And welcome back to the incredible shrinking ABC satire. Where’s Briggs? More like where’s everyone else these days on The Weekly. Remember when the show wasn’t 40% archival footage? On second thoughts, don’t bother – the whole show’ll just be showing old clips from Hard Chat as soon as they come up with a hilarious comedy angle that justifies it.
The ABC hasn’t always run satirical programming – there was that decade or so of The Chaser doing pranks for starters. Haha, just joking. Somebody has to: it’s not like there’s many laughs to be found with The Weekly.
Back to our point: there have been stretches in the past where the ABC hasn’t bothered with scripted satire. During those periods, the slack was taken up by shows like Good News Week and The Glasshouse. Whatever the format or quality, there was always a vague sense that the show we were watching was willing to gesture towards telling some harsh truths amongst the comedy.
Not The Weekly. As it currently stands – and it’s been through a lot of changes over the years – The Weekly is a show purpose-built to defuse the very idea of satire. It’s shithouse at it, and it makes sure that nobody watching it is ever made to feel in the slightest way uncomfortable or perturbed. Not that Mad as Hell had them rioting in the streets or anything, but that show usually went harder than “oh look, the PM ate an ice cream in a weird way, he’s cancelled JOKE OVER”.
(fun fact: politicans are specifically told to eat awkward food items in those weird ways. That’s because the alternative for someone constantly being photographed and recorded is much, much worse. Does anyone really want to see any one of our nation’s politicians sucking on something even slightly phallic? Well yes, obviously, which is why they don’t do it)
What do we get for our half an hour a week? Some lazy observations about days-old news stories, a bunch of archival footage with a voice over pointing out exactly what it is we’re seeing, and a surprisingly large amount of coverage of reality and breakfast television – if we wanted to watch that shit, we’d watch that shit. If we’re lucky, there’s also a guest comedian a thousand times more qualified to be on television than the host.
Let’s not forget, this is the only “satire” the ABC is showing, now and for the forseeable future. It’s not like the commercial networks are going to pick up the baton, even if both Have You Been Paying Attention? and The Cheap Seats do a better job of political comedy by accident. This is as good as it gets, and it’s nowhere near good enough.
It’s not this shit by accident. This exact format – fake newsreader-style host behind a desk makes fun of recent events via clips from news services – has been the basis for numerous classic satirical series, and dozens more pretty good ones. And then there’s The Weekly, a program that couldn’t lob more softballs if it was one of those robotic pitching machines, one of which coincidentally would also be a much more charming and charismatic host.
Good news for the rich and powerful, a group whose arse The Weekly is never far from at the best of times. Bad news for the taxpayers who fund the ABC, many of whom like their comedy to be funny.
Still, at least host Charlie Pickering – who at 45 remains the fresh young face of ABC comedy – has the big desk all to himself so he can really express what truly matters to him: acting shocked when Rhys Nicholson suggests black deaths in custody are a bad thing. Roll the Zapruder footage!
And now you know why politicans are very careful when eating ice creams.
Comedy is for the young and the young at heart. If you were looking for confirmation that the ABC appeals to neither of those groups, have we got good news for you! But for everyone else, strap in because this article right here is a bumpy ride down a waterslide right behind a family that just ate a whole lot of dubious shrimp:
Of all the broadcasters, ABC has the biggest slate of local production across drama, comedy, documentary, children and news.
Not all of it can realistically be canvassed in a single conversation, but in this final Programmer’s Wrap, Jennifer Collins Acting Director, Entertainment and Specialist, pinpoints some of 2023’s highlights.
What follows is a close look at a cavalcade of programming seemingly aimed entirely at people nodding off on the couch, and not in the “we just scored some good shit” way. When you’ve got someone saying “If the ABC can’t take risks, who can?” with a straight face about a reboot of Mother & Son, you haven’t so much gone through the looking glass as smashed head on into it and severed an artery.
In previous years our stance on the ABC has basically been “the obvious reason why they’re serving up such thin gruel is because they’re not being properly funded”. So now that Labor is back in the big chair federally and the money tap has been turned to… well, not quite as firmly off as before, what have we got to look forward to on the light entertainment front?
Amiable interview series Kitchen Cabinet with Annabel Crabb makes a surprise return in second half of the year.
New in 2023 is a series with Chas Licciardello, Kirsten Drysdale & Lawrence Leung to be known as WTFAQ (previously No Stupid Questions). Described as a hybrid format with both location and studio elements, this sees the team answer questions submitted by the audience
Craig Reucassel returns for a third season of War on Waste, last staged in 2018.
more Gruen, and Question Everything for Wil Anderson fans.
Fuck.
To be fair, there is a clear programming ethos on display behind commissioning all this shit. These are all shows aimed not so much as getting people to tune in – because seriously, who is going to consciously decide to change the channel to an “amiable” show where Annabel Crabb tries to make Peter Dutton seem like a top bloke – as it is to stop the people already tuned in from tuning out.
While the ABC seems to think drama is something that might possibly lure new viewers in and so still puts in a bit of effort there, all this… stuff (we can’t call it comedy) isn’t even trying to hide fact that the ABC sees even mildly interesting comedy programming as just a little bit too risky. And fresh faces? Don’t make us laugh. Let’s play connect-the-dots:
With no Mad as Hell on the horizon, Collins confirms, “We don’t intend to make Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell without Shaun, but the door is of course always open to Shaun for return…”
Which pretty much confirms the various rumours that Micallef and company did want to keep the series going without Micallef as host – but more on that later, because then there’s this:
“And I love Wayne (Hope) and Robyn’s (Butler) work. I’ve been a fan of them for a long time. I thought Summer Love was a perfect vehicle for nurturing new writers and new performers.”
You know what was an even better “vehicle for nurturing new writers and new performers”? Mad as Hell. And yet the second there wasn’t an already established name out front, all that nurturing – and the talent – went directly in the bin.
