Australian Tumbleweeds
Power Without Glory 2: Check Out My Sweet Tatts!
The Tumbleweed awards might be right around the corner (we’re still aiming to have the results up Jan 26th, but don’t be worried if they’re a little late: 2010 was a big year in comedy and Hey Hey-hating, and it’s taking us longer than expected to tidy up the mess), but don’t think we’ve taken our eyes off the future of Australian comedy here at Tumbelweeds central – and, according to the Life magazine found in this Sunday’s Age and Sydney Morning Herald, the future of Australian comedy (until mid-March at least) is Marieke Hardy and her new dramedy Laid.
If you’ve ever wondered why we bother writing a blog like this, this three page cover story on Hardy and her work pretty much ticks all the boxes. And not just because for a mere two pages of text we get four photos of Hardy looking “sexy” (the cover, contents page, two page spread at the article’s start, one more pic on the second page – oh, forgot the Age’s cover where we learn Hardy’s “passion is drunk men”). Wow, if they’re focusing that much on her looks, her writing must be awesome!
For those not in the know, the premise of Laid is that a 20-something gal discovers that all the men she’s slept with are now mysteriously dying off. Let’s quote the article itself: it’s “a six part TV series whose central character, 29 year-old market researcher Roo McVie, might be somewhat unremarkable if she didn’t apparently have the power to inadvertently kill men by sleeping with them”. This premise, according to article author Alyssa McDonald, is “intrinsically funny”.
No it’s not.
Let’s go over that premise one more time: a young woman learns that all the men she’s ever slept with are dying off one by one. Maybe if you’re an emotionless psychopath this is hilarious. Perhaps if you’re a sex-hating ball-buster that set-up might bring the kaks. Could be the idea of sending a young woman into a spiral of self-doubt and loathing over the murderous intentions of her genitals makes you split your sides. But in the real world pretty much everyone actually feels at the very least a slight twinge of sadness and loss over the demise of a former lover; having this happen over and over and over again to someone is intrinsically shattering – the comedy is something you’re going to have to work at.
Yeah yeah, we know about “dark comedy”. We’re also fully aware that in the hands of a skilled practitioner just about anything can be spun into comedy gold. Which is where this article’s real problems begin. See, by assuming that Hardy and her once-mentioned writing partner Kate “Fisho” (that’s not us – the article actually calls her that) Fisher have come up with an “intrinsically hilarious” concept, McDonald feels no need or desire to actually explain to the reader why Hardy is a name they can trust in comedy. As pointed out above though, this concept is actually not spun comedy gold. In fact, it’s kind of a tricky one to make work (for one, what can Roo do about it? It’s not an idea that lends itself to action unless her ex’s are being killed by someone, and then it’s just a shit episode of Murder She Wrote). So where are the reassurances that Hardy is a writer of sufficient talent to bring it off?
Well, we’re told that Hardy “has worked, on and off, as a TV scriptwriter” since her teens. Oddly for an article about a television writer, no actual TV shows she’s worked on are listed (don’t worry, there’s two fat paragraphs about her quirky character-defining adoration for Bob Ellis), so let’s fill in that gap: Packed to the Rafters, anyone? Got yourself some cutting-edge comedy there. She did also quit her job writing for The Age –
[what’s that? You didn’t know she was a former Age TV columnist, because this article in The Age about how awesome this former Age writer is doesn’t mention that she worked for The Age’s Green Guide for years? How odd that they didn’t mention that in The Age…]
-to go work on the second series of :30 Seconds, only that never actually happened. And let’s not forget her real main achievement in Australian television: Last Man Standing, a justly forgotten Secret Life of Us knock-off for Seven notable largely for not being very notable at all. Though that episode that had the same plot as that episode of Andy Richter Controls the Universe where Andy dated a hot racist was pretty funny.
Slightly more interesting than the way this article glosses over her somewhat chequered TV writing career is the way that her teenage scriptwriting career is in no way linked to the revelation (carefully distanced over on the next page) that both her parents are writers and television producers. Ah. Okay.
