Australian Tumbleweeds
Not Much Chop
In a world where comedy on commercial radio largely consists of prank calls and stand-up-esque chat, it’s refreshing to find a show where scripted comedy gets a look in. The Bunch, the top-rating breakfast show on Perth’s Mix 94.5, may not be the first place you’d look for that sort of thing but we can assure you it’s there, albeit not terribly often.
Each week The Bunch includes not only an amusingly snarky film review from Justin Hamilton, but “Ask Ethel”, in which Andrea Powell’s grotesque octogenarian Ethel Chop dispenses advice to the listeners. Both segments are worth downloading the weekly Bunch podcast to hear (although this does require you to fast forward through a lot of breakfast radio slop). The “Ask Ethel” segment in particular is savagely funny, and remarkably crude for the timeslot.
We’ve asked many times on this blog why Australian radio has so little scripted comedy – even basic comedy review or comedy advice segments are rarer hen’s teeth. Yet “Ask Ethel” and Justin Hamilton’s film reviews can’t be prohibitively expensive, and given that The Bunch website includes more than a hundred Ethel Chop segments Ethel, at least, must be quite popular.
So what’s the problem here? Are the purer types of comedy too divisive for some radio audiences? Do they not fit station’s brands in the way that pointless stunts and mindless phone-ins seem to? Has stand-up become so dominant in comedy that there’s no one out there capable of writing a half-decent radio script? Can producers just not be bothered? Or is it just that a show can make more money for a station by filling air time with pranks, stunts and chat that are actually a plug for some product, than they can from a comedian doing a character monologue?
Post your ill-advised theories or insider gossip here, and in the meantime get some Chop down you.
Based On Factual Events
Not everyone loves The Jesters. We understand that. After all, after a decade where most Australian sitcoms were filmed in odour-rama stuck on “shit” coupled with a solid push claiming that ye olde sitcom format – that is, people on cheap sets telling obvious (if funny) jokes – was clearly inferior to a show filmed like a high-end drama series only with everyone saying “outrageous” things that would bore most primary school students, a regular old-fashioned funny sitcom most likely comes as a shock to the system.
But one thing is a bit of a puzzle. Most of the press about The Jesters has taken the path of least resistance: The Jesters (the comedy group) are basically The Chaser, Dave Davies (Mick Molloy’s character) is Andrew Denton, etc. It’s understandable, if not strictly true: Davies is nothing at all like Denton, he just has a similar gig as a mentor to a bunch of up-and-coming comedians, while The Jesters all have distinct comedy characters, which is something The Chaser never managed to do (was there any real difference between the on-screen personas of Chris Taylor and Craig Reucassel?).
The thing is though, with all the “The Jesters are basically The Chaser” chat, no-one seems to have noticed that, on The Jesters the actual Jesters TV show is, well… meant to be shit. Of course it is: it’s a lot easier to make jokes about a crap show than a successful one, as everything from 30 Rock to the first few series of Frontline has shown. But it doesn’t work both ways. Either it’s a copy of the original – in which case maybe the fact that it’s saying that The Chaser’s War on Everything was kind of shoddy is worth pointing out – or it’s a show that uses real-life as a springboard for something new.
[yes, it’s obviously the second. But the reviews, even the positive ones, have focused so heavily on the “it’s just like the Chaser! Mick’s just like Denton!” angle that it’s worth pointing out that, if that’s really the case, then there’s an actual story out there they’re missing. And if it’s not, maybe they could find something else to say.]
This does go a long way towards defusing the other occasional criticism of the show, where it’s supposedly simply and mindlessly re-telling recent real-life comedy controversies (the Chaser’s Make a Realistic Wish Foundation outcry for one) using characters closely modeled on The Chaser. While a straight re-telling of that controversy would certainly be interesting (to us, if no-one else), The Jesters is a comedy. Events and characters are exaggerated for comedic effect. Even if you don’t think the end result is funny, how hard can this be to understand?
