Australian Tumbleweeds
Thank you Charlie
Am I mistaken, or did I actually see Charlie Pickering laugh so hard he put his head down on the podium and thump it with his fist during a recent episode of Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation? It’s a well-established fact that Charlie is perhaps the most appreciative fan of Shaun Micallef’s one-liners ever, but even based on his past performances this was a new level for him.
And was it on that exact same episode that, while Pickering was once again pissing himself over a throw-away line, that Micallef said dryly “thank you, Charlie?” No doubt he was honestly thanking his co-star for all the support. But as a huge fan of Micallef while not exactly loving every second of TAYG, it’s these moments of wild and groundless speculation – where Pickering’s laughter is maybe more about making sure the camera cuts to him and not either of the other team captains after Micallef’s gags (because after a joke, you want to show someone laughing), and Micallef occasionally feels the need to rein his OTT co-star in – that make watching Josh Thomas rummaging through a garbage bin tolerable.
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The second series of Wilfred seems to have been picking up mixed reviews – by which I mean, The Age’s Green Guide said “there’s only so far the conceit can stretch”. Yeah, that particular insight was old news by the second episode of series one – it’s a show about a bogan in a dog suit where the only joke is that, well, there’s a bogan in a dog suit and look, he’s got a bong! – so perhaps it might be more useful to, considering they’ve dragged this one-note joke out for another eight episodes, come up with something that digs a little bit deeper.
So with that in mind, and ahead of a no doubt longer (if in no way more insightful) review a few weeks further down the track, it seems only fair to point out that while the “hey, it’s a dog who acts like a bogan” jokes are still being remorselessly pounded into the ground, series two of Wilfred has managed to fix one of series one’s bigger annoyances. Instead of Wilfred being a bogan thug, his owner Sarah being a moody demanding sod and Adam being a nice guy stuck in the middle, Adam is – at least in the first episode – now a annoying pedantic knob (the other two remain unchanged).
It’s a minor shift, but an important one. In series one the comedy was often hamstrung by the power imbalance: watching someone powerless being picked on isn’t funny, it’s bullying… no matter how hard Ricky Gervais tries to pretend otherwise. The relationship was clearly meant to be that Sarah was so hot Adam would put up with both her bitchiness and Wilfred’s abuse, but over eight episodes it just turned into one long awkward passive-aggressive dinner party conversation between a couple everyone else knows is doomed.
With Adam now being a dick, problem solved: everyone on the show clearly deserves each other, and all the shit they put each other through is fair enough. It doesn’t make the show any funnier, but it does indicate that writers Adam Zwar and Jason Gann are stepping up a notch – and makes the prospect of Zwar’s upcoming behind-the-scenes-at-a-newspaper sitcom for the ABC a little more promising too.
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Part of the reason why it’s been so quiet around here this last week is because I’ve been plugging away at Akmal Saleh’s book The Life of Akmal in the hopes of… well, I don’t really know what I was hoping for. Some kind of review, obviously, but really, if you’re a comedy fan – and not just a fan of Akmal – there’s not a whole lot to say about this one.
Akmal himself comes across as a likable guy here, which is more than he’s done in any of his movie or TV appearances to date, and most of the stuff about his upbringing, religious background and home life is both interesting and kind of funny. But as far as the comedy stuff goes – and this isn’t a criticism really – it’s little more than a collection of slightly amusing stories about being on the road.
It’s not a criticism because this is obviously a book for people who like Akmal, not comedy. Personally, I was hoping for some stories about him television shows (wasn’t he on Mick Molloy’s ill-fated The Nation) and movies (You Can’t Stop the Murders, anyone?), but instead all I learnt was that Austen Tayshus is a bit of a prick. Which I kinda knew already.
Otherwise… well, it is a nice reminder of why Tony Martin’s books are so much better than these kind of things usually are. Akmal can tell a funny story, but – on the basis of this book – he can’t do much more than that, while Martin is always dropping in extra gags that both push things forward and give us a better idea of who he is as a person.
Put another way, Akmal seems like a nice guy but even when he’s talking about his trouble with women (mostly due to his religious upbringing), it rarely feels like we get under his skin. It’s the old stand-up trick writ large: don’t say anything personal or controversial that could put your audience off-side. They won’t laugh if they don’t like you.
