Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

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.

Bridging The Gap Between Radio & Television

We’re now halfway through the current series of Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, and it’s hard not to be a little disappointed in the way the show’s developed. Not because it’s a let-down, but because it’s been exactly what we expected going in: week after week of minor variations on their series of specials on Ten, which themselves were basically their radio show with pictures. Even the celebrity interviews of the first two episodes are long gone, leaving behind what is basically “Hamish & Andy’s New York Caravan of Courage Up On Blocks.”

If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to H&A’s work over the last few years, you don’t need us to tell you what business as usual for the boys means: a combination of segments that involve going somewhere to investigate some mildly odd local custom, combined with other segments based on some kind of wacky made-up sport / prank. And it generally works for them pretty well. They’ve got a knack for making silly antics seem light-hearted rather than mean or annoying – they bring the people around them in on the joke rather than make fun of them – and they’ve been at this long enough to find the comedy in pretty much anything served up to them.

They’ve also managed to come up with a couple of running gags that they’re working hard: Hamish has stacked on the pounds thanks to a weakness for American fast food, and the now-single Andy is, well, single. This weeks episode saw the button-bursting Hamish enrolled in a bodybuilding contest before revealing the creation of a fake dating show to try and find Andy a date. It’s hardly compelling or hilarious, but at least it’s a hook: much of the rest of the show consists of “we went and looked at some stuff”.

We’ve been fans of Ryan Shelton’s work for a while here, and his “100 Seconds” segment is… okay, it’s also just a truncated slice of what he used to do on Rove. But what it does do – apart from deliver some much-needed variety in a fairly one-note show – is provide an opportunity for Hamish & Andy to do some actual sketch work. We’d like to see them do more of it, (and give Shelton an extended segment – at 100 seconds, it feels like they aren’t confident he can run longer despite his Rove segments going four minutes easily) but considering we’re also the only people alive who liked Hamish & Andy & Shelton’s fake current affairs / sketch show Real Stories, there’s a good chance every single person advising them on Gap Year is advising them against it. Loudly.

As many, many reviewers have pointed out before us, Hamish & Andy are in a bit of a tricky position with Gap Year. Much of their much-vaunted charm relies on them being good-natured slackers wandering into offbeat situations. That’s fine for the occasional special: over ten weeks it’s going to wear thin, even when you’re on an entirely different continent. So far though they’ve made a reasonable fist of it. The aforementioned running gags provide a new way for them to justify at least some of their usual antics, and when it comes to comedy even a small change in setting can breathe some life into old rope.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, there’s no more good news. The interviews might have been a little dodgy, but at least they provided some variety between the stunts and travel segments. Sadly, it seems that after mixed reviews and slightly soft ratings during the first couple of weeks, they’ve-

[while we’re here, feel free to check out The Herald-Sun‘s resident grumpy old man reviewer Colin Vickery’s two stories on Gap Year that he filed on July 29 – one covering their ratings success, the other proclaiming it a dud. Sadly for those sick of his “stop making TV for the young people” stance, history has proved him to be roughly on the money: the current ratings are below a million viewers nationally, which no-one at Nine would be happy about]

– been scared off trying anything that isn’t tried-and-tested, which is pretty much always a mistake. Even massive fans of a comedy team want the same thing in slightly new and different ways, and tweaking the same old same old with a few new set-ups and Hamish’s greased-up gut isn’t going to keep things fresh. The individual segments are pretty much always still strong, but they’re too much alike.

Despite the clear and obvious effort H&A have put into making their television show an actual television show – for all the snark some reviewers have dumped on them, at least it’s not a static panel chat show like so much local comedy has turned out to be – it’s still much too close to their radio work. On radio you can churn over throw-away gags and if a show doesn’t work there’s always tomorrow: on television having your show feel like the raw material for a “best-of” DVD is not exactly the tone you want to be striving for.

More importantly, on radio you don’t have to provide variety. The format does it for you: you do your thing, then there’s a song or two, then there’s the ads, then it’s back to you. Even if all you do is the exact same thing over and over, it’s broken up enough simply by the format to ensure that the listeners – if they like what you’re doing – won’t get too tired of it. On television though, it’s just you. People will turn over during the ads (or record it and edit them out), so they end up getting a much more concentrated dose of your work. If you don’t vary what you do a lot, it’s going to get stale. And Hamish & Andy don’t seem to have worked that out.

