Australian Tumbleweeds
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.)
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)
Gruen All Over The Carpet
So The Gruen Transfer returned last night. We should have been paying attention, but we were too busy getting some actual laughs from this:
THE producer of hit series The Gruen Transfer, which returns to the ABC this week, has engaged lawyers over what appears to be another plagiarism case featuring a British broadcaster.
British government-owned TV broadcaster Channel Four has commissioned a pilot for The Mad Bad Ad Show, a panel show hosted by comedians Micky Flanagan and Mark Watson and with panellists from the advertising industry.
Media understands the producers of The Gruen Transfer, Zapruder’s Other Films’ Andrew Denton, Anita Jacoby and Jon Casimir, are extremely annoyed with the development, particularly as its format has been pitched at global TV markets and a pilot was made for BBC3 in 2009.
Because when we think of the advertising industry and all who sail in her, we certainly don’t think of a business packed to the rafters with thieving hacks happy to shamelessly rip off everything in sight – movies, television shows, actual sketches from sketch comedy shows – in order to make a buck while giving nothing but a raised finger back to the people who actually put in the hard work to come up with the original idea. Oh no no no no. Not advertising. They’re “creatives”. And make no mistake, adding panel discussion to an episode of The World’s Wackiest Commercials is a creative act. Just ask the Gruen panel.
Actually, while we’re here, one of the many reasons to loathe the growing Gruen stable of shows was once again underlined last night: it’s smug. It’s a show that congratulates you for being too smart to be sucked in by advertising. Ignore the fact that everyone knows advertising works best on people who aren’t wary of it – whether they don’t notice it or think it has no effect on them, it doesn’t matter – which kinda makes the entire show one big ad for advertising. And they say it doesn’t breach guidelines for advertising on the ABC.
Here’s another fun fact: if you’re focusing on the creative side of things – if you’re making a show that supposedly discusses the creative side of advertising alongside how it works – then advertising not only isn’t special, it’s a collection of third-rate knock-offs. Why not talk about short films, or music videos, or movie trailers? They’re at least as creative and interesting as advertising. And they’re not always desperately trying to sell us crap.
Some ads are interesting or funny: a once a year special pretty much takes care of those. Gruen is a show that sets out to praise and elevate an industry roughly equivalent to door-to-door salespeople and Indian call-centers that ring your house at dinner time. If you’re looking to create actual comedy out of such a business, you hire actual comedians and people outside the business to mock and ridicule these annoying, pointless wastes of our time and other people’s money. If you’re looking for real insight into how it works, you hire academics and other concerned outsiders whose job it is to not only figure out how advertising works, but to explain why advertising itself is at best a mixed blessing and at worst a corrupting force that reduces all human interaction down to the level of “givvus a buck”.
As for what you don’t do… well, you don’t bring on board a bunch of back-slapping glad-handers who go out of their way to ensure the solution to every single problem raised on the show is “spend more money on advertising”. Unless you want a hit ABC show, of course.
Repeat viewing
In one of our semi-regular trawls for Australian comedy online we recently came across the web series Lights, Camera, Maction! made by and starring Perth radio personality Sam Mac. Episode 1 wasn’t too bad for a deliberately shonky series aimed at the YouTube audience; Peter Helliar was mocked for his succession of axed sports/comedy shows, there was a segment called What Girls Like! in which Sam and David M. Green tried to appeal to women, and things wound-up in true YouTube style with some bad karaoke and a dancing cat. Fair enough as a first attempt.
The only problem is that every subsequent episode has been roughly the same, except that there’s now an ongoing gag about Joseph Fritzel being more popular than the show. But, as that Fritzel gag isn’t really being developed much (more done over and over again), well, put it this way, our search for really amazing Australian comedy online continues.
Viewing these videos in the week of the debut of Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, a show which also features a similarly shonky style and a number of familiar conceits, sure made us wonder why many comedians and producers in this country don’t realise that doing roughly the same thing over and over again is just going to get boring for audiences. With Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year this point is particularly key because wasn’t their move away from daily radio and into TV supposed to be about them trying some new ideas?