So while he’s very open about what he’s done (apart from his TV and movie work, dammit), and his insights into Egypt are interesting stuff, I didn’t come away from this feeling like I knew anything at all about who he really was. Which is fine for a stand-up act:, in a comedy memoir, it’s a bit of a drawback.
A Plea for Preservation (pt 1)
If you’re anything like us, you’re constantly in awe at the vast collection of Australian television comedy that’s been released on DVD. Seriously, there’s a best-of collection of Graham Kennedy’s Coast to Coast: who ever expected that? But in this golden age of plenty, let’s not kid ourselves: there’s a heck of a lot of stuff out there that hasn’t been released on DVD yet, and a lot of it might never get there.
Which is why we figured now was as good a time as any to make a start on our list of shows / specials / whatever that we’d like to see get an official release. This list is only the beginning, so feel free to send us any suggestions you might have. We’re actually going to try and be reasonable about this rather than just making it a blatant wish list: sure, we’d all love to see a proper release – or even a dodgy bootleg – of Tony’ Martin’s Boytown Confidential mockumentary, but there are plenty of good reasons why that ain’t going to be happening (that said, if you’ve got a copy lying around the house, give us a call).
So for the most part we’re going to try and provide at least one decent reason why we think a particular request is reasonable. Of course, we live in a world where Let the Blood Run Free and Bogan Pride are out on DVD, so pretty much anything is possible. And if you’re thinking this is just a fishing expedition to see if anyone out there has copies of any of the following they’d like to share… well, you’re not exactly wrong. But some of these series are readily available through various back channels already: we just think that they deserve, for whatever reason, to be officially preserved for the ages. Or just for a boozey Friday night with some mates and a pizza.
1): Welcher & Welcher. Shaun Micallef’s to date only sitcom didn’t exactly set the world on fire on its’ first screening, but that’s not its’ fault. Some odd timing issues aside (it’s one of the few shows that would have been improved by a laugh track), it’s basically Micallef doing what he does best: being piss-funny. A solid collection of co-stars (Robyn Butler, Santo Cilauro, Francis Greenslade) don’t exactly hurt either. So where’s the DVD release? Don’t ask us, though we hear there’s a bit of a rights issue holding it back. But with Micallef currently riding high, surely this is the kind of release that would make someone some money.
2): Series Four of Full Frontal . The fine folks at Shock released series one, two and three – and then stopped. Why? Lack of interest – on their part, not the general public’s, as series Four is the one with all the really first-rate Micallef material and yes, we know there’s a separate all-Micallef DVD that collects a lot of that stuff. But there’s no harm in asking for the world, especially as they’ve already brought out the first three series. It’s not like we’re talking Totally Full Frontal here.
3): BackBerner. This Peter Berner-hosted slice of strident satire was The Chaser’s War on Everything of its’ day – only without the pranks, which is probably why not a trace of it is available on DVD. And okay, much of it was very topical, and most of it wasn’t exactly funny, which is often the case when you’re more interested in point-scoring than making people laugh. But that approach didn’t stop the ABC from releasing a “Best of The GlassHouse” DVD a few years back, and unlike that show, BackBerner contained actual scripted sketches instead of just Hughsie trying on hats.
4): The Jesters / Whatever Happened to That Guy. Neither of these Pay TV shows were classic comedy, but they were, in their own clumsy ways, at least as funny as fellow Pay TV series :30 Seconds and Stupid Stupid Man – both of which shot to DVD almost before the final credits had rolled. It’s not like either series was a massive flop – The Jesters is even getting a second series – so if Chandon Pictures can get a DVD release what’s the hold-up here?
5): TwentySomething. This Channel 31 comedy series might have been a little rough around the edges, but so was A Hot Dog with the Lot and The Shambles and both of them made it to DVD. And with TwentySomething getting script development funding from the ABC, what better time to raise the show’s profile? It’d be really interesting to know exactly why Shock (who released both Hot Dog and both Shambles DVDs) pulled out of the Australian comedy business a year or two back: without them, there’s clearly a big segment of the Australian comedy market left out to dry.