You wouldn’t want to assume the budget previously allocated for Mad as Hell has gone to another “surprise” series of Kitchen Cabinet, but it does seem noticeable that, despite Shaun Micallef saying clearly on a number of occasions that he’s stepping aside to “make way for new talent”, the ABC in 2023 is offering absolutely nothing in the way of opportunities for new talent.
And why would they? Going by this year’s programming line-up they have zero interest in anything comedy-wise that involves anything beyond 40 year-old concepts or comedy teams that have already proven successful elsewhere, preferably for at least a decade or more. Why give new talent – or even funny established talent – a shot when you can have Wil Anderson hosting two shows a year and members of The Chaser hosting everything else?
(don’t forget, Chris Taylor and Andrew Hansen’s Stories From Oz is “going to land in the second half of the year.” Feel free to imagine the sound it’ll make when it does)
As far as scripted comedy goes, if you’re an optimistic sort you might almost believe the ABC is showing a bit of interest for once, with sure things Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe airing this year alongside a fifth season of Utopia. The six-part Limbo “tackles the serious issue of mental health” so uh yeah, while period comedy Gold Diggers is created and written by Jack Yabsley, about which the internet has little to say beyond hosting some kids TV and filming a bunch of Gogglebox. Will we see that Mother & Son reboot this year? Not before October is our best guess.
But even if all of those series are winners, that’s what – twelve hours of local scripted comedy for the whole of 2023*? In previous years Mad as Hell went a long way towards boosting those numbers: now it’s gone and nothing funny has taken its place. This line-up is an unmistakable pivot away from comedy and towards a kind of pale white dogshit approach to programming, where the idea is that it’s basically crap but hopefully not so annoying that anyone will actually do anything about getting it off their screens.
These aren’t shows people want to watch. They’re not hosted by anyone the public cares about. Giving Annabel Crabb and Wil Anderson two separate hosting gigs in a year would be taking “more of the same” to insulting levels even if they came across on television as anything more than carpet samples given the power of speech.
Not to mention Sammy J’s finally put the legacy of John Clarke in the grave as the Thursday 6.55pm “satire” slot has now become, like satire in general on the ABC, a thing of the past. Welcome to 2023!
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*you could possibly try to argue that The Weekly and Hard Quiz count as comedy. Good luck with that
Considering one of the first Australian comedies out of the blocks last year was a local version of British favourite Would I Lie To You? it’s perhaps not a surprise that we start 2023 with an Australian take on Taskmaster. Original concepts are not what we can expect from Ten at this point in history.
For those not familiar with one of the several international versions of Taskmaster, the show sees a Taskmaster (Tom Gleeson) and his assistant (Tom Cashman) setting five regular contestants (Danielle Walker, Jimmy Rees, Julia Morris, Luke McGregor, and Nina Oyama) a series of odd and challenging tasks. In the first episode, these are:
Getting a balloon out of a caravan without touching the balloon or the caravan.
Making a short video about your life in just 45 minutes.
Juicing enough oranges to fill a glass, only touching the oranges with the small number of objects on the bench.
A knockout round, where the contestants must throw some everyday items nearest the edge of the stage.
Given everyone involved is a comedian, and that the tasks are a bit off-beat, you might expect all this to be funny. It isn’t particularly, although the contestants try to make it so.
The best opportunity for comedy was, unsurprisingly, the life story video task, where the contestants’ script-writing and improvisational skills resulted in some amusing short pieces. The other tasks were more the kinds of things that might provoke debate amongst those watching the show with other people. Should that contestant have used that object to juice the oranges? Or that method to get the balloon out of the caravan?
Overall, this places Taskmaster more in the realm of the light entertainment stunt or prank show, except there’s less opportunity for slapstick laughs. At least, there was in this first episode.
It’s also worrying that two kinda similar “no touching” tasks are in the first episode. Are we going to get a lot of tasks which are slight variations on previous tasks across this series? That doesn’t bode well given there are nine more episodes of Taskmaster to come.
On the plus side, if you’ve had enough of Tom Gleeson’s schtick on Hard Quiz, the focus of Taskmaster is more firmly on the contestants, and so there’s less opportunity for Gleeson to do his smarmy high-status humour. Gleeson does get to shine during the scoring, though, and takes delight in disqualifying a contestant on the slightest whim.
Not that who wins necessarily matters. This is about being as entertaining as possible within the confines of the task. Sadly, Taskmaster’s definition of “entertaining” doesn’t quite mean “being really funny”.
Welcome to the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards, in which we honour the best and worst of Australian comedy in 2022.
Australian comedy is at a crossroads. Not one of those exciting ones where a clear choice lies ahead; this is a barren wasteland where two dirt tracks intersect, the kind of crossing where you turn up at midnight hoping to sell your soul for the ability to make people laugh and instead walk away with a vague idea for a youth-focused dramedy about lung cancer.
The real crossroads – the one where we might have had a chance to avoid the wasteland that now surrounds us – was miles back and years ago, when the ABC decided that actually making new comedy was too much like hard work and instead, they’d just run a bunch of “new talent” showcases that never went anywhere. And then they stopped doing those too, gifting us a world where Charlie Pickering, who let’s not forget had already burnt through an entire career on commercial television, would forever be the fresh young face of comedy on the national broadcaster just don’t focus on his hairline thanks.
In 2022 it became very clear indeed that outside of whatever Working Dog can get on Network 10, there’s no gas left in the tank. The brief flurry of activity during the various Covid lockdowns has faded away, to be replaced by weekly programs regularly losing guests and hosts to Covid. And when we did see the occasional new face on an ABC panel show, there seemed to be an iron law that they had to be balanced out by oh let’s say, Wendy Harmer or Paul McDermott, those exciting new comedy finds of 1989.