So what this article really should have been about is how a skilled self-promoter (sexy photos? Don’t see Judith Lucy posing for a lot of those) and general media dogsbody (12 years on radio, you say? Columnist for the Age and ABC? Panellist on the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club too?) overcame a limited resume, no actual comedy experience (she’s not a stand-up and she hasn’t worked on any of Australia’s purpose-built comedy shows) and a high-profile flop to get a six-part comedy series on the ABC.
That’s not even a negative story: surely overcoming the fizzle of Last Man Standing is a triumph? Especially when it involves working your way up through the ranks again on commercial television and making loads of important contacts all over the ABC (did we mention her big paid radio gig was on ABC youth station Triple J? No? Oddly, neither did this article).
Problem there is, then you might get the idea that Ms Hardy is someone who actually works for a living, getting ahead in the Australian media the way lots of people do: through contacts and networking. She worked for The Age: now she’s getting a profile in The Age. She worked for the ABC on radio, as a TV panelist and an internet columnist: now she’s got her own show on the ABC. Mystery solved.
And it’s hardly like this article paints a picture of her as a big league television talent anyway – as pointed out, it only mentions her previous efforts in the vaguest of terms. Her blog is named; none of the television shows she worked on are. But don’t worry: she’s still a vegan. Like anyone gives a shit.
In a perfect world, there’d only be two reasons for this kind of pointless puff piece: either Hardy is so amazing an individual she’s worth reading about simply because of who she is, or she’s a writer so excellent and exciting we need to know more about the person behind such fascinating work.
In the real world, where quirky hipster chicks aren’t exactly thin on the ground, skilled soapie writers have entire careers without a single name-check in the press and columnists who ignore the “thought” side of “thought-provoking” clog the internet, the only reason to read this article is to see how utterly irrelevant hard work and talent are when it comes to getting media attention in this country.
In Laid’s case, whether they’re equally as irrelevant when it comes to making television comedy remains to be seen.
Yet Another Thing to Thank Tony Martin For
Remember the “good old days” of Australian comedy DVD releases, where extra features were a joke instead of actually containing more jokes? But as everyone who scored a copy of series 3 of The Librarians for Christmas now knows, All That’s Changed: not only does this particular slice of Aussie comedy hilarity contain a descent chunk of extra features (inc all of the Sir Robert Franklin clips and a couple of table reads, which is really going above and beyond the call of duty), but there’s also an easily found and highly enjoyable selection of Easter Eggs as well. Hurrah! Especially as one of those EEs consists of Tony Martin singing “US Forces” in the style of the Federal Environment Minister.
The reason why Tony Martin’s getting all the thanks here – it’s a Gristmill production, after all – is down to a): his near-constant presence in those extras, and b): a scene where Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope basically say “is that going to be enough extras to keep Tony happy?” Yes, it seems that Tony’s love of DVD extras isn’t just part of his comedy persona, it’s reached out into the real world – and we’re all the better for it.
Of course, some may point to the amazing amount of extras available on Chris Lilley’s DVDs. And sure, hour upon hour of deleted scenes seems pretty impressive there. But let’s be honest: you’re not getting Lilley doing commentary on any of his shows, are you? All you’re getting are the plentiful offcuts from a filming process that generates deleted scenes at the same rate as a ACA “special report” on youth crime churns out cliches.
No, it’s Mr Martin who we (mostly) have to thank for the current golden age of DVD extras… or we do until we realise The Chaser aren’t too shabby with the DVD extras either. Ditto John Safran. And those Micallef P(r )ogram(me) DVDs… ah heck, just forget we said anything…
(The Librarians s3 DVD does have some excellent extras though)
Don’t forget to cast your vote in the Australian Tumbleweeds 2010. You have until 31st December 2010 to register your votes and snarky comments at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumbliesvotes.
Stop It, He’s Already Dead
While there hasn’t yet been an official announcement – and who knows, the way things work these days there may never be one – it seems increasingly likely that we have, finally, seen the last of Hey Hey it’s Saturday. It’s a result that should surprise no-one capable of rational thought: for all the cheering from the peanut gallery when Hey Hey moved to a Saturday timeslot after frankly disastrous ratings on a Wednesday night, a Saturday timeslot didn’t make it any cheaper to make and made it a lot harder to attract enough viewers to make it worthwhile. After all, viewers on a Saturday don’t count double ratings-wise.