6): The Gillies Report. This is a slightly different puzzle to the others, in that a best-of was released back in the day on VHS. So presumably all the ABC would need to do is dust off the tape and run it through the converter. Fingers crossed they get around to it – or better still, release the complete series. Hey, if Aunty Jack can get the full treatment, why can’t this? Especially as, with John Clarke on board doing his legendary Farnarkling sports reports, this was easily the best of Max Gillies’ various political series.
7): The Money or the Gun. In a parallel world much like ours, this DVD is sitting on the shelves of ABC stores everywhere. It’s been announced and postponed twice now, for reasons that remain unexplained. Supposedly it’s to be a best-of, but whether that means a collection of segments or complete episodes is also a mystery. Still, why announce such a thing (twice) and then not follow through?
8): The early work of Bob Franklin. When The Comedy Channel first started up in Australia it was basically run by Artist Services, and Bob Franklin took advantage of his in with them to get two separate series up: Small Tales & True (a series of mockumentaries) and Introducing Gary Petty. And who doesn’t love Bob Franklin? He was hilarious (and very popular) on Thank God You’re Here, he’s always turning up in old-timey movies (watch out for him in the upcoming World War One film Beneath Hill 60), he’s even got a collection of his excellent creepy short stories out (Beneath Stones). And with a supporting cast that includes the Librarians trio of Wayne Hope, Roz Hammond and Robyn Butler, not to mention guest appearances from pretty much everyone in Australian comedy (including Shaun Micallef), if they could ever get the rights sorted out this would be the comedy DVD release of the year.
Sam Simmons scores a duck
It’s time for a shocking admission: I have close friends who are fans of Sam Simmons. It’s safe to say that we agree to disagree on the quality of his work. But the relevant point here is that my Simmons-loving friends are big fans of live comedy, and they base their love (okay, enjoyment) of his work on his live performances. I’ve never seen him live so for all I know he’s a stand-up genius: what I do know is, his television work sucks.
I bring this up not only because word has reached us that Simmons isn’t exactly happy about the almost entirely negative coverage we’ve given him over the years, but because with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival looming it’s as good a time as any to point out the one comedy-related thing that this blog doesn’t do: care all that much about live comedy.
Don’t get me wrong. We’ve seen our fair share of live comedy over the years, and no doubt we’ll be checking out shows at this year’s Festival too. But given the choice, the kind of comedy our tastes tend toward is – for the most part – the kind of comedy people do on radio or television or (on a good day) movies. Just check out the Australian Tumbleweed Award categories and compare the double-digit number of television awards to the single, solitary one for stand-up.
That’s partly because stand-up in Australia is pretty much split into two groups: unknown up-and-comers, and long-established safe nights out. For those whose interests fall in the middle – for those who like their comedy competent, but not mainstream – there’s just not all that much on offer. Perhaps that’s why this years Festival line-up looks so dire. None of the up-and-comers (a few exceptions aside) seem to have acts polished enough to make a night out worthwhile, while the polished acts are mainstream faves like Charlie Pickering (doing a best-of, just in case you can’t spell CELEBRITY CASH IN), Dave Hughes, Dave O’Neil (whoops, he’s just pulled out) and Wil Anderson’s Wil-Pun Express.
Some might argue that the previous paragraph is the explanation for our long-standing dislike of stand-ups on television like Dave Hughes and Wil Anderson. Unfortunately for those people, there are stand-up comics in this country that we do enjoy – Judith Lucy for starters, and at least one of us has enjoyed the work of Justin’s Hamilton and Heazlewood in recent years. No, we don’t like Anderson and Hughes, but it’s not because they do stand-up. It’s because they’re not very funny. And as far as television goes, neither is Sam Simmons.
To be fair to all concerned, Anderson and Hughes are crap because all they do on television is bad stand-up. Hughes “tells it like it is”, which translates as bog-obvious observations delivered in a nasal whine that gives cicadas the shits; Anderson is the right-on comic who secretly votes Liberal in the desperate hope that his George Bush and John Howard gags – the only things on planet Earth to have aged worse than he has – will have their day in the sun once again.