Comedy shouldn’t be filed away under “nostalgia”, but in Australia in the 21st century that seems to be the only way anything gets made. If it’s not a salute to an old show then it features the stars of yesteryear, or just some oldie from a decade or two back who has nowhere else to go. And we can’t even blame them for refusing to piss off, because when they do move on they’re not replaced – comedy having shrunk from “something that makes people laugh” to “something hosted by these six people and nobody else”.
Apropos of nothing at all, has the ABC announced a replacement for Mad as Hell yet? Has the ABC shown even the slightest inclination to replace Mad as Hell? Is there any sign at all that the budget for Mad as Hell will go towards a new comedy series and not just vanish into consolidated revenue before funding yet another series where some negatively amusing host wanders around some moribund government institution providing free advertising for some upcoming commercial event the ABC is sponsoring?
Because losing Mad as Hell was the closest thing to a death blow to Australian comedy we’re going to get until HaveYou Been Paying Attention? gets axed. It was the last example of sketch comedy on the ABC, the final example of decent political satire. It was the sole remaining slice of being silly for the sake of it, the final outlet for funny performers who weren’t also writers and directors and producers and any other job that can be piled onto an individual to cut costs.
Consider it a lifeboat, containing the final traces of what was once a thriving Australian comedy ecosystem. It was the kind of thing you’d hope would eventually land somewhere hospitable – that is, it would stick around until the ABC started getting funded again – and provide the seeds (or just the inspiration) for a whole new world of comedy.
Instead, it went down with all hands. We’re guessing if anyone at the ABC has even thought “yeah, we should maybe replace that show people liked” about now is when they’ve realised that, thanks to a decade of point-blank refusing to nurture new talent, there is now no new talent. What you see is what you get, and we’re not seeing much that’s new or interesting these days.
Of course, it could always be worse, but in a year that saw multiple Hey! Hey! it’s Saturday specials we’re struggling to figure out exactly how. A Trial by Kyle celebrity special? Hey, let’s not give them any ideas.
Worst Sketch or Short Form Comedy
Runner-up
Mark Humphries 7.30
17% of the total votes
That kind of satire that Mark Humphries’ strives for requires a point of view. Mocking the rich and powerful suggests you’re on the side of the poor and downtrodden. Now more than ever, Australia could really use a prominent political satirist willing and capable of sinking the slipper into the cosy cabal of vested interests that are steering our society into a brick wall. We’re still waiting for one to arrive.
Runner-up
The Bush Blonde vs The World
37% of the total votes
If you thought comedy had moved on from the dumb blonde stereotype, or the idiot bushie stereotype, well, it seems it hasn’t. This unedifying and unfunny pilot will hopefully never become a full series, meaning we can all forget it and move on. But given how few out-and-out comedies even get a pilot, it makes you wonder: what was rejected in favour of this? And was anything better overlooked?
Winner
The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
56% of the total votes
Sketches? Short form comedy? Hang on, what’s The Weekly doing in this category? Guess until we bring in an “inane desk-based blather” section, this’ll have to do. In 2022 Pickering finally stripped away everything that made his show anything more than just him behind a desk openly wondering if this was the year he could finally call himself “Australia’s Noah Trevor”. The result? A show that wasn’t so much a comedy as a metaphor for how the last decade of budget cuts have turned the ABC into a faded whispy spectre haunting its own grave. It’s a pointless waste of time that exists solely so ABC management can pretend they give a shit about satire.
What the voters said about The Weekly with Charlie Pickering
The Weekly, if left to the private sector, would have bankrupted itself years ago.
Unoriginal and formulaic carbon copy of American shows. About as funny as an episode of Friends. Would have preferred this was axed and Tom Ballard’s Tonightly moved to prime time/prime channel.
Nick Maxwell’s clip montage voiceovers would be the notably terrible lowlight of any other show, but with Pickering front and centre he can hide safely.
Worst Sitcom or Narrative Comedy
Runner-up
Summer Love
28% of the total votes
Part of the justification for Summer Love (which was arguably neither a sitcom nor a narrative comedy, but what else was there to include in this category in 2022?) was that it gave emerging creatives with a comedy background an opportunity to write a one-off show which was a bit different. Great, except that each episode was like almost every new “comedy” made these days: a dramedy. Do we really need the ABC and funding bodies putting money into more dramedies when there are already heaps of dramedies, and even more straight dramas, being made? And while it was good to see some racial diversity across the series, and an LGBT-focused episode, setting the show in a chi-chi beach house meant there were no opportunities to do anything about people on modest incomes. Unless you count the couple who did the cleaning.
Runner-up
Aftertaste
30% of the total votes
The second series of Aftertaste was more what you’d expect to see in a sitcom – over-the-top characters, high-energy performances – but time and time again the sit failed to have much com. Part of this was down to the writers not quite nailing the Gen Z versus Gen X dynamic, and part of it was down to whether this was trying to be a sitcom, a dramedy or a cooking show. That and the major plot arches – the death of the grandfather and the return of the missing grandmother – were so obvious you could see them from space.
Winner
Housos: The Thong Warrior
52% of the total votes
What does Paul Fenech have over the execs at Seven? It must be pretty shocking because why else would anyone give him money to make this half-arsed crap. Like most recent Fenech shows, The Thong Warrior took a grab-bag of zeitgeisty things – cryptocurrency, conspiracy theories, political corruption – and wove them into a (sort of) plot which involved extended fight sequences, grotesque erotic performers and slapstick. There is an audience for this, but they’re mostly high.
What the voters said about Housos: The Thong Warrior
Paul Fenech, please, just retire. You have enough money. Please. You already are Warren Perso.
Once upon a time I admired the work ethic of Fenech. Despite all the odds he still managed to get shows on TV. Now that’s changing though – it’s not natural. He shouldn’t get to keep making the same show over and over. Something is wrong. Someone is in danger.
Is there a fate worse than being banished to 7mate?