For some reason, many Hey Hey fans couldn’t figure this out. Seemingly driven entirely by nostalgia cut free from any real-world constraints, they asserted that once Hey Hey was back on Saturday nights its long-lost audience would somehow rise from the dead to watch it in droves before heading out for a big night at The Chevron or The Metro (feel free to add further early 90s nightclubs as appropriate). They were wrong. Very, very wrong. So wrong in fact that anyone who joined the “bring back Hey Hey” Facebook page should be banned from any job requiring decision-making skills for the rest of their now-meaningless lives.
But it’s not entirely their fault. Strong ratings for the first few episodes of Hey Hey this year suggest that people actually do want to see live entertainment and comedy on in prime time – they just didn’t want to see the same old crap Daryl Somers has been serving up since 1992. The success of the 2009 reunion specials was so obviously down to nostalgia even mainstream TV writers picked up on it: why Nine let Daryl return with 20 episodes virtually unchanged from the show that was axed due to low ratings a decade earlier would be a mystery if not for the fact that the networks are always pulling bonehead moves like that.
As for Daryl… who gives a shit? He’s already proved he doesn’t give a shit about his viewers, constantly talking about the ways he was going to make Hey Hey into a new and more attractive show before he got on air, then claiming the fans would riot if he made a single change once he was back. Yep, Celebrity Head was that big a cultural icon. Well, in one particular “celebrity” head at least.
If you’re an Hey Hey fan, ask yourself this: by bringing back basically the same show that had been axed, what did Daryl think had changed since 1999? By the mid-1990s Hey Hey’s best years were obviously behind it, the hilarious segments and quirky sketches and a general feeling that anything could happen replaced by drawn out banter that went nowhere, Daryl convulsing with laughter at jokes no-one else found all that funny, and a man in a duck suit running around in circles for minutes on end before dry humping some stage equipment. Yep, a million people every week were going to turn their backs on downloading the latest overseas comedy and YouTube clips of wacky pranks to check that shit out in 2010.
Let’s be blunt: from day one it was obvious that Daryl felt his show was stolen from him in its 27-year-prime when it was axed the first time and by putting to air the exact same show (ok, he tinkered around the edges) in 2010 he hoped to prove these nameless executives wrong once and for all. Well, he sure showed them. Bet they’re still smarting from that one. Ouch.
So Hey Hey’s done: why dredge up the past? Well, for one thing because the past just might be repeating itself. When Hey Hey was grinding to a halt the first time, Nine – wanting to keep the variety show crown that Hey Hey had helped them hang onto for decades – commissioned a bunch of new shows hosted by promising talent. For a brief moment, it looked like Nine seriously wanted to get into the comedy business, with shows from the then-unknown but promising Rove McManus and the critically successful Mick Molloy and Shaun Micallef. Hurrah!
And then it all went wrong. Rove and Micallef’s shows lasted one series; Molloy’s show was axed after eight episodes. After that Nine gave up on comedy for the most part, handing the variety crown to the various Footy Shows. It’s not that hard to see why either: Nine’s “corporate culture” (for want of a better word) likes its comedy and variety broad, blokey, and obvious – Sam Newman in a dress / Warnie talking to his mates stuff. Hey Hey delivered that by the bucketload: whatever their flaws, Rove, Micallef and Molloy aren’t the types to let a blackface act on their shows.
So around the turn of the century you had a situation where the network was still comfortable with the Hey Hey style but the viewers increasingly weren’t there. The network’s replacements were all shows they didn’t really like, and when the ratings weren’t massive out the gate they each got the axe. Ten years later, and what has Nine lined up for 2011 light entertainment-wise? Ben Elton’s got a talk show, John Clarke’s doing a new series of The Games, and Tony Martin and Ed Kavalee are doing a show making fun of television called (currently) The Joy of Sets. See where this is heading? Anyone think any of those shows will get the 20 episode commitment Hey Hey got?
