does get one “Zing!” (and accompanying trademark fist-pump) in there, so it’s hardly a dead loss though.
While Lucy never quite manages to integrate the comedy with her spiritual explorations – largely because she treats the spiritual side of things with actual respect, which makes her a much more likable person (by virtue of not going around making fun of people) but does cut off most of the obvious comedy angles – that’s not to say the series has been all sturm und drang. The funny stuff has, for the most part, been very funny (that commercial radio support group sketch is probably going to be the comedy highlight of Australian television in 2011) while the serious stuff has mostly only been serious in comparison to the sanitary pad gags.
While it’s part of the seemingly unending trend towards “let’s get comedians to explore issues” programming, Spiritual Journey has been a show that only Lucy* could have made. She’s interested enough in spirituality to have actual questions she wanted answered, and she’s level-headed enough to get in a bunch of jokes around the edges. If it’s turned out to be heavier on the spiritual side of things, it’s not like Lucy isn’t funny or endearing or intelligent enough to bring it all together into an interesting whole. Hell, she was pole-dancing in a nun’s costume; you’re not going to get that on Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year.
*Ok, and John Safran. Though Safran would have made it just as much about his ex-girlfriends as spirituality and had his exes on and then gone in a couple of mildly unsettling directions. Lucy may have slept with a prostitute and made it part of her act, but she’s always kept her personal relationships (aside from the one with her deceased step-parents) off-limits.
Rebel Rebel, That Food Is For Guests
After the unflushable turd that was Bogan Pride Rebel Wilson might never be Australia’s sweetheart again, but over in the US her star turn (okay, three scenes) in Bridesmaids is opening doors left, right and center:
Rebel Wilson is seeing her career go into overdrive since appearing in Bridesmaids.
The actress, who played Kristen Wiig’s roommate in the hit comedy, just got the plum role to replace Casey Wilson in the all-star indie comedy Bachelorette, being produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s Gary Sanchez Prods. shingle.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, that’s not the only feature role she’s snagged:
At the same time, Rebel Wilson is the first person to be cast in Pitch Perfect, the Gold Circle romantic comedy set in the world of collegiate a cappella groups.
Nice work if you can get it. Or is it? The real comedy comes from reading on to see exactly what kind of roles the glorious new post-Bridesmaids age of gal-friendly comedies is giving to Australia’s greatest female comedy export. In Bachelorette:
Isla Fisher, Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott are cast in the movie, which follows three best friends (Fisher, Caplan and Dunst) who are invited to act as bridesmaids at the wedding of a girl they called Pigface in high school.
Pigface. Ooh, sounds classy. But wait, there’s more: In Pitch Perfect–
She’ll play a character called Fat Amy who is a member of the female a cappella group Divisi and goes head to head against a counterpart from the male group known as the Treblemakers.
Pigface and Fat Amy. Typecast much?
Fingers crossed these roles turn out to be big hits for our Rebel, so she has a long and productive career in Hollywood, making, oh, we don’t know… maybe a wacky stoner comedy called FAT BLUNT? A movie where she plays a wealthy bank executive trying to buy her way to love titled PIGGY BANK? A poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks turns to beatboxing to make her way out of the gutter in PHAT BEATS? Or perhaps a good old-fashioned disaster movie called FLABBERLANCHE?
(snark aside, does anyone seriously think that if she’d gone to Hollywood two years earlier – or for that matter, two years from now – Wilson would have any kind of career there? She’s been amazingly lucky to bring her “hey, I’m a fat slut” act to Hollywood just when Hollywood has decided it’s ok to put non-model-standard women in comedies.
That’s not to say she shouldn’t take full advantage of the offers that come her way, mostly because we figure the more exposure she gets, the quicker the limits of her abilities – and the massive extent to which she overstates them – will become clear. For fuck’s sake, she’s telling Americans that Bogan Pride was like Glee only “ahead of its time”; eventually someone’s going to notice this clown car only has one gear.)
The Host With The Most
Showing the hard-nosed journalistic skills that have put them in the fore-front of “who’s wearing what at fashion launches” coverage, today the Melbourne Herald-Sun‘s “Confidential” put two and two together then wheeled out a giant multicoloured symbol that just might be a four. Or a squiggle:
SHAUN Micallef’s bid for a variety show on Channel 10 has fallen flat.
The Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation host said he was in talks for a Rove McManus-style show last October.
But there was no mention of the show in Wednesday’s gala program launch. Micallef admitted: “It doesn’t fit in with what they (Ten) want so I’m not doing it. Bit of a pity, but that’s it.”
How this counts as news considering Micallef actually gave that particular quote in an interview that took place a few days earlier – before the actual launch of Ten’s 2012 line-up – remains, as with much of the content of the Herald-Sun, a mystery. But it does highlight a more than slightly depressing trend in Australian television at the moment: why aren’t people falling over themselves to give Micallef anything he wants?
Let’s look at Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation for a moment. Despite Ten shuffling it around timeslots pretty much at random and putting it on then yanking it off a couple of times a year – neither of which counts as behaviour that encourages people to actually tune in – it’s been a solid ratings hit for the network. People want to watch it; it’s a commercial television success story.
Now take a look at the actual show itself: what we’ve got is your basic stock-standard comedy game show, a la any number of failed efforts over the last few years (The White Room, The Trophy Room, and so on). The only concrete difference is that it has Micallef’s fingerprints all over it comedy-wise. Top to bottom, side to side, from the increasingly bizarre segments to a host’s chair with ‘Tyrell Corp’ written on it, there’s no possible way to avoid the comic sensibility that Micallef (and his long-time writers Michael Ward and Gary Maccaffrie) bring to proceedings.