Worst Panel, Game or Stand-up Show
Runner-up
GruenNation
25% of the total votes
It’s a good thing nobody ever looks back at old episodes of any of the Gruen shows, otherwise, the way this series constantly gushed over the marketing genius of the LNP would seem a trifle embarrassing. Not that anyone involved has to worry in the slightest about getting it all completely wrong: just so long as they sound authoritative and smirk at each others “jokes”, they’ll be back to spread even more bullshit around the dinner table next series.
Runner-up
Win the Week
29% of the total votes
It’d be nice to think that the ABC’s seemingly rock-solid commitment to giving just about everything a second series, no matter how shit or pointless the first turns out to be, would come with some strings attached of the “try and fix the mistakes before you come back” kind. Yeah, nah. If only the executives that said that this could return were as good at backstabbing as some of the contestants.
Winner
Hey Hey It’s 100 Years / The Best of the Best & Worst of Red Faces
61% of the total votes
If you ask around, chances are you probably know at least one or two people who still think Hey Hey it’s Saturday was “a bit of a laugh” or “the kind of show it’d be good to have back on telly” or “not a total disgrace”. Cut those people out of your life. Then cut the antenna cord on the back of your television set just to make sure you never accidentally watch another second of these garbage nostalgia bonfires. They’re just glorified commercials for Daryl Somers anyway, and he’s a product nobody needs in their home.
What the voters said about Hey! Hey! It’s 100 Years / The Best of the Best & Worst of Red Faces
Like all commercial channels in this country, the name of the game is cheap nostalgic retreads to squeeze what’s left of any influence these comedy icons once had. Except Hey! Hey! That’s always been shithouse.
This whole category is appalling and offers life support to Australia’s mediocre rump of alleged comedians, but Hey! Hey! is something to be critiqued, not celebrated: it was always casually racist, sexist and homophobic, and watching clips of it now should only make everyone involved cringe in shame and beg for forgiveness. I feel ashamed to have enjoyed it as a child and have no nostalgia for it now.
Nostalgia will murder you.
Worst Topical or Satirical Show
Runner-up
A Rational Fear
13% of the total votes
A Rational Fear does a lot of good things – it gives new and established comedians a platform to speak about topical issues, and it creates engaging content about the climate crisis – but its satirical sketches are a hard listen. Once you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. Take the tropes of advertising, an issue the audience cares about and combine the two to make several minutes of barely amusing “satire”. Here’s a compilation of some of them. Even if you agree with the sentiment, the execution is piss poor.
Runner-up
Mark Humphries 7.30
20% of the total votes
Biting satirical commentary isn’t Mark Humphries’ forte either, with his sketches often being mistargeted and weak. And this was even during the era of the Morrison government, where Morrison and colleagues so blatantly failed to address our concerns that we overwhelmingly booted them out. There is an audience for this kind of satire, but they’ve fallen asleep. Rather like the people making these sketches.
Winner
The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
65% of the total votes
The recent outrage about the greenlighting of Frankly, a chat show hosted by a white woman in her 60s and aimed at Boomers, highlighted who the ABC’s target audience really is. A less obvious manifestation of this is The Weekly, a show hosted by a Gen X white guy but aimed squarely at older generations. Ever wondered why The Weekly has a rather conservative take on issues that are important to younger generations? Or why the show rarely does any robust satire? It’s because everything’s pretty good for the target audience, so why think about anyone or anything else?
What the voters said about The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
Charlie Pickering is long overdue for a nice drive out to the comedy retirement farm. Or he would be if he were an actual comedian.
The folksy explanations on The Weekly were loathsome. And Micallef almost pleading to be let go of speaks volumes.
This may be a case of bad comedy recency bias, but Pickering’s Fresh Prince of Bel Air parody on The Yearly deserves the death penalty.
Worst Comedy Film
Runner-up
Christmas Ransom
11% of the total votes
Streaming service Stan has gone all-in with the Christmas movies over the last few years, and good on them for giving it a red hot go. Maybe one day they’ll come up with something worth watching over Christmas, but considering these days around 40% of all films are “a Christmas movie, if you really think about it” we’ll stick with Bad Santa for now.
Runner-up
How to Please a Woman
11% of the total votes
When a middle-aged accountant takes over a struggling removalist firm and turns its fortunes around by retraining the all-male staff into sex workers, you’d expect something a lot funnier than this ended up being. Who thought turning what was obviously the set-up for a 70s sex romp into a serious look at the politics of female desire was a good idea oh it’s an Australian film forget we said anything.
Winner
Wog Boys Forever
69% of the total votes
Look, to be fair this was pretty much the only real Australian comedy film made this year. Everything else just had trace elements of comedy sprinkled over some other, more popular dramatic format. So if you could squint just right and ignore the actual content of this film – which was not great even when it wasn’t outright bad – you could almost imagine you were watching something with the potential to be both entertaining and funny. You weren’t of course, but aren’t the movies about playing let’s pretend?
What the voters said about Wog Boys Forever
People who watched Wog Boys are now all over 45. People who liked Wog Boys are all over 60. Must have been some good tax credits on the production costs
Congratulations Nick Giannopoulos you have officially made The Wog Boy the Police Academy of Australian cinema. The first Wog Boy, a genuinely funny and satirical take on modern multicultural Melbourne through the eyes of a first generation man. Wog Boys Forever…, hey everyone it’s me Nick, remember me and how funny I was?! Well I’m back and dancing in a night club, please see my movie! That’s the whole premise.
As a wog, this should have been a slam dunk (soccer goal?) But the cameos from Sooshi Mango, kings of Instagram, prove that these particular Wogs are out of work for a reason.
Best New Comedy
Runner-up
Shut Up
18% of the total votes
Shut Up was a stand-out new release in 2022. This two-hander starring Debra Lawrence and Celia Pacquola as a mother and daughter meeting up between lockdowns had a strong script, lots of laughs and occasional moments of poignancy. Written by Sarina Rowell and directed by Tony Martin, it’s available on YouTube. You should check it out.