We’ve said numerous times on this blog that the reason why we hate on the bad as well as praise the good is because Australian television comedy is a zero-sum game. There are only so many timeslots to go around, and every time a bad show gets one a good one is pushed out of the way. So while some might say 2011 looks like a great year for local comedy thanks to Nine’s promising line-up, it’s just as important to realise that 2010 was a shit year because the resources that might have gone into three promising shows instead went into a pointless revival of a proven turd.
Idiots often say “if you don’t like it, don’t watch it”; we say “what are we supposed to watch instead?” Having Hey Hey it’s Saturday back in 2010 meant that we couldn’t watch a bunch of new or different shows we really might have liked, because its return meant they did not exist. Make no mistake, we’re celebrating its demise now. But those suckholes in the media that talked it up beyond any reasonable level and those chumps on the internet who demanded its return shouldn’t get away scott free. A “we were wrong” note in the local paper would be a good place to start.
Don’t forget to cast your vote in the Australian Tumbleweeds 2010. You have until 31st December 2010 to register your votes and snarky comments at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumbliesvotes.
A flannelled panel and a premier premiere
This time of year usually signals the start of a two month-long drought of repeats and programmes too bad to be broadcast during the ratings season. But in a surprise move both ABC1 and The Comedy Channel have launched new panel shows in the past week.
You can see the thinking behind it. 2010 has seen a number of panel shows premiere to great hype and then be swiftly axed. In the relatively low pressure environment of the summer, new shows should have an easier run.
Not that they necessarily need the help. ABC1’s offering, The Trophy Room, is basically a sports version of Spicks & Specks. Sport’s something a lot of people like, Spicks & Specks is something a lot of people like – how could it fail to run for years?
Like Spicks & Specks, The Trophy Room seems to have been designed with a variety of audiences in mind. The very knowledgeable and the almost novice can all find questions to answer in the quiz rounds, and if you didn’t enjoy that don’t worry, there’ll be a wacky party game along any second now.
Apart from that, the team captains are inoffensive, host Peter Helliar manages to get some laughs, guest panellist and very good friend of the Tumblies Sam Simmons was quite entertaining, and there are some nice little sporting touches like oranges being brought out at half time and spoof post-match interviews with the panellists running during the credits.
The problem with The Trophy Room is it’s just not that exciting. Like Spicks & Specks it’s destined to be the sort of show you don’t dislike, but don’t watch religiously. Or at all, unless someone you really like’s on.
A better watch, if laughs are your priority, is The Comedy Channel’s Statesmen of Comedy. Hosted by Trevor Marmalade this is a very light-touch panel show which is more about the chat than the games. Three comedians talk about various topics for most of the show and there’s a quick quiz at the end where the winner gets a slab.
What made the the first episode work was the chemistry. Host Trevor Marmalade and guests Shane Bourne, Jane Kennedy and Tim Smith all know and like each other, meaning the chat and the laughs flowed easily. This is quite a feat for a brand new show, as well as a useful reminder of the importance of good casting.
You can’t just stick a bunch of different people behind a desk and expect the good times to roll. Great comedy’s about timing and chemistry, and generally involves a small group of people who understand each other, working together to get laughs.
According to TV Tonight upcoming episodes of Statesmen of Comedy will feature Glenn Robbins, Jason Stephens & Greg Fleet, and Peter Rowsthorn, Rachel Berger & Anthony Morgan. They sure sound like good trios – could this be the surprise comedy hit of summer?
Don’t forget to cast your vote in the Australian Tumbleweeds 2010. You have until 31st December 2010 to register your votes and snarky comments at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumbliesvotes.
Voting starts now!
The nominations have been counted, the donkey votes weeded-out and the attempts at vote-rigging discarded (we’re naming no names, but let’s just say the attempts to skew the results in a particular way were screamingly obvious…partly because they were completely out of step with how most people were nominating).
That aside, we now move on to voting. Head to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tumbliesvotes to make your choices.