Simmons though, makes the effort to try something different on television. His work on jTV with his “Man and Man” and “Human News” sketches shows that he’s someone who knows you can do more on television than just deliver monologues. It’s just a shame then that all he does with that knowledge is babble on at random for roughly a minute to no worthwhile end whatsoever.
Again, let’s stress here that we haven’t seen his live act. For all we know, given the proper context his random wordplay and obsession with farmyard animals could become comedy gold. But in small doses on television his act comes off as nothing but the results of a random word generator stuck on “annoy”.
Worse, he’s been shoveling the same shit for over two years now. His 2009 13 part series of 5 minute episodes The Urban Monkey showed a few hints of promise, but Simmons’ inability to come up with a comedy character that isn’t “Hi, I’m a blabber-mouthed arrogant moron who doesn’t know when to stop… and then does just so we can have an awkward pause” is holding him back in a serious way. Even Ricky Gervais has pretty much given up on that act.
Being roughly on par with Chris Lilley when it comes to working with others doesn’t help much either. Every single other character in a Simmons sketch has the arduous task of looking puzzled and annoyed while Simmons makes a dick of himself. Even in The Urban Monkey, where you might have hoped there’d be room to develop something of a comedy dynamic, he played an aggressive dick while his sidekick suffered. That’s the sum total of his television work: he’s annoying, everyone else suffers. And that includes his audience.
None of this is to suggest that Simmons will never do good work on the small screen. If you were putting together an old-style sitcom and you wanted a crazy neighbour, he’d be the man to call. But until then – or until he comes up with a new act that doesn’t involve saying “duck” a dozen times in a row and expecting laughs like it’s the Nazi-killing joke from Monty Python – his television appearances will fill the hearts of many with dread. Because whatever the virtues of his live show, his television work aint no damn good.
The wonderful world of Australian comedy online – Part 1
A week or so ago a reader commented on one of our recent blogs:
“The networks are useless, dying and clueless. I really hope that Australian comedy can find it’s way online. There are some excellent US comedy websites with loads of little web series on them.”
And because we take your feedback seriously down here at Australian Tumbleweeds – well, that and there’s almost no Australian comedy on that isn’t a panel game – I’ve decided to dip my toe into the wonderful world of Australian comedy content online, starting with podcasts.
Before I go any further, however, I should declare that while I listen to a lot of podcasts, very few of them are comedy, and even then they’re almost all podcasts of radio comedy shows it’s not convenient for me to actually tune in for. The later is clearly a habit I’m not alone in, as a quick look at both the “Top Podcasts” and “Featured” sections of iTunes shows that the majority of the most popular Australian comedies are either radio best-ofs (Hamish & Andy, Roy & HG), or entire episodes of radio or TV shows (Good News Week, Sunday Night Safran). The only exception, in “Top Podcasts” at least, is Josh Thomas & Friend, in which everyone’s favourite Gen Y has a chat with fellow young stand-up Tom Ward (although their effort can hardly be said to represent the vibrant world of user-generated content given Thomas’ current profile).
Anyway, if I’m going to conduct any kind of survey of Australian comedy online – and that’s the plan for the next few posts from me – I’m going to need some word of mouth recommendations (leave a comment if you have any, be they podcasts, YouTube videos, or internet radio or TV shows), because what I’ve found so far via Google and iTunes has been mostly awful. A fact which is hardly surprising given the medium’s domination by amateurs.
Now, I don’t have any thing against amateurs making podcasts, in fact there are some excellent ones out there focusing on the sorts of specialist subjects that the traditional media have never covered in any depth, but when it comes to comedy there’s always been a lot of it on TV, radio and elsewhere, and whether it’s to your taste or not, it’s put together by professional comedians who’ve been practising their craft for years. And it’s experienced personnel on board that gives a comedy podcast the edge because despite our occasional successes, amateurs like you or me generally aren’t that much of a cack, even by the standards of the average “people sitting around having a chat”-style podcast. Yet there are probably thousands of Australians just like us currently involved in such productions, getting together ’round a microphone or on Skype every week or so to record their latest show.