One of the bigger problems comedy faces when it comes to criticism is literalism: the inability to understand that some things are meant to be a joke. The Jesters, by having a basic set-up somewhat close (on a superficial level) to an existing group of people and a real-life situation, is an obvious target for this kind of thinking. It’s the flip side of the reality TV boom: some viewers can’t understand why you’d choose to make a show less real, even if by doing so you made it more funny.
As always around these parts, it’d be nice to blame Chris Lilley for all this, seeing as his career has largely been made on the back of audiences saying “I know someone just like that!!!” (only presumably an actual schoolgirl or Asian, making the entire joke nothing more than the fact Lilley is playing dress-ups). But he was just surfing a pre-existing wave, where reality – or barring that, holding up an purposely blunt and un-altered mirror to real life – was seen as television’s ultimate purpose.
It’s been a few years since that wave crested (which is why it’ll be extremely interesting to see how Angry Boys does when it starts), and the return (and relative success) of shows like The Jesters to the Australian comedy firmament is a sign that the wave may be receding or fading or heading off to Noosa or whatever it is that waves do after they break.
Clearly the tide hasn’t completely turned (that’s enough of the water bizzo – ed) – The Jesters is still loosely based on an actual real-life comedy team, after all. But it’s a start, and the fact that this season has increasingly moved towards more sitcom-y plots (such as last week’s dinner party episode) is, as far as we’re concerned here, a step in the right direction. Because comedy should always be free to do whatever it takes to get a laugh – even if that involves telling jokes.
The Sum Total of our Melbourne International Comedy Festival Coverage 2011
We don’t really cover stand-up / live comedy here all that much and so, while the spotlight shines brightly on the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the next few weeks we’ll mostly be ranting away about Chris Lilley and trying to drum up support for Tony Martin’s nerd-friendly interview show A Quiet Word With… (starts this Saturday!).
But, in a moderately impressive segue, recently Mr Martin linked on twitter to the following in-depth article. It’s well worth checking out if you actually are interested in stand-up comedy in general, and MICF in particular. Because it’s not like we have anything interesting to say on the subject.
The News Team of Dorian Gray
For all the tough questions being asked on Hungry Beast, one seems to have been overlooked: why is it that, when producer Andrew Denton says “The whole point of this was to bring new people into the industry”, this third series sees the same faces back in the ring for yet another swing?
After all, by this time these guys are no longer “fresh young faces” – they’re just the Hungry Beast team. A team that, judging by the first episode at least, has pretty much given up on comedy in favour of relatively straightforward investigative journalism with some snark sprinkled on top.
This seems to be the fate of ‘news comedy’ in Australia: over the course of a year or so The 7pm Project went from a news-based comedy show to a news panel show with a few smart-arse comments thrown in. It’s hardly surprising considering scripted jokes cost money and require talent, while investigating news often requires little more than a google search or putting a call out on Twitter. And as a straight-up news show, it’s certainly at least as worthwhile an effort as anything on the commercial networks (not that that’s saying a whole lot). It does mean it’s slowly drifting out of our remit though, thus sparing Dan Ilic the dubious pleasure of our sniping.
Still, when one of the bigger selling points of your news show is that it’s giving fresh young faces and voices a shot (without that angle, why not just watch one of the many other in-depth news programs the ABC currently puts to air – they have trained professionals doing the same job without the distracting snark) it seems fair enough to ask why none of these fresh new faces have gone on to work on any of the ABCs many other in-depth news programs yet.
Yes, Marc Fennell is now reviewing movies on Ten’s morning show The Circle, and alumni Veronica Milsom went on to appear on the short-lived Live From Planet Earth. Otherwise, zip*. And after two series surely some of these big talents should have moved up to the big leagues – especially as with each series the team’s numbers are whittled down, like a internet pundit interview-heavy version of Musical Chairs.
In the Green Guide interview quoted at the start of this post, Denton says “This third series has been an evolution but it’s not like they’ve reached their peak now. They’ve got a lot of learning to do and a lot of possibilities to explore”. Really? After two series? At what stage does someone say “ok, playtime’s over”?