You can’t tell from the highly edited version available on DVD, but The Late Show is a prime example of a comedy (fresh from radio as well) knowing that you can’t expect people to keep laughing at the same kinds of jokes over and over again. As it originally aired, The Late Show was extremely varied: live sketches, in studio sketches, monologues, fake news, vox pops, making fun of commercials, sports jokes, musical numbers – they threw everything out there to fill a fifty minute show. Gap Year runs 45-odd minutes, and usually only features four or five segments, some stretching close to ten minutes. We’re not saying the segments themselves aren’t good, but they’re just not different enough from each other to keep the laughs coming.

Sadly, even in our fantasy dream world of perfect comedy it’s more than a little unlikely that Hamish & Andy’s first proper television series after becoming massive successes on radio would have seen them make a serious effort to change up their act. Being big radio stars is what got them the gig, and with the amount of money Nine reportedly put into this show they’d be wanting that radio magic and plenty of it. Be careful what you wish for: being a repeat of their radio show is exactly why Gap Year is faltering.

No DVD? Unbelievable

What does and doesn’t get released on DVD in this country is often a bit of a mystery when you look at archive TV – that many people want to buy E Street? Really? – but things seem pretty cut and dry when you look at new shows: if it’s an ABC comedy it gets a DVD release. The as yet un-aired twentysomething, for example, is due out on DVD towards the end of its run. And to wind things back a year or several, everything from Double The Fist to Sleuth 101 to Sam Simmons’ The Urban Monkey is yours to own right now for the standard purchase price.

So, bearing that in mind, we’re currently wondering why there’s been no word about a DVD release of Lawrence Leung’s recent series Unbelievable. It’s not like it rated poorly, or was a particularly awful series; and it was on ABC1, in a good timeslot – not things you can say about some of the shows we’ve listed above.

Well, here’s our theory (a theory for which we have none of that evidence Lawrence Leung’s Unbelievable told us to look out for): the second series of Review with Myles Barlow didn’t come out immediately because a Christmas special was scheduled and the ABC wanted to include it on the DVD release…so, we’re wondering, could there possibly be more Unbelievable to come? Perhaps a Christmas special, where Leung goes and debunks Santa Claus in one of those nutty Christmas villages they have in Scandinavia or North America? We don’t know, we have no idea, no inside information – it’s just a guess – but you’re welcome to e-mail us if you’ve got any inside goss. Or just leave your thoughts on why some shows have or haven’t got DVD releases below, in your usual rabid and abusive manner. Bonus points will be awarded to the first person to tell us this blog is shit.

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.)

Satiricalpolitik

Satire in this country has historically been mostly piss-poor, and neither the upcoming revamp of Good News Week, called Good News World, or upcoming sitcom At Home with Julia, which explores the personal and professional lives of Julia Gillard and Tim Mathieson, look set to change that.

Let’s look at Good News World first. There aren’t many details out there but the Herald-Sun tells us that the show will be “new and improved”, and that current cast members plus “a few extras” will be on the show. Media Spy adds “It had been speculated that the programme was facing the axe after low ratings and a long absence from TV screens. There is no word on when the ‘new and improved’ Good News World will air.”

Obviously the revamp could go a number of ways. Good News Week‘s satirical elements, such as they were, could be retired to make the show more variety focused (that was already kind of happening anyway). Or perhaps the show will ditch the variety elements and return to its roots as a topical panel game. There’s also the possibility that the show could attempt to morph into an Australian version of The Daily Show (many other groups of comedians have tried crack this one, although none have succeeded).

We have no idea, and the producers of the show haven’t exactly been telling, but a not very thorough Google search did alert us to the following passage in a biography of Paul Livingston (Flacco) which appears on his agent’s website:

From 2008-2011 Paul joined the writing team for Channel Ten’s Good News Week, for which he received two AWGIE awards in 2009 and 2010. He is currently writing for Good News World, a satirical sketch comedy program for the Ten Network.

A “satirical sketch comedy program”? From the Good News Week team? A team which includes Claire Hooper, whose marked inability to analyse the claims made in dodgy current affairs programs was highlighted recently on Media Watch. Wow, this show will definitely provide incisive commentary on the week’s events! We can’t wait.

Meanwhile, the ABC have released a preview video of At Home with Julia, the new four-part series starring Amanda Bishop as Julia Gillard and Phil Lloyd as Tim Mathieson. When the show was announced many online TV reviewers compared the show to the 2001 US sitcom That’s My Bush, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s White House-based sitcom. Having seen the At Home with Julia preview video the comparison seems kind of apt; both shows are based around the lives of serving political leaders, and have a hyper-real, semi-satirical tone. Yet, That’s My Bush wasn’t really about President George W. Bush, it was mainly parodying a certain type of American sitcom, and according to the show’s Wikipedia entry the series was originally planned on the basis that Al Gore would win the 2000 US election, with the title of the show to Everyone Loves Al.