One such example is Two Schooners, with Dave Gray and James Williams. Dave and James are two ordinary, middle-aged, Aussie blokes, having a beer and a chat and a few laughs. They’re not actually in a pub and they’re not always having a beer, in fact they’re just nattering away to each other on Skype, but they like to pretend they’re in a pub, so the first minute or so of their show has some pub background noise sound effects dubbed under it and they keep their conversation blokey as.
Fair enough, there’s clearly a section of the population who likes to listen to ordinary blokes who are supposedly funny and “telling it like it is”, but on the other hand, isn’t that what a great many radio programmes (many of them with podcast best-ofs) already do, but with vastly better production values and presenters who know how to keep things concise? Dave and James’ approach, by contrast, is to conduct a largely unplanned and rambling conversation, and then make it public, seemingly oblivious to how much better the show could be if they a) planned things a bit more and b) edited the show. And with Dave and James rarely approaching the realm of comedy, it’s hard to work out why this show has made it to “Featured” status in the comedy podcasts section of iTunes.
If Two Schooners had a sister show it would be Is It Just Me? with Wendy Harmer and Angela Catterns. Produced by ABC Local, Is It Just Me? appears to be one of the ABC’s first podcast-only productions. Producing podcasts is something that a lot of established broadcasters seem to be getting in to, for one thing it’s a good way to reach niche audiences, and in the world of podcasting what could be more niche than a show aimed at one of medium’s smallest audience segments: middle-aged women. And indeed, what could be more middle-aged woman-friendly than two such women having a natter about such never-dealt-with-by-the-existing-media subjects as troublesome teenagers, plastic surgery, and growing old.
But compared to Two Schooners, Is It Just Me? is a far better programme – the chat’s punchier and funnier (and so it ought to be with a professional comedian and a well known radio presenter on board), and the show’s tightly edited into a number of sections lasting a couple of minutes each – a welcome contrast to Two Schooners, whose episodes get increasingly longer over time. It’s still a bit of a stretch to label Is It Just Me? comedy, but at least there are some laughs to be had.
Another largely laugh-free podcast is Josh Thomas & Friend, currently doing very well in the iTunes comedy “Top Podcasts” chart. It’s another conversation-based show, and is currently in its second series. So far there have been three episodes in series 2 (series 1 is no longer online for some reason), and in episode one Josh has something he wants you all to know: he’s gay and in a “semi-open relationship” with Triple J breakfast host Tom Ballard.
Thomas choosing to tell the world he’s gay on this podcast is kinda interesting, but the fact that he’s gay – or at least the way he talks about it – isn’t interesting, or indeed funny, so devoting an entire episode to the subject probably wasn’t the best move. In fact, after 15 minutes or so of listening to this show, I had to conclude that Thomas’ decision to talk about this topic came about either because he’s a massive ego maniac, or because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Seriously, Josh, we don’t care who you’re sleeping with – just be funny.
To be fair to Josh Thomas & Friend, things pick up a little in the second episode, when another comedian, Melinda Buttle, joins Thomas and Ward. Again it’s a small group having a chat, but Thomas has worked out what they’re going to talk about, and Buttle in particular gets some good gags out of it. In the third and most recent episode it’s back to just Thomas and Ward, but again there’s been a bit of planning, with the pair spending most of the show trying out the gay dating iPhone app Grindr. This is kinda funny, in a part John Safran’s Race Relations, part commercial radio segment way, and if this podcast is what I suspect it is – an audition for a radio slot – then working out something to do other than yammer on is a wise move.
But if podcasts are a way to get in to radio, they’re also an option once you’ve been kicked out of radio, hence The Chat hosted by the original members of Triple M Melbourne’s The Cage: Matt Quatermaine, Tim Smith, Andrew Goodone and Matt Parkinson. Tim, Andrew and the two Matts are old mates from the Melbourne comedy scene who get together every week or so at the Maori Chief Hotel to record their show in front of a live audience. Each episode is around 45 minutes of, well, chat, in which the four of them go through the sort of weird news stories which are a staple of most commercial radio comedies. Given the quartet’s experience in both comedy or radio it’s no surprise that The Chat is the best of the four podcasts I’ve listened to in preparation for this post; it could probably benefit from a tighter edit, but it’s a mostly funny and entertaining listen.