Unfortunately for viewers expecting something fresh and exciting from the Kings of Radio, their low-budget, shonky take on the US late night talk show didn’t really work, although not because it was low-budget shonk, it was that lack of ideas thing again. Particularly a lack of new ideas, or different ideas, or crucially, good ideas. Run out of those, particularly in comedy, and audiences drift away.
Which is why we’re kind of sad that every episode of Lights, Camera, Action! is roughly the same show. The individual sketch ideas are quite good (if only done once) and the series manages to both revel in and mock YouTube’s obsession with dancing animals, lame graphics and filming yourself being a dickhead for no reason. Like Hamish & Andy, the spirit is right, but the new ideas just aren’t there.
Words and Pictures: Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year
So after all the mystery around Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year… it’s a talk show. Not that that’s automatically a bad thing, especially when you’re bringing out wacky diagrams drawn on cue cards. Still, it turned out that the cue cards were pretty much the only way that H&A – best known for radio success, not so well known for their television fizzles – actually put in the effort to broaden out their act. Not that we’re complaining: it might seem a little obvious, but considering how much of Australian television these days consists of people behind a desk talking, having the people behind the desk also pulling out the occasional visual gag (bobbleheads! photos of their mums! a robot!) is a definite plus.
That said, if you’ve seen any half-way decent Australian talk show of the last decade – Rove, Micallef Tonight, er… – you pretty much know the score here. Yes, there are a bunch of filmed inserts to break things up, and there’s a segment that resembles – Hell, is exactly the same as – their Caravan of Courage specials for Ten, but at its core Gap Year is a Talk Show, complete with desk and couch and guests and band and segments that don’t quite work.
The question then is, does the talk show format struggle time and time again in Australia (while going gangbusters in the US and ticking over okay in the UK) because of some deep-seated aversion to the format, or simply because we haven’t found the right host(s)? If anyone can make it work it’s Hamish & Andy, even if they do seem a lot more comfortable (and funnier) in the filmed segments than the show proper.
Part of that could be down to the New York audience (supposedly packed with expats), who, while clearly rev’d up, aren’t always fully on board with all the jokes. It did give the early segments a slight Micallef Tonight feel, where the jokes worked for those at home (well, at our homes) but didn’t quite work in the studio. Fortunately (not that we didn’t like Micallef Tonight), Hamish & Andy are much, much better interviewers than Shaun Micallef circa 2003, and their muck-around song with Taylor Swift was – for a nation used to the painfully embarrassing suck-up interviews seen on Rove – both a relief and pretty fun (the Neil Patrick Harris interview later on, not so much).
In a recent interview a comparison was drawn between Gap Year and Nine’s last high profile stab at letting a big name radio comedian run his own show, The Mick Molloy Show. It’s a reasonable comparison in more ways than one: much like The Mick Molloy Show would eventually figure out, Gap Year sees the guys sticking close to what they’ve been doing on radio for years: loads of filmed segments being wacky and interacting with strange customs, short but fun interviews, likable banter. And they’ve learned from Mick’s mistakes: there’s absolutely no playing a comedy drunk, being a slob, running old footage of Bert Newton hosting a drinking competition or doing anything else the tabloids could misconstrue.
By sticking very, very close to their successful radio show format (much as we enjoyed The Mick Molloy Show, one thing it wasn’t was a television version of his radio show Martin / Molloy, mostly because Tony Martin was only around for half the episodes), Hamish & Andy have failure-proofed Gap Year about as much as anyone could expect. That doesn’t mean it’ll be a success – even sure-fire formulas tank weekly on Australian television these days – and the fairly similar talk / comedy show Rove was struggling in its’ last few years. But with only ten weeks to run, Australian audiences would have to prove themselves more fickle than a gaggle of teenage girls to turn what is basically business as usual for the guys into a flop.
One question though: where was Ryan Shelton?
Autopsy Ambulance: Vale Angry Boys
Angry Boys probably isn’t the biggest comedy flop of 2011 – Live From Planet Earth still retains that crown – but the term “massive debacle” isn’t exactly overstating the case. Let’s be blunt: in television it’s ratings that count, and the ratings for Angry Boys have been utterly shithouse. Worse, there’s no way to spin it as “an undiscovered masterpiece” or any of the other comforting phrases trotted out when a show fizzles out. The first episode pulled in 1.3 million viewers; by week eleven, that was down to 465,000. Roughly what the first episode of the much-reviled Life From Planet Earth pulled in.