There’s nothing wrong with training – new talent has to come from somewhere. But if your show’s point is that it is all about training, at what stage does ‘the talent’ get kicked out of the nest? And if they’re here to stay – if they’re going to be judged as qualified television makers rather than eager newcomers – how long are we expected to wait for them to reach their peak?
*Oscar has since let us know that “Jessicah Mendes and Kieran Ricketts, from the first two seasons of HB, are now working at ABC News. Daniel Keogh has gone on to report for the ABC’s Science Show”. Which makes it five success stories (if you count Live From Planet Earth) out of HB’s original team of nineteen.
Vale Laid
Yes, Laid finished up a few days ago, but it seemed like a good idea to wait just in case the Fairfax papers – specifically The Age – tried to slip in some more good words for a show they love so much they should just bloody well marry it. During its final week it somehow scored not one but two glowing reviews in The Green Guide – and this for a show that, thanks to being based around a storyline that developed and continued week after week, was impossible to follow if you hadn’t already been watching. What’s next, glowing reviews of the final ten minutes of Chinatown?
No minor reviews these either. Lorelei Vashti devoted her entire 10/3/2011 column to Laid, kicking things off with the comedy highlight of 2011: “Being a friend of [Laid creator Marieke] Hardy’s it is tricky to write about this show but as it has been one of the most anticipated local comedies this year, it would be remiss not to cover it.” That’s right: Laid was more anticipated than John Clarke’s return to The Games. It was more anticipated than Chris Lilley’s new series Angry Boys. It was more anticipated than the return of 2/3rds of Get This to television, more anticipated than Adam Hills getting his own talk show, more anticipated than Ben Elton making an Australian series, more anticipated than Hamish & Andy moving to television, more anticipated than any show made by anyone with any kind of established reputation in Australian comedy. Oh wait, maybe the “being a friend of Hardy’s” line is the one to focus on here.
In one sense it’s nice to actually have confirmed the fact that the best way to get blanket coverage of your television show – let’s say it again, two separate reviews in the Green Guide during the show’s final week – isn’t to actually make a good show, but to be mates with the people writing the reviews. It means that the reviews can safely be ignored by those readers looking for a guide to a show’s actual entertainment value or quality, while keenly read by those wanting to know what Vashti’s pals are up to this week. This kind of favouritism isn’t exactly news, of course, but it’s rare to see it so insistently, offensively, disgustingly blatant.
[It does, on the other hand, go some way towards explaining why The Age seems to have been running a “the internet is full of mindless haters” campaign over the last month or so. We’ve covered most of it in the various Live From Planet Earth threads (though there was yet another story on the hurt anonymous internet posters can cause to media personalities on six figure salaries in the most recent Sunday Age), but where The Age’s stories have focused on the supposedly mindless hate of decent shows / people that the internet fosters, their blanket love of Laid is a display of how they plan to use the power they heap scorn on the internet for displaying. It’s a bit rich to claim that old media is a better source of information than blogs and twitter when your staff seem largely interested in uncritically talking up a former workmate’s projects.]
Without full access to the ratings it’s hard to know how well Laid did. The few figures we have seen suggest that it held steady at around half a million viewers nationwide, at least for the first few weeks. Which, based on wild guesswork, is good but not amazingly great for that timeslot – it’s safe to assume Summer Heights High did a lot better, for example. Still, turns out all this good press has paid off: the night of the final episode Hardy tweeted:
“The ABC are keen on another series and we have begun writing. See you in 2012.”
“We are currently writing a second series and the ABC are keen. If all goes well we will shoot in July/August.”
Here’s a question: Huh? Forgive us for being a little tardy, but didn’t the show end with the mystery of the dead boyfriends being solved? What is a second series going to be about, apart from letting us all know that the ABC wants to be in the Marieke Hardy business so badly they’ll throw cash at pretty much anything?