Here’s where things get tricky. Two things make TAYG different from The White Room and The Trophy Room: Micallef’s comedy, and the fact that the show itself is a success. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that what makes TAYG a success is – wait for it – Micallef’s comedy. Shows like this done without Micallef fail; shows like this done with Micallef become hits.
[and let’s pause for a moment to consider how much better TAYG would be if not for the dead weight of at least two out of the three team captains – you can pick any two, they’re all roughly equally useful as an anchour. Josh Thomas is the most annoying, but he and Micallef have somehow managed to develop some kind of antagonistic relationship that works as comedy; Amanda Keller and Charlie “I’ve stopped laughing hysterically at everything Micallef says because they’ve stopped used those clips in the promos” Pickering just exist without adding anything substantial to proceedings. Imagine what the show would be like if Micallef and the captains had an actual back-and-forth going on; it’s a great way to fill in time]
And yet, despite his ability to make a format that’s killed off titans of television comedy like Peter Helliar work, Micallef can’t seem to get a break. He’s been the only worthwhile thing at the last two Logie Awards; he did a New Year’s special that went well enough for Ten to ask him back to following year (he was too busy); he’s even made the Australian Census Website worth a smirk. And yet, as far as giving him a go on television…
Part of the problem is that in interviews Micallef actually talks about future projects. Not everyone does. So it sometimes sounds like he’s facing a unique wall of knockbacks when the very nature of television means only a very limited number of show ideas get up. But still: Micallef pitched a two-hander sketch show starring him and his Newstopia cohort Kat Stewart to the ABC. Despite sounding pretty damn promising and starring two of Australian televison’s biggest draws, the ABC said no – or to be more accurate, “yes, if you can make a sketch comedy on the budget of a studio-based panel show like Spicks & Specks“. Ah ha ha ha no.
Shaun Micallef’s New Year’s Rave was a psuedo-pilot for a talk / variety show at Ten; they weren’t interested. Then there was a talk show concept involving a number of different hosts, including Micallef and Hamish & Andy; never happened. Micallef spent a lot of time earlier this year talking about his hopes of trying a variety / talk show format on for size in 2011; not only didn’t it happen, Ten’s big 2012 line-up launch features not the slightest hint of an expanded role for Micallef on the network. Young Talent Time‘s coming back though. Bet you’re excited about that.
Little wonder that now all the talk is about Micallef visiting the USA “for a mix of business and pleasure” and rumours that he might host a UK version of Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation. Despite the fact that he’s already proven he can make a go of at least one format that’s proven to be ratings death in other hands, no-one in Australia wants to let him loose in a format where he might really be funny. Because who wants to laugh at a television show when you could be learning about cooking pasta or watching someone re-grouting the shower? Who wants to make a show that isn’t a format that’s worked overseas or a format you can sell overseas? Who, in short, wants to rely on actual, proven, on-air talent over faceless executives?
[yes, in theory the ABC does. But they already have the colourless, odourless, flavourless Adam Hills hosting their chat show. Sure, Micallef would do the job a dozen times better, but that’s not how it works at the ABC. Being easily the best thing in the generally pointless and consistently laugh-free Laid is as close as Micallef will be getting to Aunty for the foreseeable future]
During the two-and-a-bit years that TAYG has been on air, Micallef has kept himself busy. He made a comedy CD (who does that these days?), wrote a novella, toured a stage revival of a Peter Cook & Dudley Moore sketch show, turned up on a bunch of other people’s shows and generally looked like a man taking full advantage of the spotlight to do a whole lot of things he wanted to do. We’ve all benefited from this. Even if you don’t find him funny, having a comedian out there trying new things (or re-trying old things) opens doors for others to follow.
It’d be both a shame and a disgrace if we lost this unique talent – a talent uniquely interested in actually making Australian comedy rather than simply hosting ideas stolen from foreign television – to overseas simply because our television networks would rather continue to swing wildly between shows about cooking, shows about building, and shows about singing than give a proven talent a real chance to shine. Or just the chance to make jokes about Caesar Romero without having to cut to Dave Hughes.
S&S Music Factory
Swift & Shift Couriers returns to our screens tonight after a long absence. A long, looong absence. In fact, if various rumours are true, the only reason we’re even seeing it now is because someone very high up in the SBS scheme of things left the network earlier this year. To be even more blunt: when the second series of Swift & Shift was handed over to the network in 2009, someone at the network with the power to say so said “we’re not going to show this”. That person has gone and now Swift & Shift is back. Yay.
Exactly why it was pulled in the first place remains something of a mystery (or at least, we’re going to pretend so here). But if you do feel like tuning in tonight, keep in mind that something you’re going to see was so lame / rubbish / offensive that the very people who paid for it to be made refused to let it go to air. What exactly was so horrible about it we don’t know, but as we haven’t heard that the series was edited to remove the offending scenes we can assume that a): the scenes were so integral to the show as a whole that they couldn’t be removed and b): whatever it was that made them so offensive at the time has blown over.
Perhaps c): no-one at SBS today expects anyone to even watch Swift & Shift, let alone notice something offensive about it? Ian Turpy’s not the draw he used to be…
Maybe d): offending people is now good business? The ABC sure tried to make people think Angry Boys was going to be offensive, and look how well that turned out… okay, perhaps not.
(honestly? We just think someone at SBS had a sudden burst of good taste and artistic standards. Paul Fenech has been coasting on his Pizza cred for at least a decade now – an decade in which everyone else funny on the Pizza team seem to have bailed on him – with ever-diminishing results. Does SBS expect us to believe there are no other non-anglo comedians in Australia they could be giving airtime to? After well over a decade, the joke that is Fenech’s comedy career is well and truly done.)