And it’s here in this first attempt to survey Australian comedy online that I should stop, because like many of the shows I’ve mentioned, I’ve crapped on long enough. Don’t forget to leave a comment with your suggestions of shows I should check out – good or bad – but before I go, and because I’m feeling a bit devils advocate today, I’ll leave you with something to ponder…
Market dominating podcast catcher iTunes offers only 16 categories to those wishing to submit their shows: Arts, Business, Comedy, Education, Games & Hobbies, Government & Organisations, Health, Kids & Family, Music, News & Politics, Religion & Spirituality, Science & Medicine, Society & Culture, Sports & Recreation, Technology, and TV & Film. While some of these categories have sub-categories (click here to see them), Comedy has none, yet huge numbers of comedy podcasts, including at least two of those I’ve just reviewed, would probably sit better in either a sub-category of Comedy called Chat, or a category in its own right called Chat. And with no Chat category or sub-category currently existing, are the makers of some shows being unfairly forced to label their shows as Comedy? Or do they really think their show is worthy of being categorised in that way? Clearly, if a category or sub-category called Chat existed then such shows would still suck, but wouldn’t it be better to produce a crap chat show which is occasionally funny, than a chat-based comedy which is just crap?
“Self-Indulgent? Moi?” or “We’ve created a monster!”
Taken from the Chris Lilley fansite:
January 26, 2010
Angry Boys updateI just wanted to quickly update you on the progress of Angry Boys. We’ve been shooting for a few months now and have started up again for 2010. It’s a really long shoot. And a really big show. So it’s going to take a while to put together. But its looking pretty good so far and hopefully quite funny. We’ve been shooting in all sorts of interesting places and we’re heading overseas in a while to shoot another component of the show. There’s lots of new characters, new wigs, new situations and surprises. The supporting cast is huge! And they’ve all been really good so far and it’s been really fun on set. Lots of laughs. Thanks for all your messages of support and for being patient in waiting for the new show. The shoot is flying by for me so hopefully we’ll have it all together and on tv before you know it. It’ll be on HBO in the U.S., BBC in the U.K. and ABC in Australia so stay tuned.
What didn’t get mentioned there – and only seems to have been announced in the middle of a press release yesterday – is that Angry Boys won’t screen here (or anywhere) until 2011. So we’re being told right now, in the second month of 2010, that Lilley’s latest series will not be finished for at least another year. What the hell is he doing? Building an atomic bomb from scratch?
At a guess, I’m betting the “huge” supporting cast is mostly supporting Lilley in his need for drinks and snacks when the cameras aren’t rolling, because the only way this timeline makes any kind of sense is if he’s playing every single on-camera role himself. Which, judging by the obvious trend in his work over the years, is in no way meant to be a joke. Fingers crossed that Angry Boys turns out to be a classic of the genre whenever it finally screens: at the rate he’s going, none of us will live long enough to see him finish his follow-up.
White Out
The White Room is perhaps the most important comedy program you will see this year. Not because it’s any good, or because you’ll get any laughs out of it at all, but because it’s important to be reminded that the only people who make television shows funny are the people who write and perform them. Take them out of the equation and you get producer-led slop like this born dead and soon-to-be-forgotten misfire.
Oddly, it’s the kind of malware that could only happen on the nation’s number one commercial network. Nine simply doesn’t bother making this kind of broad-based programming: they’ve got 20 to 1 for their clip show, Eddie McGuire for everything else and a station-wide sense of humour that says if it doesn’t involve at least one ball it’s not worth bothering with.
If Ten were doing it, they’d actually let the creative talent run with the idea a bit and make it their own. Very few people would deny that the entire reason for Talkin’ bout Your Generation‘s success is that Shaun Micallef gets to do his own thing pretty much every chance he gets, turning a limp game show into something that’s at times actually kind of funny. Okay, the stuffing’s starting to show a bit this year, but it’s still the best comedy game show on Australian screens – and considering how many comedy game shows there are, that’s actually high praise.