Personally, we say put money on a spin-off called YEAR ZERO about a woman who meets her dream guy then goes about exterminating all her previous lovers so she can erase her dodgy past and be The Perfect Woman for him, but that’s mostly because, well, that’s kind of the vibe that came off the show itself after a while. Actually, the one single solitary interesting thing that came out of The Age’s blanket Laid coverage was the way no-one seemed fully sure whether we were actually supposed to like Roo or not.
[this is the point where a crasser blog would mention the review that said Alison Bell as Roo was pretty much channelling Hardy. Yes, this is that blog]
“Frequently unlikable” and “shifting between various states of bewilderment, awkwardness and straight-out obnoxiousness” were a couple of the terms used to describe Roo in this final run of reviews. Which is a bit of a shift from “resourceful, smart and sometimes sure of her opinions, but also uncertain and a little daffy”, which is how she was described in Debi Enker’s initial review in the Green Guide’s 3/2/2011 issue. At least the all-over-the-shop nature of Roo’s personality remained a constant; whether this is down to inconsistent scripting is up to the viewer to decide.
While it’s possible that the general souring of opinion towards Roo may have been a result of the show’s dramatic progression, it’s only six episodes long: how much dramatic progression do you expect (sources say the ABC sent the first two episodes out to reviewers, so Enker was writing having seen a third of the show)? Considering the mate’s rates reviews Laid has been getting, it seems equally as likely that the shift in response to Roo’s character only came about when the reviewers saw the final episode and realised the whole story only really makes any kind of sense if Roo has been a bit of a bitch in her dating history. Which we guessed a few weeks back – not because we have the slightest idea what we’re talking about, but because it was screamingly obvious that there was no other way for the story to end.
Laid was an inconsistently scripted, frequently poorly acted, rarely funny sitcom designed to pander to a middle class audience that prides itself on its sophisticated sense of humour – one that involves plenty of saying “that’s hilarious” and very little actual laughing. All that’s fine: those people need television too, and tweeting about Q&A can’t fill up their entire week. But when it’s given a second series (despite the idea of a second series making about as much sense as a sequel to Titanic) seemingly on the back of glowing reviews almost entirely written by Marieke Hardy’s mates, then something has to be done. And thus, a snarky blog post is born.
The Audacity of Hype
We’ve heard a lot in the past week about how the BBC would screen exclusive footage from Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys as part of their biennial fundraiser Comic Relief. Appearing on Comic Relief is obviously a massive coup for any Australian comedian – Comic Relief is a long-established, high-rating spectacular featuring the cream of British comedy talent – but it’s notable that Lilley’s Angry Boys wasn’t considered one of the highlights in Britain.
Throughout the broadcast there were numerous plugs for comedians who would be on soon, but the first plug for Angry Boys didn’t come until around 12.20am. There was another plug for it 10 minutes later, and also mentioned as coming soon were Australia’s own Axis of Awesome, but anyone wanting to watch either would clearly have to force themselves to stay awake.
Finally, at some point after 1am, when a large chunk of the audience had probably gone to bed after a hard weeks work, about three and a half minutes of Angry Boys was shown. If you want to see it, it’s on YouTube. Then again, why bother? It’s just more of the same.
Axis of Awesome, who performed their 4 Chords Song, were on about 20 minutes after the Angry Boys preview. They performed live and went down really well with the studio audience. The Angry Boys clips, despite getting a big build-up from the quartet of celebrities who introduced it, didn’t get much of a reaction from the audience, who didn’t seem to have heard of Chris Lilley or find the clips funny.
It’s fascinating that no one in the Australian media has noted this, or questioned the fact that Lilley seems to be basically making the same programme over and over again.
Anger is an Energy
There’s a clip from Chris Lilley’s upcoming series Angry Boys currently doing the rounds (for example, here), and surprise surprise, it contains no surprises whatsoever. Well, maybe it does if you were expecting Lilley to do anything new or different now that he’s playing with the big boys (Angry Boys is co-funded by the BBC and HBO), because judging from this clip* we can look forward to six hours** of more of the same three characters*** Lilley’s been serving up (with minor variations) for the last decade****.