As usual we’re inviting you to comment on your choice in each category. The best comments will appear in our glittering awards ceremony to take place on or about Australia Day.
Voting closes on 31st December 2010. One vote each, please. Votes from obvious fraudsters will be discarded.
With voting now under way we will resume blogging, although only about shows and people not up for an award. Look out for our incisive views on The Chaser’s 2010 Annual Eat, Pray, Vomit very soon. In fact here they are…
Meh.
And don’t forget to fan us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You can tweet your whatever about Tumblies 2010 using the hashtag #tumblies, and follow the lucky nominees on our almost pointless Twitter list.
Tumblies 2010 nominations are go!
We are pleased to announce that nominations are now open for the 2010 Australian Tumbleweeds.
To make things easier – and because you demanded it – you can nominate through the Survey Monkey website at http://www.surveymonkey.net/tumbliesnoms
In a number of categories we’ve provided lists of possible or suggested nominees, but there is also the option to write-in your choice(s) if they aren’t listed. You can make up to four nominations in each of the 29 categories.
You have until late night (Melbourne time) on Friday 3rd December to complete your nominations. Voting opens on 6th December.
In the interests of neutrality, we will keep blog posts to a minimum during the nominations and voting period….although it’s difficult to restrain ourselves from commenting on this article which appeared on TV Tonight yesterday.
The ABC has now ruled that it will not commission used formats. The ban comes from Director of Television Kim Dalton.
…
“We’re the only broadcaster that won’t do second hand formats,” [Stuart Menzies, Controller for ABC2] said, describing his aim as making ABC2 “creatively and intellectually distinctive”.
If that actually happens we’ll be whooping for joy. If it doesn’t, that’s Tumblies 2011 done and dusted!
Don’t forget to fan us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You can tweet your whatever about Tumblies 2010 using the hashtag #tumblies.
The Other WTF
Just as Charles Firth’s WTF was finishing on GO!, a new WTF started on Melbourne’s Channel 31 – With Tim Ferguson. Described on its website as “a reactionary Live TV show” and “shock-jock radio with pictures”, With Tim Ferguson is a part comic/part serious look at politics, current affairs and culture.
Much of the show is taken up by Ferguson giving his views on various issues, views which are often nuanced and unconventional. He’s neither on the left or the right, he’s somewhere in between. Or possibly on a different political spectrum entirely. Either way, he’s clearly got a bee in his bonnet about The Greens, sometimes giving them more of a drubbing than the politicians who are currently in office (or might soon to be depending on the results of the Victorian State Election).
With a stick of broccoli in one hand (Greens…geddit?), Ferguson makes gags about pretentious, pashmina-wearing, inner city, Prius-driving Greens voters, and follows them up with some more serious analysis of The Greens’ policies. Roughly summarised, his view is this: The Greens want to fundamentally change our way of life and we don’t want that. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, he’s at least spent some time thinking them through – it’s more the cliched gags about pashminas that let him down.
Another feature of the show is the weekly theme, a theme which sometimes seems designed to annoy as many in the audience as possible. In episode one it was “satisfied Indian students”, although their presence seemed unlikely to rile the average Channel 31 viewer. A better bet was probably the “young monarchists” in episode two. And in particular one of their number, university student Timothy Maddocks, who Ferguson interviewed.
The intereview with Maddocks is on YouTube, should you wish to watch it, but the basic deal is that Maddocks claimed to have become a monarchist because a person he thought was “a berk” was a republican and he “just decided to be contrary”. (Oh, and he happened to have conservative political views already, so it probably wasn’t much of a stretch.) To be fair to Maddocks, he seems intelligent and probably has a serious basis for his view, but none of that really came across in the interview, which was riddled with muddled points and crap gags, which Ferguson over-indulged. Indeed, Ferguson ended the interview with…
Great to have you here Timothy, and good luck – and if you see him shake his hand because he is actually a rebel, not the spliff-rolling beanie wearers.
…so clearly anyone who’s going against the tide is going to float Fergo’s boat.