[interestingly, there’s already a counter-narrative being put out there claiming that the show still pulled in viewers, only they were watching on iTunes and other digital platforms. Trouble there is, that doesn’t explain why they tuned in initially on their old-fashioned television sets – it’s not like iTunes suddenly came on-line during week 6]
While the ratings have been poor, it’s the reason behind these crap ratings that’s of real interest. This wasn’t a show people never checked out, or a show they never had a decent chance to see: it was well advertised, on in an easy-to-find timeslot, given plenty of media coverage and well supported (with ads, repeat showings, a consistent timeslot and so on) throughout its run. The only serious, plausible explanation for why the show failed to hold an audience is that, for the majority of viewers, it simply wasn’t any damn good.
The odd thing there is, Angry Boys isn’t all that different from writer / director / musician / star Chris Lilley’s previous (and extremely successful) series Summer Heights High and We Can Be Heroes. Just go read any of the reviews that ran in The Age’s Green Guide – actually don’t bother, we’ll do it for you.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. It took a while to gain momentum but episode four of Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys is traction city with the introduction of Lilley’s latest incarnation, ruthless Japanese skateboard mum Jen Okazaki… Angry Boys is emerging as a beautifully realised series that might rival Summer Heights High. This episode has instant classic written all over it. If you’re not hooked already you don’t stand a chance” – Larissa Dubecki, May 26
“There’s no doubting Lilley’s skills – S.mouse’s newly penned song is brilliantly painful” – Paul Kalina, June 2
“For this viewer, Gran is the standout creation of Lilley’s much-discussed show which, like Offspring, is slowly but surely heading towards what promises to be a memorable finale” – Paul Kalina, July 7
(that “memorable finale”, by the way, was the most obviously tacked-on piece of garbage seen on television since the ending to ALF where the alien-hunting taskforce finally grabbed ALF and took him away to be dissected [not a made-up ending]. In defiance of every single scene that had come before, erasing any actual drama or emotion created by the series simply for the sake of a totally unearned feel-good moment, Nathan suddenly regains his hearing just in time to see the rest of the cast turn up for his farewell party. How did they get the invitations? Why would they even bother? Couldn’t Lilley have figured out a way to get his happy ending by actually building up to it? STOP ASKING QUESTIONS AND CRY)
Ahem. So what’s missing from these reviews? Phrases like “Lilley has lost his way”, “A marked departure from his earlier work”, “bound to disappoint long-time fans” and so on. These people (and plenty others – these were just the reviews handy at the time of writing) clearly didn’t see Angry Boys as being all that different from Lilley’s other shows. Which somewhat blunts the increasingly common argument that somehow with Angry Boys the wheels suddenly fell off.
Yes, Angry Boys was extremely slow-paced, with next to no story development for most of its 12 episode run, but Summer Heights High was just as plodding during its’ middle stretch – out of eight episodes, there’s at least two that add nothing to the overarching storylines. That’s hardly surprising, as the show expanded from six episodes to eight during filming – presumably Lilley’s fondness for improvising scenes in front of the camera meant they had enough material to extend the series’ run (and still have hours and hours of deleted scenes left over for the DVD – which is also the case with Angry Boys).
Yes, Angry Boys verged on the racist and the homophobic; so did his earlier series. Islander teen Jonah was a racist cartoon until Lilley started getting serious towards the end of SHH; Ricky Wong was a stereotypical nerdy Asian who had no problem getting around on stage in blackface. Daniel & Nathan’s constant use of the term “fag” was a staple of their appearances back in We Can Be Heroes too; nice to see Lilley being consistent in their characterisation… such as it was.
Yes, Angry Boys was told in the same mockumentary style that meant he didn’t have to write storylines, and Angry Boys had Lilley doing all the characters and barely giving anyone else a line, and Angry Boys had Lilley writing a bunch of “offensive” songs, and Angry Boys shoe-horned in supposedly touching moments and a mawkish ending, and Angry Boys had the same boys choir opening music (written by Lilley again), and… you get the idea.