*yes, it’s a one-minute clip. Maybe the rest of the show is going to be wildly different. But c’mon: the Japanese mother is a mix of Ja’ime and Ricky Wong, and the twins are from We Can Be Heroes. It’s hardly a sign of an artist looking to stretch himself.
**you didn’t know? Initially announced as a 10 part series, Angry Boys seems to have grown to 12. It’s up to viewers to decide whether this is because Lilley’s work is so hysterical he couldn’t cut it any further, or so meandering and self-obsessed that once again we’ll have a series with a couple of plot-heavy eps at the start, a couple at the end, and a big stretch in the middle where Lilley seems to just be amusing himself.
***did anyone else think that with a title like “Angry Boys”, Lilley was actually going to head down the path blazed by Jonah in Summer Heights High and create some characters with at least a trace of depth? Prior to Jonah, Lilley’s “drama” consisted largely of smashing stereotypes together (Mr G versus “the system”, Ricky Wong versus his dad): if he’d taken a step forward with Jonah’s personal issues, this looks like a big step back.
****at the end of this series, Lilley will have made 26-half hour episodes of basically the same program. Considering that program is pretty much a one-man show focused entirely on him, is this some kind of record? And, considering how young Lilley still is, is there any chance of him doing anything seriously different in his career? Or in twenty years time will he still be frocking up and making fun of Asians?
The Twenty Twelve Games
One of the biggest stories in comedy in both Australia and Britain in the past week has centred on the allegations made by The Games‘ writers and creators John Clarke and Ross Stevenson on The Drum Unleashed.
According to their article, over a period of “almost four years”, conversations and correspondence about producing a British version of The Games took place between Clarke, Stevenson, Rick McKenna (producer of Kath & Kim, who acted on Clarke and Stevenson’s behalf), Jon Plowman (producer of countless BBC comedies and latterly Head of BBC Comedy) and writer John Morton (People Like Us). During this period Morton “was lent DVDs of The Games” and “acknowledged he had never previously seen nor heard of the show and was impressed and keenly interested” in being involved.
The conversations and correspondence then appear to have ended (why is unclear and no reasons were given in The Drum article), but now Twenty Twelve, a satirical mockumentary about the organising of the London 2012 Olympics which, say Clarke and Stevenson, bears “marked conceptual similarities to The Games”, has been made for the BBC. The writer and director of Twenty Twelve is John Morton and the Executive Producer is Jon Plowman.
An open and shut case of plagiarism you might think? Not according to the BBC, who told Chortle the other day:
Twenty Twelve is an original and distinctive comedy series looking at London as it counts down the last 1,000 days before the 2012 Games begin. It is written by John Morton who created People Like Us and Broken News for the BBC. Its comedy is delivered through a distinctively British sense of humour.
We have investigated the complaints made in relation to The Games and have found no evidence to support the allegations of copying. No use has been made of any material deriving from The Games and we are confident that the allegations are without foundation.
There are, as Tony Martin pointed out on Twitter, questions to be raised from that statement:
1. As the BBC is accused of stealing the idea, are they the right people to ‘investigate’ the complaint and find it ‘without foundation’?
2. Why no denial that Morton had seen the DVDs? Presumably because no-one is disputing that he did. Therefore…
Although it’s also notable that, as far as we are aware, Clarke and Stevenson have yet to take any action beyond penning their piece for The Drum and presumably being the ones who made the complaint to the BBC. Here’s why: plagiarism could not be proven in this case unless an episode of Twenty Twelve contains lines, characters or plots that are identical or extremely similar to lines, characters or plots in The Games. The evidence of four years of conversations and correspondence between Clarke, Stevenson, McKenna, Plowman and Morton does not prove that plagiarism has taken place. Ross Stevenson, who is a lawyer, is no doubt painfully aware of this.