Also on the show are three regular “thinkers”, stand-up and journalist Fiona Scott-Norman, film producer Alan Finney, and Strictly Speaking judge and former Labor speech writer Michael Gurr. Fiona Scott-Norman’s contribution each week is a short, stand-up style monologue on various topical issues. Her jokes are OK but her delivery is pretty awkward, and after six shows she’s showing no signs of improvement. Alan Finney’s segment involves him reading out a synopsis for a possible new Australian film. The synopsis’ are usually a satire on something topical, and pretty wordy – too wordy to make a good monologue, really, particularly the way Finney delivers them. As for Michael Gurr, each week he plays a put-upon character in a two-hander with Ferguson. These sketches are weak – more odd than funny – and Gurr’s a bit of a ham actor (not in a good way, sadly).
All up, With Tim Ferguson is a kinda disappointing programme. As interesting as Tim Ferguson’s views are, he’s too preoccupied with a desire to shit-stir, and his attempt to create a hybrid of comedy, variety, current affairs and political discussion has just resulted in a messy half-hour of community television. Most disappointing is the comedy, especially when you consider Ferguson’s past success in this area. If as much thought went into the comedy as has gone into the politics, With Tim Ferguson would be a much better show.
Long Overdue
Right from its first episode, The Librarians (ABC1, Wednesdays, 8.30pm) has been surprisingly divisive, in that it was neither obvious rubbish or amazingly hysterical. More insightful critics than us might want to discuss whether being able to provide support for shows that aren’t either pandering crap or clear genius is a sign of maturity for the Australian television industry: we just like things that are funny.
That said, it’s been pretty obvious this year that season three of The Librarians has been taking a slightly different approach. Creators and stars Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope have said in interviews that this year they felt they’d established the characters enough and it was time to have some fun with them. Some might feel that establishing the characters in a sitcom should take the first five minutes of the first episode, thus paving the way for the “having fun” viewers have come to see a good six hours earlier into the run, but… well, let’s introduce the contrasting view first.
In this week’s Age Green Guide (dated Thursday November 11), reviewer Bridget McManus writes: “In a case not so much of jumping the shark as failing to live up to rather optimistic expectations, The Librarians seems to have lost sight of its original subtlety and is milking its set-ups dry”.
The problem here is obvious: McManus has confused “subtlety” with “not actually being funny”. And that’s speaking as a fan of the first two series. A sit-com should “milk its set-ups dry”: that’s the whole point. If there are laughs to be had, those laughs should be taken – no-one walks away from a good sitcom thinking “yeah, but if only they’d taken it a little further, that would have been really funny”.
In case you were worried we were going her a little hard, McManus goes on to prove our already low opinion of her judgment in comedy matters with this: “Whereas once we cringed at the non-PC snorts of head librarian Frances (co-creator Robyn Butler), now it feels as if we’re all supposed to be having a laugh at people in wheelchairs and ethnic minorities”.
Let’s start at the start: if you think the sign of a good comedy is cringing rather than laughing, you fail. At life. One more time for the late arrivals: good comedy makes you laugh – it doesn’t make you feel pain. That’s a rule you simply can’t get around, and the only people who support the idea of “cringe comedy” are people who do not or can not laugh but don’t want to be left out when people talk about comedy around the watercooler. Of course, you can laugh at awful things and situations – Christ knows we do around here – and obviously some jokes are cruel and offensive, but when you say that your idea of good comedy is one that makes you cringe rather than laugh, you’ve got your head up your arse.
Next point: after six hours often taken up with character-establishing “cringe comedy”, The Librarians has reached a point where jokes about people in wheelchairs and minorities are not the kind of offensive crap Ricky Gervais paraded out in the second series of The Office. There he tried to have it both ways: “Oh, David Brent’s horrible, see how badly he treats that girl in a wheelchair… of course, if you’re actually laughing at the girl in the wheelchair, we’ll take that too.”