Runner-up
Hot Department: Dark Web
23% of the total votes
Also available on YouTube, this series from Aunty Donna spin-off Grouse House is a series of parodies of online pop culture (TikTok, Netflix, porn, YouTube). Not all episodes were great, but the best got solid laughs from putting a Black Mirror meets Aunty Donna-type twist on familiar online tropes.
Winner
Colin from Accounts
25% of the total votes
Is this uneven rom-com sitcom the best new comedy made in Australia in 2022? We don’t think so but you voted for it… Colin from Accounts is beautifully shot, it includes some funny moments, and there’s an on-again-off-again romance at the centre of it and some people enjoy that sort of thing. Is the romance entirely believable? Not really? Are many of the situations funny? Again, not really. But if you’re looking for eight pleasant-ish half-hours about decent people leading a slightly glamorous but also fairly relatable life then there are many, many worse shows you could watch.
What the voters said about Colin from Accounts 2022 new comedy in general…
None of them are any good. That’s the sad thing. When the new shows and ideas are just as bad as the old ones, that’s when you know we have no more comedic talent on mainstream Australian media.
This was a mediocre year.
I’m just so tired.
Best Comedy
Runner-up
Have You Been Paying Attention?
36% of the total votes
The kind of consistently funny and entertaining show Australian commercial television rarely made even in its heyday, it’s frankly astonishing that we get something this good on our screens for half the year each year. Don’t believe us? Think of every single panel show the ABC’s made this century. A well-oiled laugh-generating machine with an amazing depth of talent and the ability to make even paid sponsorships seem amusing, it continues to be a triumph.
Runner-up
Fisk
61% of the total votes
Still going strong in its second season, Kitty Flanagan has come up with the goods and then some with this understated sitcom about a lawyer who doesn’t quite fit into a world that you probably wouldn’t want to fit in with anyway. A timely rebuttal to those who say that the future of Australian television must lie with appealing to an international audience, it’s homegrown in all the best ways, mining comedy from the quirks of our culture while tapping into the universal nature of a whole lot of dickheads. No word yet on a third season but with a Logie on Flanagan’s mantelpiece and Fisk’s baggy brown suit back in style, here’s hoping.
Winner
Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell
70% of the total votes
There’s a school of thought that says after a loss you shouldn’t mourn the fact they’re gone but instead celebrate the time you had together. Yeah, good one. We’ll remember that for twenty weeks in 2023 when instead of enjoying world-class comedy created by one of the sharpest satirical teams this country has ever seen, we’re not. Making matters worse – which really should be the ABC’s new slogan – the final season of Mad as Hell was as strong as it’d ever been, skillfully pointing out the flaws in the freshly elected Labor government with sketches that had a new sense of purpose. Plus all the regular stuff? Still just as funny. It went out on a high note; we won’t see its like again.
What the voters said about Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell
Mad as Hell’s departure leaves a big hole in Australian television. Fortunately that leaves somewhere the country can dump all that soft plastic.
You have to wonder how satire is going to hold up without Mad As Hell around.
Bye Mad As, we love you.
We asked our readers… What did you think of comedy in 2022?
It could always be worse. It’s time for the ABC to start again and give us some fresh shows that actually take risks. No more panels, no more established talent, please.
Fisk was the big TV-narrative-comedy highlight! Whether or not you think it’s funny, and I do, it’s so refreshing to see a comedy that puts itself out there with the primary aim of being funny, rather than having a bedrock of ‘serious issues’ to make it critic proof. Its huge success is really heartening.
Underwhelming, especially if you tend to want to see films or TV sitcoms. I’m at the point where I don’t care if it’s not great. Just put on a show with a 23 year old I don’t know hosting, or sitcom, something out of the blue. Nostalgia is biting at my bosom too readily and I seek out the tried and true oldies rather than bother with the new. Is that wrong?
Same as the last 15 years or so, very bland with the same handfull of dinosaurs on every show. I think Australian and New Zealand stand up comedy is stronger than ever and would like to see these youngsters replace all these lame ABC on air types across all forms of our comedy media.
It’s too soon to say what 2022 meant for screen comedy. Mad As Hell finishing marks the end of an era, but there are a surprising number and variety of shows slated for 2023 (Taskmaster, Aunty Donna’s sitcom, the Channel 7 sketch show) which could set the tone for what’s next. Kitty Flanagan winning the most popular actress Logie was funny and bizarre enough to tip the scales over to positive. Not a standout year on its own, but hopefully good things are to come.
Mitch McTaggart’s seasonal evisceration of the awful lowlights of Australian TV (as well as noting a few positives) has become must-see TV, even if you have to join Binge to see it. Mad As Hell leaves a huge hole to fill (bye Tosh), Fisk, HYBPA? and Cheap Seats delivered solid laughs. The rest? A huge angry sigh…stuff I can’t be arsed to watch to be able to determine just how little I care for it. Bring on Aunty Donna and The Back Side of Television season 2…
Like our Olympic performances: you only get out whatever dollars you put in. Aussie comedy has evolved past the long-form and the only consistent quality comes from the bite-size format: “don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share” is the new catch-cry of the popular Aussie comedy performer.
Panel shows remain the absolute worst, keeping the same few hacks employed while emerging talent has nowhere to go. Also, too much scripted ‘comedy’ is still really drama with quirky trappings.
A few glimmers of brilliance in a sea of formula and dated reboots. Fisk has become a clever, well written 30 minute sitcom. Sad to see Mad As Hell go, there is nothing like it on Australian TV. I hope Micallef’s wit will be seen again soon elsewhere. Colin From Accounts was an excellent new sitcom; funny, authentically Australian and unique.