We have watched the first episode of Twenty Twelve and could not find lines or characters in it that are like any in any episode of The Games, although the are slight similarities between the situations in the two shows. We see no reason to disbelieve Clarke and Stevenson’s claims, and we do not endorse the practices they suggest have taken place, but the similarities between The Games and Twenty Twelve pretty much begin and end at “conceptual similarities”.
Autopsy Ambulance
It’s already become established wisdom that the failure of Live From Planet Earth comes down to one man: Ben Elton. (ok, and twitter, but let’s come back to that later) LFPE stunk on ice not because of Elton’s actual stand-up – generally acknowledged to be the best thing about the show and the only thing really worth saving from it – but because he was also the man writing all the sketches. Or was he?
In late 2010 a “comedy insider” passed on the news to one of us that a bunch of 7pm Project writers – some of whom had come across from The White Room and The Bounce – had left that show to go work on Elton’s upcoming project at Nine. At the time, it was interesting mostly for the way it suggested that The 7pm Project was moving even further away from its original comedy concept. But in the light of the repeated line that Elton was writing everything over at LFPE– parroted by critics across the land – this info was a little puzzling.
Had they hired writers then sacked them without them ever putting pen to paper? Were writers just sounded out but never hired? Did the writers get the ball rolling before being shunted aside? Had our source got things totally balls-up? Was this our big chance to pitch an All The President’s Men-style movie about a massive cover-up in the comedy biz? Well, kinda. Except for the movie pitch part, that’s definitely going to happen (only about Hey Hey it’s Saturday).
We’ve since discovered – thanks to another “comedy insider” – that there actually was a writers room on Live From Planet Earth, but that they had “very little influence or input” regarding the finished product. So it seems Elton shouldn’t shoulder all the blame after all – there was a team of writers helping (to some extent) put the sketches together. But why weren’t they credited in the first place? Rumour has it that Elton has it in his contracts these days that he be credited as the sole writer on his television shows – but that’s just a rumour (if anyone knows more either way, we’d love to have it confirmed / denied).
Unsurprisingly, as the show went to air it seems those involved were increasingly pleased that they weren’t being credited for their involvement, and it’s hardly likely they’d be rushing to put it on their resumes now. So we’ll probably never know how much real involvement the writers had on the show; Elton’s hardly likely to suddenly say “I blame my writers” (and who would believe him), while the writers themselves weren’t credited at the time so why ‘fess up later to such a train wreck?
It’s hard to feel bad for Elton in all this, even if he’s been attacked for something that wasn’t (strictly, entirely) his responsibility. He was the man in charge, and his stamp was all over the finished product. Still, he wasn’t alone on this particular sinking ship, so the blame should be spread around at least a little. “A little”, by the way, doesn’t mean “to people on twitter”, who… I mean, c’mon…
Seriously, having people like The Age‘s entertainment writers Karl Quinn and Jim Schembri claim that the evil hordes of twitter whipped up a hatestorm that sank Live From Planet Earth only makes sense once you realise they’re so scared that twitter will make their jobs as taste-makers obsolete they’re running the kind of scare campaign that usually features the dead rising from their graves.
Let’s break their version of events down: Twitter is full of nameless people who get off on their own hate, so when an easy target came along like #LFPE they whipped themselves into such a frenzy of baseless hate that the show itself didn’t stand a chance. Only hang on: Twitter isn’t like some guy with a megaphone strapped to the roof of his car circling your block – you have to actually be part of Twitter to see what people are saying on Twitter. And if Twitter is mostly used by haters, how does their message of hate get outside the circle of hate to infect the rest of the viewing public? Who, let’s not forget, have to have been incapable of realising on their own that the show was no good for this theory to make sense?
Live From Planet Earth seems to have been such a disaster that for once the blame has to be laid somewhere. Problem is, what we’ve got is the media attacking outsiders – whether on the internet or from overseas – instead of trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. It might help the press paint the picture they’re interested in painting, but how does it help ensure that this kind of disaster doesn’t happen again? After all, some of us would actually like to see Australian comedy on our televisions again…