By this third series of The Librarians, we’ve already had twelve half-hour episodes establishing the characters of Dawn, Nada and everyone else. They’ve been around long enough that jokes at their expense are now jokes about them as characters, not as stereotypes – unless McManus is saying that it’s never ever possible to make funny jokes about people in wheelchairs or homosexuals or people who belong to ethnic minorities. Which is true if the jokes are simply about them as stereotypes, but again, after six hours of television time we know them well enough as characters to see them as more than just “person in wheelchair” – and there doesn’t seem to have been a sudden spate of “all people in wheelchairs are like Dawn” gags just yet.
Just to make things abundantly clear, the third season of The Librarians has been the best yet, and that’s because it’s increasingly silly and willing to have a mess around with all the characters. As a character, Frances worked largely in the first two series because of Robyn Butler’s ability as an actress to make a painful, uptight, sneering character seem slightly watchable. As mentioned earlier, the more this series moves away from the old power structure where we were supposed to cringe at the awful way she treated her underlings, and towards a model where she’s under at least as much pressure herself as she can dole out to others, the funnier it gets. And, y’know, Bob Franklin is always funny in everything, so there’s that.
Everyone’s entitled to the right opinion, which fortunately isn’t McManus’ one. The Librarians is hardly perfect, but looked at from at least one perspective – the one where comedy should be funny – this third (and, if some rumours are to be believed, final) series is a distinct and obvious step up from what’s gone before. After all, what’s the point of comedy: to make you laugh, or to make you think “gee, that last comment about immigrants was kind of embarrassing”?
Painters & Dockers’ hits that never happened #34: We’re All Going to Comedy School
[in which a throwaway moment in a show about something else entirely is hijacked for our own purposes]
Early on the first episode of Comedy School (SBS, Saturday’s, 9.45) – a show that follows a group of would-be stand-up comedians at a East Sydney community college course – teacher Rob McHugh writes on the whiteboard that “Stand-up comedy is hard, lonely & vicious”. The students gasp when it’s revealed that the quote’s originator is Will Ferrell, and rightly so – just not for the reason the show gives.
They’re shocked because Ferrell seems to embody an easy-going, lets-have-fun approach to comedy. They should be shocked because Ferrell isn’t actually a stand-up comedian. He’s a comic actor. He doesn’t make his living touring America and the world appearing on stage telling jokes: he’s in movies playing characters. Before that he was on Saturday Night Live playing characters, and before that he was playing characters on stage. If these students want to do what Ferrell does, they’ve come to the wrong place.
Apart from casting doubt on the competence of McHugh, this is hardly a fatal flaw in his course. It’s just a quote used to point out that comedy – like everything else – isn’t all fun and games. And whether you can actually teach comedy is beside the point too. After all, we all know that there are two kinds of documentaries about “making it” in a creative / sporting endeavour: the realistic ones that say it’s a massive amount of work simply to get to a stage where you might have a tiny chance at being a d-grade star, and the feel-good ones that say you just need to do a course / appear in the right venue and it’ll just all fall into place.
Of the two – Hoop Dreams is a good example of the former, your average TV talent show of the latter – this falls firmly in the “feel-good” camp. In the real world the people who become successful in comedy, much like any other competitive field, have been obsessed with it since childhood, have studied it (often informally but passionately) for many years, and even then often fail to be anything more than some mildly annoying chump on a panel show. People who do a one-month course at community college while they’re in their 40s just have a bit of fun and learn something about themselves.
[When the voice-over starts saying stuff like: “Rose Lee’s road to comedy school began with breast cancer”, you know you’re not watching a show where the subjects are going to have their dreams crushed by the brutal reality of showbiz]
But the thing that’s annoying about the use of the Ferrell quote is that Australia doesn’t need courses teaching people to be stand-up comics: we need courses teaching people to be Will Ferrell. Our comedy clubs are already full of stand-ups, some of which are really good; meanwhile, Australian film and television is all but empty of comic actors who can be funny and interesting enough to keep you from putting your boot through the screen every time they pull a “hilarious” face.