Seven is the network that thinks it knows how to make this kind of quasi-comedy variety thing work, and they’re going to keep on trying until they get it right. So what we get is a mix of Glenn Robbins’ 2008 late night panel / game show Out of the Question and 2009’s version of the UK hit TV Burp, only without the charm or comedy of either. The quality gap between The White Room and those shows is so clear and obvious it’s clear that Seven’s programmers are driven almost entirely by trends rather than any intrinsic worth their shows might have. Otherwise why fail to renew those far superior efforts and give this crap a prime time slot?
[okay, there’s clearly a lot more to programming than that. Just as The 7pm Project lingers on despite public apathy thanks largely to the cross-promotional opportunities, so too does The White Room present Seven with a showcase for its “stable of stars” – even if such stars exist only in their fog-addled brains. If this trend continues by 2012 all original Australian programming will simply be cross-promotional showcases where the same merry band of hacks wanders from studio to studio promoting identical shows where the same people appear to promote their own identical shows]
A brief word here on The White Room’s format: for those old enough to remember when Rove would feature Rove McManus forcing his cast and guests to play charades on live television, then the aimless collection of party games held in a cavernous salt mine that is Channel Seven’s latest rating big gun will provide a pleasant wash of nostalgia. For everyone else, seeing a bunch of no-name brand celebrities and Not Quite Right soap stars groping household objects while blindfolded or staring blankly at a four man combat squad of lycra-clad dancers as they use their bodies to spell out their Centerlink ID numbers will provide a much-needed excuse to put their head in a bucket.
So far so typical for a comedy game show. What is slightly puzzling is the way that whoever’s putting this show together seems to think people watch comedy games shows for the game show component rather than the comedy that should flow forthwith. It’s your typical producer-led approach: The 7pm Project seems to think news comedy is about actually reporting the news, and look how well that’s worked out. But comedy requires letting the people on screen – AKA the supposedly funny ones – have a bit of freedom to be funny. And if they started getting laughs, suddenly the producers would look like what they are: people who should be helping the talent get the job done, not the stars of the show.
The result is that once again we get a show where some at least passably funny people are delivering well under their admittedly average standards. You can actually see hosts Tony Moclair and Julian Schiller – very funny as CRUD on RRR, kinda funny on MMM for a number of years (Guido Hatzis was their creation), and back to being very funny on JJJ’s right -wing parody Restoring the Balance – having jokes edited out from under them so the show can race back to the laff-free “fun and games”.
Arguing that this would suddenly become a classic if only it was made a bit more free-wheeling would be madness: even the best comedy game show ever is never going to be as good as a decent sketch show, or even a top-quality panel show (which would be identical to the best comedy game show ever, only the guests would be allowed time to tell funny stories instead of being cut short to gawp at a clip from an 80s sitcom). But letting the hosts make a few more wisecracks, making sure the guests make a few less gags – letting someone do their “gay run” around the studio is the kind of thing you see on a show made by people who have never actually found anything at all funny in their entire lives – and trying to wrap the crazy old clips up with one decent joke or one-liner instead of the half-baked ones currently on offer couldn’t hurt either.
Seriously, finishing a clip of a weird 50’s dance number involving ironing boards with a joke about how that was the only recorded instance of men in the 50’s going near ironing boards (as The White Room did) isn’t a joke, it’s a ham-fisted social observation. “Oh, those hilarious 1950s menfolk, with their avoidance of housework!” There’s an entire team of writers on The White Room, and that’s the best joke they could have come up with? There are men rolling around on ironing boards! Surely a reference to a popular but skinny / flat-chested starlet could be made there. Or a joke about the surfboarding team from the land-locked nation of Chad. Or anything else! That White Room line is the result of the least-possible amount of effort you could put in to create a joke, and yet it went to air in prime time on the number one network in this country.
It’s tempting to wrap things up with a quip about how quickly Seven will shunt this off to a graveyard timeslot or axe it entirely. But like the rest of The White Room, that’s just not funny. Comedy on commercial television is already a dying breed: having Seven serve up yet another shithouse show then let it tank isn’t doing anyone any favours.
Sam Simmons just won our respect…
… by calling his 2010 Melbourne Comedy Festival show FAIL. Can’t fault him there.