Satirical comedy really peaked. I think it helped process the horror of the worst Prime Minister we’ve ever had. It was kind of like therapy.
The fact Tosh Greenslade has gone into advertising is enough to tell us what’s gone wrong with TV comedy.
At least it’s not getting worse.
Needs improvement and more financial support.
There weren’t enough panel shows about the news, they should do more of those.
The above is a selection of the many comments we received. Thank you for voting and commenting, now comes 2023…
Colin From Accounts is a romantic comedy, which would usually send us running for the hills. Comedy? Love that stuff. Romantic comedy? That’s usually a love story with some mild banter and maybe – if you’re lucky – a wacky mix-up or zany best friend. So why are we reviewing this one?
Mostly because for a romantic comedy, it’s surprisingly light on the romance. Thanks to the set-up, the two leads are pushed together sooner than either really finds comfortable – which works out well, because it means a lot of the early “romance” stuff is them trying to pull away from each other and fight against the situation they’re in. But we’re getting ahead of things.
Gordon (Patrick Brammall) owns a microbrewery yet somehow is not a total wanker, while Ashley (Harriet Dyer) is a medical student who doesn’t mind a drink and a sleep in. They meet on a street corner in inner-city Sydney – he’s driving, she’s walking, he stops to let her cross, she flashes a boob as a thank you and does this kind of thing really happen oh wait “romantic comedy”. Anyway, Gordon is distracted and runs over a dog.
The pair race the dog to a vet, where for some reason they end up a): owning the dog and b): owing $12000 in vet bills. Things get more complicated from there as Gordon can’t have a dog in his life, Ashley can but she can’t have a dog in her flat, and soon Gordon has both a dog and Ashley living with him. Plus he owes the vet $6000 because they’ve decided to split the bill. But hey, what price love?
Dyer – who also created this series and wrote a number of episodes – has been appearing in a lot of different series recently, but it’s her work on Matt Okine’s The Other Guy that’s relevant here. There she played Stevie, a drug-loving party gal who was… let’s say, “in your face”. Here, she plays a similar character, only this time she’s often funny and likable.
Likewise, Brammall isn’t wandering far from his comfort zone as a non-threatening dork with a decent heart and a second-guessing brain. So good news, everybody: this is a rom-com where you’ll probably want the two leads to find some level of happiness, maybe even with each other.
But is it funny? Well, it’s often trying to be, and we’re always happy to hand out points for effort. On the other hand it’s a real grab bag of styles, and that’s being generous. There are jokes in here we haven’t seen attempted in years: they actually do the old “oh wow this date’s really awkward, they have no chemistry and [SMASH CUT] now they’re passionately making out in the back of a car whuuuuut” gag.
Yeah, but is there toilet humour? Ashley is literally rummaging around in a toilet in the first episode. And then she sleep-pisses on Gordon’s bedside dresser in the next episode (making Dyer two for two when it comes to pissy sitcoms). Then her mum turns up to let her know some random childhood friend’s been raped. Meanwhile, Gordon’s talking to his doctor about cancer. What is this, 2003?
Who knows, maybe it’s time for this kind of “shocking” comedy to come back in style. At least it’s trying to be funny! Trying really hard! Which is kind of the tone of the whole series. Are we talking a wacky mix up involving an accidental dick pic? You know we are.
Working against the comedy’s… uh, manic energy (we’re going to be charitable there) is the way the locations are all very inner city and tasteful and oh look a microbrewery. Which is what you expect from a rom-com where the rom is the point, but… did we mention Ashley plucks a giant turd from a toilet and throws it out the window? Love may be in the air, but it’s clearly not the only thing up there.
“At least it’s a comedy” is something we’d really like to say here, but if you stick around you’ll discover that this is not a series that shies away from tragic backstories and heartfelt moments. Fortunately it delays them long enough that by the time the waterworks start, the unwary viewer will have become emotionally invested in the characters. If that hasn’t happened – maybe because you’re here for the comedy – chances are that you are going to bounce right off these scenes.
This isn’t a series like Summer Love where it was clear the comedy was a distant second. This has plenty of jokes and some of them are pretty good. It’s just all over the place with its comedy, and the aforementioned comedy isn’t really the type that fits in well with a romance – even a down-to-earth, plain-speaking one like this.
There’s a lot here to like (if nothing else, the dog has been selected for maximum adorableness). But there’s also a lot here to like somewhat less, and they’re all jumbled together like a… what’s the term again?
Fisk has come in with over 1m viewers. The episode was up 59%, with 1,106,000 tuning in.
Not far behind was the match between the Socceroos and France, with 981,000 tuning in to the FIFA World Cup on SBS.
And this for a show which flies in the face of the accepted conventions of ABC sitcoms in 2022:
Feature likeable/relatable characters
Include moving/dramatic elements
Have the entire series arch lead up to a big bombshell in episode five which, in episode six, gets resolved and paves the way for a new series
All of which seem like good ideas and are pushed heavily by execs and screenwriting courses alike, except they result in every show feeling the same. And same doesn’t equal funny.
Fisk, on the other hand, is a show written to get laughs. The characters aren’t 100% realistic, although we’ve all met people a bit like them. And the show isn’t trying to make some wider societal or satirical point, although it ends up doing that too (modern cafes, anyone?).
All she wants is a cappuccino
It’s also not a show you’re meant to feel moved by or where the sort of differences that are sometimes used as plot points become a thing. Yes, the main character Helen Tudor-Fisk (Kitty Flanagan) is probably neurodivergent, but that’s not really the point. If anything, it’s celebrated, as Helen’s unwillingness to accept idiocy makes her the perfect voice of the audience.
Modern cafes are ridiculous. Roz (Julia Zemiro) and Viktor (Glenn Butcher) are ridiculous (and quite possibly neurodivergent in their own ways). Lots of people are self-centred and behave stupidly and unreasonably. And the only thing we can do is laugh about it.