Seriously, in 2010 the two major big-screen Australian comedies released in cinemas had as their leads Nick Giannopoulos and Brendan Cowell. For fuck’s sake. Whatever they might be like in real life, on screen they’re hardly guys overwhelming audiences with their charm and warmth. And yet, where are their replacements going to come from? We don’t even have sketch comedy in this country any more, so if you’re an actor who wants to be funny you can either focus on doing stand-up – which tends to encourage a brash, unsubtle style of performing that, let’s be honest, makes you look like a self-serving prick anywhere but on a stage – or focus on straight acting, which in Australia means rolling up your sleeves… and then shoving a needle in your arm to play yet another junkie in love. Yeah, that’ll get big laughs… at the box office.
So thanks, Comedy School. Not only are you training a bunch of likable low-talents in a career path that’s already over-populated, you’re holding up as an example someone who doesn’t even do what you’re teaching. And just in case you think we’re being a bit harsh on what is basically your typical “group of likable types go on a journey” doco series, there’s this line from McHugh early in the process: “To be a successful comedian, you’ve got to be funny”. Really? We’ll leave it up to you to point out the flaws in that argument…
And Never the Twain Shall Meet
Australian comedians doing ads: there must be a good example out there, but none currently leap to mind. Oh wait, Hoges advertising Winfield Cigarettes. And Norman Gunston doing those toilet paper ads (unless I just dreamed that one, in which case my subconscious deserves a job at McMahon & Tate). Anyway, they’re all thrust into the shade by the white-hot glare coming off this story helpfully titled “Chaser team moves into adland with Will O’Rourke”
It’s hard not to feel a little like a grumpy old fart as I wheel out the bog-standard Bill Hicks line about losing all your cred once you harness your talent to selling people crap they don’t need. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Sure, we’re all out to make as much cash as we can these days, and we expect everyone else to act likewise (there’s no weirder cinematic experience going at the moment than Made in Dagenham, a movie set in the late 1960s about workers who actually GO ON STRIKE despite their bosses loud protests that paying them one extra cent will result in their jobs going overseas. What, you mean there was a time when that line didn’t work?).
So no doubt as far as the cool kids are concerned, making a bit of spare change coming up with fun ads can’t really be a bad thing. As Julian Morrow said: “I’m looking forward to being a part of the creative collaborations that Will O’Rourke makes possible, and to taking the piss out of them at The Chaser.” Only that’s not really what’s going to happen, is it? After all, how’s it going to look to the folks at Will O’Rourke – the folks cutting Morrow, Craig Reucassel and Dominic Knight a pay check – if the guys they’re paying start making fun of the work they’re doing? Because everyone’s boss just loves being made fun of out there in public, right?
Some may say that, in hiring The Chaser, they know what they’re getting. And they’d be right. But there’s a big difference in knowing “we’re hiring a bunch of wacky pranksters who might bite the hand that feeds them” in the abstract, and turning on the ABC and seeing them mocking work they were paid to do. If you’ve ever had a boss, you know their sense of humour only ever stretches so far, and that’s usually just short of anyone making fun of anything they take seriously. Like, oh, their job making advertising. And the clients who pay them to do so.
[Here’s a tip for politicians worried about The Chaser (*pause for laughter*) – simply hire them to make an ad for you! That way, even if they do go the hack on you elsewhere, you can always make them look like ungrateful bastards by saying “they were happy to take my money earlier”. And if The Chaser really were the knife-edged satirists some would have us believe, this might actually happen)
But let’s be serious. No-one really expects The Chaser to ever make fun of a company that’s hired them. The Chaser might make fun of sick kids and ill-informed people wandering around shopping strips and politicians they then let on their show to demonstrate that it’s all been in good fun, but as “satirists” go they’ve never gone after anything too close to home. For example, the utter gutlessness of ABC management in failing to back them up in any way over the tabloid frenzy regarding their “Make a Realistic Wish” sketch might not be a topic worthy of extended comment, but a couple of pointed digs wouldn’t have gone astray.
So in the end – or in Australia in 2010, which is the same thing – this is really a non-story. Everyone already expects our comedians to be off making a buck with their talents any way they can, and if it destroys their artistic credibility… well, as long as they’re smart enough to get paid they’ll always get respect for that. And hey, maybe the ads’ll be funny! You know, like the ones on The Gruen Transfer…