[While we’re here, normally Lilley’s use of racist language is brushed off as either “just a joke” or a reflection of the way teens actually talk. As jokes go, it stopped being funny a long time ago. Gran’s use of racist language early in the series worked because clearly the joke was that she was saying the (now) unsayable; what are we supposed to think now that the series is over and racist Gran turned out to be the character shown in the most loving and sympathetic light?
The kind of “joke” Lilley is supposedly going for, where we’re meant to laugh at the person making the racist / homophobic comments, only works if you don’t then try to make us feel sympathy for your racist / homophobic characters. Daniel constantly uses the word “fag” as an insult; by series end we’re supposed to see Daniel as a troubled, sensitive teen unable to articulate what he wants to say. He doesn’t grow from one state to the other though; rather, our view of him is meant to deepen. It turns out it’s okay for him to say “fag” all the time – the same way it was fine for Jonah to call red-haired kids “rangas”, the same way it’s okay for Gran to call black kids “Coco Pops” – because they’re really good people at heart. Or at least, Lilley thinks they’re good at heart, hence all the sad music and touching “dramatic” scenes and trips out to the tree where Daniel & Nathan’s dad died so Daniel can say “we’re not like men yet, we’re still like kids”. Aww. And then Nathan pisses on the tree, just to make sure we don’t take the super-serious scene he just showed us seriously. Make up your mind already.]
So – to get back on track here – why did audiences turn their backs on Angry Boys if it was basically just more of the same… oh wait, now we get it.
Time for a history lesson. We Can Be Heroes screened in July 2005, after a relatively long period of next to no Australian comedy on our televisions. Let Loose Live had tanked after two episodes barely a month earlier, Kath & Kim were on a break (that’s where the money for We Can Be Heroes came from), The Panel was six years old and worn out, Spicks & Specks was brand new and the idea of a regular Wednesday night comedy timeslot on the ABC was in its infancy. To some extent, Chris Lilley was the only game in town.
That’s not to say audiences were desperate for local laughs – clearly they weren’t desperate enough for Let Loose Live. But with Kath & Kim on the downwards slope and no-one else around, Lilley was in the right place at the right time. He’d been doing “cringe comedy” with his Mr G character on sketch show Big Bite, and with The (UK) Office at the height of its fame here a local version was a pretty safe bet – especially once (as rumour has it) the ABC asked Lilley to incorporate a David Brent-esque character into the mix.
Come 2008 and Summer Heights High had a secret weapon on its side: it was set entirely at a high school. In Australian society, you’re either about to go to high school, are at high school, have just left high school or – after a few years – have kids that fall into one of those categories. It’s a massive audience, and when one of the things you’re really good at is capturing the voices, mannerisms, and social nuances of people… well, it’s hardly surprising that the realism of SHH (in contrast to the comedy, which on one occasion involved Mr G putting excrement in a classroom in the hope a disabled student would be blamed) was often cited as its main draw.
Come 2011, and Lilley was back with a show without a clear connection to the audience. It was about “angry boys”, but that was so vague it didn’t work as a hook. He didn’t have the realism card to play either: S.mouse was a cartoon, surfer Blake wasn’t relevant to anyone in a city or inland, Jen Okazaki wasn’t human. All they had to offer were jokes, and that had never been Lilley’s strong suit.
Worse, come 2011 Lilley was a man out of time. In recent years comedy has swung away from the Ricky Gervais / Office style of “cringe comedy” and back towards, well, making people laugh. Hamish & Andy are the current kings of Australian comedy; awkward pauses and racist comments aren’t exactly staples of their work. Comedy has moved on, and it’s moved away from what Lilley does.
This won’t kill his career. The Angry Boys DVD is reportedly selling well, and the show is rating okay in the UK. But you’d have to think this kind of audience-shedding failure would give him pause before his next series. As well it should.
For 26 episodes over three series Chris Lilley has churned out the exact same show. He writes it, he produces it, he plays all the main roles in it, he writes the music for it. And that show is built around the exact same joke: his characters are arrogant morons who think they’re great and treat everyone around them like dirt. Then somewhere along the line, Lilley decides to show their sensitive side to wring some pathos out of the bad situation they’ve put themselves in through (to one extent or another) the same blatant stupidity we were supposed to be laughing at. We get it. We’ve heard it all before. We’ve stopped laughing. Come back with something new, or don’t come back at all.