At Home with Julia doesn’t have this extra layer with which to generate laughs, all the laughs will have to come from what the characters do and the situations they find themselves in. Judging from the preview video we’ll be invited to laugh at Tim Mathieson’s supposed emasculation and Julia Gillard’s battle with various political and media figures, including her vengeful predecessor Kevin Rudd, the trio of Independents Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, and shock jock Alan Jones. But the video shows the various characterisations to be cliched and the situations to often been re-runs of past events, so searing insights into current Federal politics seem unlikely.

A quick look at the history of the creative team tells us why, their credits include shows like Double Take, Comedy Inc., Big Bite, BackBerner, and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better. Sure, Phil Lloyd (of Review with Myles Barlow fame) has a decent comedy pedigree, but he is just one of the three listed writers. This show is unlikely to have much to offer as either a political satire or a straight out comedy, which makes us wonder why the cash-strapped ABC would bother at all.

Whoever Wins, We Lose (again)

Perhaps sensing weakness in the ABC’s long-running stranglehold on Wednesday night comedy, Ten has decided to once again shift Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation to an “all-new” timeslot – Wednesday nights at 8.30pm. The later time – made necessary thanks to Ten clogging up the 7.30 / 8pm slots with ratings straggler The Renovators and its crutch Modern Family – makes no difference whatsoever to the show itself, mind you. Micallef isn’t busting out the MA-rated gags, the games aren’t suddenly all dark and creepy, the guests aren’t being strapped into torture devices – well, no more than usual, as long-time viewers will know. Ten has just bumped the extremely family-friendly show back an hour and kept their fingers crossed that viewers will still feel like an hour’s worth of silliness an hour closer to their bedtimes.

The problem for TAYG is that it’s not up against the now finished and constantly viewer-shedding Angry Boys (which it would almost certainly have thrashed in the ratings), but the much healthier combination of Spicks & Specks (8.30pm) and The Gruen Transfer (9pm). Wednesday night might be one of the busiest viewing nights of the week but it’s fairly safe to assume that not everyone is going to want to watch comedy, especially as everything comedy-wise on offer involves people sitting behind desks cracking jokes in response to wacky games and offbeat video footage.

Of course, Ten didn’t really have a lot of other options available to them now that the 7.30 slot is taken for the foreseeable future (or until they ditch The Renovators, which still seems unlikely). NCIS on Tuesdays is on of their top ratings shows, Monday is Can of Worms night and with all the effort they’re putting in to float that turd… uh, we mean establish it in that timeslot, moving it would be fatal.

Interestingly, Thursday night would see it up against Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year on Nine, which would (again) be two shows fighting for the same audience. A few weeks ago when the TAYG decision was made, Hamish & Andy would have been seen as the sure bet, with youth and freshness and a massive fanbase on on their side. Clearly the programmers at Ten thought that the ABC shows were a safer bet; with Gap Year looking a little wobbly at the moment, they might have got this one wrong.

Back in the real world, TAYG faces a bit of a struggle. While both ABC shows are showing their age, Gruen seems to be the kind of format that only disappears when it’s pulled off the air (see The New Inventors, which probably would have lasted until the sun went out if the ABC hadn’t axed it), while Spicks & Specks (another one of those much loved “live forever” formats) is bound to get a boost as it heads into its final episodes. If only from us wanting to make sure it really is dead.

Ten’s had a real strategy of late of moving its few non reality success stories around to try and shore up various nights (Offspring shifted timeslot three times in 13 episodes, including being on twice a week). Usually this strategy only succeeds in turning a hit show into one people can’t be bothered following around. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen here.

Even if TAYG holds on, what we’ll probably end up getting from this clash of the comedy game show titans is a general perception that Aussie comedy doesn’t rate like it used to, especially with Spicks & Specks already for the chop and Micallef’s interest in TAYG bound to drop off eventually. Or maybe Ten’ll break the ABC’s hold on Wednesday night comedy and open the door for all their other comedy hits; anyone looking forward to Good News Weeks‘ “all new” timeslot?

Right on target

Restoring the Balance returned to Triple J last night after almost three years, with the original cast of Tony Moclair as young Liberal Stirling Addison and Julian Schiller as young National Tom Thomlinson. If you enjoyed Radio National’s The Lonely Hearts Club you’ll probably enjoy this, but if you think Restoring the Balance is serious then you’ll probably post something idiotic on Twitter. At least one tweep used the #RTB hashtag to express their outrage that Triple J would broadcast a show like this – perhaps the ridiculous level of satirical right wingery on display wasn’t ridiculous enough?