But even as we laugh knowingly at the characters and situations – the signs in office kitchens, the arguments about who gets a toilet key, the protocols around staff birthdays, Roz’s tone-deaf disaster charity and Viktor’s over-zealous scheduling – the relatability isn’t the point. We don’t want to be friends with any of the characters. We just think they’re funny.
And, really, that’s all you need in a sitcom: some situations and characters you can laugh about. Helen success in the final episode was nice, but it was also kind of incidental. When Fisk comes back for a third series – and there’s no reason to assume it won’t – Helen’s newfound success won’t change things. She’ll still have eccentric clients and mad colleagues to deal with. And as far as anyone who likes to laugh is concerned, that’s absolutely fine.
Okay, yes, the ABC are going to be showing a Wil Anderson comedy special next Wednesday night, but it’s hardly like that invalidates the premise of this blog post. Zing?
At least with an Anderson stand-up special there’ll be a lot less of Anderson actually laughing. Which to be fair, was often understandable during Question Everything because they had some pretty decent panelists doing some pretty funny material. So why was it one of the bigger piles of steaming garbage the ABC put to air in 2022? Let’s explain:
If you want to show comedians doing their stand up act, give them a stand up special. If you want them to talk about the news of the week, let them do that. If you want to… look, we could go on all day like this. Question Everything was a mess, and being a mess got in the way of being funny.
For its second season, pretty much everything about the original premise went in the bin. Remember how it used to be a quiz show complete with points being awarded and a “final round”? Not any more. Remember how all the promotion suggested it was going to be a kind of “here’s how the sausage is made” look at the news, like the seemingly obvious but never fully realised concept of Gruen News? Forget that malarkey.
This year Question Everything was just a collection of news-ish clips – often from breakfast television, that well-known comedy goldmine since the days of The Hamster Wheel – which may or may not have provided host Wil Anderson with a segue to ask one of the panel a question, it didn’t really matter because he was going to ask anyway. Cue them struggling to tortuously link that question to some pre-scripted bit or another.
(unless it was Charlie Pickering, who seems increasingly a bit deranged whenever he turns up outside The Weekly. Which might also explain why there is nobody else appearing on The Weekly)
And yet the pre-scripted bits were often good! In between some line-ups that were so painfully “ABC” we could feel ourselves involuntarily turning Incredible Hulk-style into Gerard Henderson, there were also some surprising guests. Carl Barron on an ABC panel show? And he was great?
But the show itself was an absolute dog’s breakfast. Jan Fran was fine while also being completely pointless. Her increasingly brief segments “explaining” the news never failed to bring the show to a screeching halt. For every episode where there was a decent panelist or two, there was one that looked like they’d been rifling through the back cupboard where the ABC stashed the old portraits from their 1990s celebrity wall.
A month or two back Wil Anderson was talking about how he’d love to help the ABC get new comedians on the air – but to do that the ABC would require the involvement of established faces. Question Everything did feature some new comedians; it also featured Wendy Harmer and Paul McDermott. There comes a point where trying to attract one audience actively repels the other. Question Everything managed that more often than not.
Still, individual elements were often good. Sometimes every single part of an episode, taken purely as a stand-alone element and viewed in isolation, was a decent piece of television. But nothing worked together. Building up the kind of comedy rhythm and momentum throughout an episode where the laughs build on each other so even the weak gags work? Not happening here.
The panelists rarely even interacted with each other; Anderson just kept dropping zingers seemingly left over from Gruen; Fran was a visitor from a parallel dimension version of the show that contained actual information (in the final episode she was reduced to introducing a series of clips featuring Karl Stefanovic); the whole thing felt like it was put together by a team who didn’t actually know how to put a television show together.
Worst of all, at a time where Australian comedy is an endangered species on our screens, this refused to do anything new. If we want to watch a show where two hosts make us laugh by going over the news events of the week, we’ve already got The Cheap Seats; if we want Wil Anderson getting the last word, Gruen will never die. If we want James O’Loghlin, we’ll build a time machine. Even Dave O’Neill’s been on our screens this year on Spicks and Specks. Tom Gleeson? He was literally hosting the show that was on before this!
We were going to talk here about Fisk, which also ended tonight. But trying to shoehorn that into this would just be making the same mistake Question Everything did. Not everything works well together. And some things* just don’t work at all.
Matt Okine and Denise Scott to star in a bold reimagining of an all-time ABC favourite – Mother and Son
ABC, Screen Australia and Screen NSW today confirmed they are delighted to be bringing an all-new Mother and Son to Australian screens, in a charming and hilarious eight-part series starring two of the country’s most-loved comedians, Denise Scott and Matt Okine.
Produced by Wooden Horse and re-created by Okine with collaborators Sarah Walker, Tristram Baumber and the show’s original creator, Geoffrey Atherden, Mother and Son will screen on ABC TV and ABC iview in 2023.
When his widowed mum, Maggie (Denise Scott), sets fire to the kitchen, recently-single Arthur Gbeme (Matt Okine) moves back in to the family home. As he tells it, he has “put his life on hold” to care for his mum, but the truth is, there isn’t much to put on hold.
A former nurse, Maggie used to be a firebrand – a free-thinking renegade of the ‘60s. But since the death of her husband, Maggie has been… a little off.
(Re)Creator, Writer and Star, Matt Okine says “The idea to re-create Mother and Son first came to me back in 2013 when I was touring Hong Kong alongside Denise. It was a staple of the Okine family TV when I was growing up; a beautiful snapshot of 1980s Australian suburbia, made hilariously unforgettable by its co-stars Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald. Ten years in the making, it feels like a dream come true to have this idea brought back to life. Denise and I have huge shoes to fill but with my hairline going the way it is, I feel like I was born to play a 2023 version of Arthur!”.