Addison and Thomlinson’s strident love of free markets, Western imperialism and Protestant Christianity is expressed through sneering talk breaks about liberals, leftists and Greens, a series of fake ads and “re-education” messages, and several deeply biased interviews with possibly unwitting guests (MP Wyatt Roy seemed to take the pair seriously, although financial expert Scott Pape rumbled them pretty quickly). It’s funny, well-observed stuff, and superbly over-the-top and inventive.

In the past we’ve bemoaned the fact that radio in this country offers little in the way of comedy, particularly of the scripted variety. So, it’s good to see semi-improvised character shows like Restoring the Balance and The Lonely Hearts Club in the schedules every so often, and The Sweetest Plum continuing to fire on late night Triple M. With TV seeming to find it difficult to fund scripted shows perhaps radio can take up slack?

And while we’re here, do check out the Restoring the Balance website, where you can find past shows including a number featuring the late Richard Marsland as Family First member Spencer Penrose.

Laid 2: Money Never Sleeps

Sorry folks, while we were supposed to have been paying attention to the massive (okay, going from 1.45 to 1.06 million viewers isn’t that bad considering all the pre-show hype) drop in ratings for Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, we were instead off staring into the heart of the sun. Or the comedy equivalent, which would be this ABC press release:

Series two of ABC TV’s black romantic comedy Laid starts filming in Melbourne on Monday.

Alison Bell and Celia Pacquola return as Roo and EJ, and are joined by Damon Herriman (CSI, Cold Case, Love My Way) as Marcus.

Roo’s world is turned upside down when she meets Marcus, somebody stricken with a vaguely similar set of mysterious circumstances to the ones plaguing her – although Marcus is a little different from Roo. In fact, he is her opposite. And everybody he has sex with … is healed.

With EJ as her somewhat reluctant co-pilot, Roo embarks upon a journey. A journey to wipe the slate clean – emotionally, physically, spiritually. Along the way the two will encounter halitosis, port wine stains, funerals, trial separations, couples bootcamp and one particularly appalling conversation about semen – all in the name of preserving true love.

Created and written by Marieke Hardy and Kirsty Fisher, the six-part series will screen on ABC1 next year.

Marieke Hardy says, “Being allowed to explore the robustly comical motifs of sex and death once more with the infinitely attractive team from Laid is a dream come true. Particularly considering most of my dreams involve torn underpants, chocolate-covered pretzels, and Brian Mannix from Uncanny X-Men.”

Kirsty Fisher says, “Laid 2 has been one big maternal smile for me – and it’s starting to unsettle some of the crew. To see the scripts coming alive once again is heaven.”

Reprising their roles are Toby Truslove as EJ’s on again, off again, boyfriend, Zach; Graeme Blundell and Tracy Mann as Roo’s parents, Graham and Marion; and Shaun Micallef as G-Bomb, Roo’s gyno with the unconventional bedside manner.

So that solves the mystery of how they were going to continue a series that answered every single question in the final episode: by turning it into a shithouse knock-off of superpowered teen shagfest Misfits (okay, maybe not exactly like Misfits – for one, Misfits is fun). Seriously, if the whole thing was going to boil down to superheroes tackling their angst, why wasn’t the final scene Nick Fury turning up to recruit Roo into The Avengers?

[Sidebar: how is this “all in the name of preserving true love” when Roo’s true love from last series seems to have failed to make the cut this time around? He’s just buried in the backyard and Roo’s moved on… which seems to be the exact form of behaviour that caused all the hilarious trouble the first time around! Ahh shuddap, it’s only a press release.]

While we might have questions about how exactly the guy’s sexual power of healing is going to work (does he only root cripples? Does his sperm have the power to cure mental illness? How exactly are they going to define “healed” anyway – does he wake up every morning next to someone his penis has magically transformed into Anne Hathaway?), it’s not like the first series actually gave a fuck about nailing down anything past how cool it is to be a hip chick with a great bestie and a mildly potty mouth and some relationship issues that aren’t really your fault and a wide range of “Roo REACTS” facial expressions to deploy in place of jokes. That is to say, how cool it is to be Marieke Hardy (two books coming out this year folks! Gotta catch ’em all!).

So, as it is with all sequels, expect more of the same shenanigans only smelling slightly more desperate.

(the real moral of this story is that it’s basically impossible not to get a second series of your comedy show at the ABC these days. Unless it’s actually funny, of course. Bad luck there, Very Small Business)

Australian Tumbleweeds is Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.
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