ABC Head of Comedy Todd Abbott says “I honestly thought Matt and the team were joking when they suggested revisiting this classic series, but the more excited they got, the more it became clear we absolutely had to make it. Australia has changed a lot in 40 years, and this cheeky, fired-up, laugh-out-loud series reflects that beautifully. And for anyone who needs any more convincing, I have two words: Denise Scott!”
“This warm and funny reimagining of Mother and Son is the perfect antidote to the doom and gloom of the last few years. The pandemic forced many of us to reconnect with family and this series will resonate all the more as a result. A beautiful mix of comedy and pathos superbly crafted by Matt Okine, Sarah Walker and Tristram Baumber, Mother and Son shines a timely lens on an ageing population and modern family life in a contemporary, multicultural Australia. With the blessing of Mother and Son’s original creator, Geoffrey Atherden, we are thrilled to bring this hilarious and provocative reimagining to the ABC and audiences the world over,” said Jude Troy and Richard Finlayson, Producers and joint CEOs, Wooden Horse.
Screen Australia’s Head of Content Grainne Brunsdon says, “This hilarious and relatable series is sure to capture the hearts of Australians as it playfully brings this classic story into a modern Australian setting. With such a strong creative team behind the production, I’ve no doubt Mother and Son will charm a new generation when Maggie and Arthur return to the ABC in 2023.”
Head of Screen NSW Kyas Hepworth says “Screen NSW is thrilled to support Wooden Horse and the talented team of Matt Okine, Sarah Walker and Tristram Baumber to bring the revamped Mother and Son to Australia and beyond. This iconic Australian series was hugely successful during its original run on the ABC, and I am confident it will leverage the success of the original series and attract new audiences with a modern take.”
With rich, warm characters that could be drawn right from your own family, Mother and Son offers hilarious, poignant, and utterly relatable observations on modern family life.
Yeah, maybe we were a bit too harsh having a go at Seven for being the home of comedy nostalgia. Hopefully this won’t be a case of “we forgot to laugh” – though the idea of this being a “bold reimagining” is a pretty good zinger to start with.
It’s been a big week for comedy on Seven – unfortunately that week was from twenty years ago, as the network continued to ignore producing anything new in favour of saluting shows old enough to vote and performers old enough to be excused from voting.
Seven knows audiences won’t tune in these days for regular old repeats, which is why both Kath & Kim: Our Effluent Life and The Roast of Paul Hogan – much like those Best of Hey Hey specials earlier in the year – threw in some new footage to space out the old. Could they have stood alone without the old clips? Well…
To be fair, in the case of both Kath & Kim specials the old footage pretty much was the point; over two big nights we got two hours of corpsing and outtakes and promotional appearances and celebrity guests talking up Gina Reily and Jane Turner. Seems Tony Martin’s wig fell off during his big pash scene with Magda and he made a joke about how only hardcore nerds would notice a continuity error like that: good to see him staying in character.
There was also some newly filmed “where are they now” clips, which largely served as a reminder that Kath & Kim as characters and as a series ran out of steam a season or two before they left our screens. And speaking of screens: green screening them into their old (and now demolished) locations did not look good. The settings were a big part of Kath & Kim. With them gone it’s not the same.
(pointless speculation corner: was the idea to do one new episode and one clip show and then they were asked to pad out the new episode with clips when they only scraped together ten minutes of new scenes? It just seemed weird to have two clip shows back to back, only one of them had some new footage mixed in)
Meanwhile, the Hogan Roast was mostly new footage that just felt old, as a bunch of fresh faces, former greats and Shane Jacobson sat around poking fun at Hoges, a man who was once very funny and still remains somewhat likable, if possibly not quite up to sitting on a couch being insulted for a hundred minutes or so.
We don’t have much of a tradition of roasts here and Hoges is not a young man, so the nasty edge required was only rarely in evidence (mostly from then Covid patient Tom Gleeson, doing his usual gear). On the positive side, this did contain more jokes than the last two years worth of ABC panel shows, even if most of them were clunkers.
Tax jokes? Yeah, we got them (“”Hoges knew he was in trouble when the tax office sent him two letters – F and U”). Jokes about how his TV work was sexist? Sorted. Calling him Australia’s greatest ever drug dealer for his work promoting ciggies and booze? It’s a fair cop. And yet, the whole thing still felt like a comedy version of This Is Your Life – another nostalgia-heavy show Seven has recently brought back from the dead.
But at least this was trying to make people laugh, which set it apart from around 90% of current Australian “comedy”. Australia tends to be extremely precious when it comes to much-loved celebrities, many of whom have notoriously thin skins anyway (good luck even imagining a roast of Daryl Somers), so for Hoges to sit there and take even this somewhat toothless series of (clearly read from cue cards) insults from a bunch of near-strangers (and former co-star Ernie Dingo) reflected pretty well on him.
(there was much cheering at Casa Del Tumbleweeds when Rob Sitch took a swipe at Flipper, truly one of the low points of Hogan’s career and cinema in general)
Shaun Micallef was something of a surprise guest, though knowing his interest in and reverence for Australia’s comedy icons we probably should have expected he’d pop up. Unsurprisingly, his off-kilter performance was a highlight; we can only wish we also remembered all those brutal murders committed by Crocodile Dundee.
(pointless speculation corner: when exactly was this put together? Some of the pandemic-era jokes seemed a year old, while other references seemed a lot more current. “An epic production over a year in the making”? Oh wait, seems it was filmed back in April)
There’s been more successful comedy characters on Australian television, but a roast of, say, Norman Gunston seems unlikely (Garry McDonald, even less so). Plenty of Australian actors have had more illustrious big screen careers, but… well, come to think of it, a Roast of Russell Crowe isn’t all that unlikely.
But Paul Hogan managed to combine both, then made a whole lot of shitty movies that truly deserve open mockery – and on that level, The Roast of Paul Hogan delivered.
For once, Seven’s obsession with nostalgia paid off.