(c’mon, we’ve watched all of The Urban Monkey and two years worth of his jTV work. It’s not like he’s going to change his approach now)
Yet another panel show
Is all Australian TV comedy now a lame panel show with next-to-no laughs? Seemingly thousands of such programmes have either returned or started-up in the past few weeks, with only Hungry Beast and Clarke & Dawe suggesting there’s an alternative approach to getting laughs. In this climate I’m almost pining for that STITCH thing 13 schoolyards mentioned in his last blog – at least it’ll offer something different.
Apart from Clarke & Dawe’s (excellent as usual) return, Channel 7’s new show The White Room provided the only real potential for Australian comedy excitement this week (clips of Sleuth 101 released on YouTube before the series began told you everything you needed to know about the show – it’s a play-along detective mystery which is fun viewing, has a few laughs and will probably run for years, soaking up money which could be used to make something far better); if you’ve followed Tony Moclair and Julian Schiller’s work on such programmes as Restoring The Balance, you’d assume they’d make a good fist of a TV panel quiz, right? Especially one that looks (from the set and the two-host format) a bit like the UK panel quiz Shooting Stars.
Unfortunately The White Room makes the same mistakes that every Australian comedy panel quiz seems to make – the show’s too long for its timeslot, the focus is on the quiz rather than the comedy and the guests mostly suck (you know you’re in trouble when the guy from Home & Away is getting in more zingers than most of the comedians).
Another problem here, as so often in Australian TV, is that executives see a successful show on another network and panic-commission something similar. The White Room is clearly Seven’s answer to Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, yet without the element that makes TBYG just about watchable – the unpredictable, surreal, sketch-style humour Shaun Micallef brings. There were some small attempts to ape this in The White Room, like the finale mocking the clip of John Laws singing which was shown during the episode, but overall the show had the same atmosphere as a very dull episode of Spicks & Specks. And that’s very dull indeed.
It’s actually pretty easy to believe it wasn’t better
Whilst updating iTunes last week I noticed that what had been the podcast feed for ABC Local Radio’s 2008 comedy talent quest The Comedy Hour has now become the podcast feed for ABC Adelaide’s Talkback Gardening, that perennial favourite of my father and many of his friends. If it wasn’t for the fact that the ABC are great fans of recycling podcast feeds (do they think they’re rationed?), I could probably draw a crap metaphor for the ABC’s interest in The Comedy Hour from this – and indeed, there wasn’t much interest in it from them – but my main feeling is one of sadness, that The Comedy Hour is yet another comedy writer’s competition that’s been shut down for good (although that’s been pretty clear for a year or so now).
If you remember The Comedy Hour or our commentary about it in the 2008 Australian Tumbleweeds (where it was nominated in both the Worst Radio Comedy and Worst Podcast or CD categories) you’ll remember that while most of the results were dire it was nevertheless a good concept – opening the door to comedy writers and comedy concepts of all types. Sadly, there are very few open access opportunities for comedy writers; this is a shame as good scripts are the key to good comedy, and anything which gives up-and-coming writers more experience of writing them can only be a good thing, even if it does result in some fairly rubbish radio or TV (hello again, Hungry Beast).
Comedy writer’s talent quests always seem to be pretty problematic, certainly in comparison to stand-up competitions like Raw Comedy, which has been going strong since 1996. Perhaps it’s because there’s so much more involved – with a writer’s contest you have to spend lots of time and a fair bit of money making the winner’s show(s), which almost no one will watch or listen to. With a stand-up competition all you need to do is broadcast the final and offer the winner a high profile gig – the swarming pack of comedy agents hanging around backstage will do the hard work of making the winner (and finalists) stars, and indeed some of the regional co-ordinators for Raw Comedy have been or are comedy agents themselves.
So, it’s probably no surprise that The Comedy Channel’s Comedy Gold competition was only run twice – in 2007 and 2008 – and that it took until last December for the script by 2007 winners Sean Condon and Rob Hibbert, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better, set behind the scenes of a sketch comedy show, to make it to air. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better appears to have been beset with problems, as TV Tonight noted in October “the project has…seen a number of delays and changes. Originally hoped to screen in early 2009, it has now shifted from being a 13 part series to one special”. It also probably didn’t help that while The Comedy Channel were getting their act together vis a vis I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better, Movie Extra put out the funnier and quite similar sitcom The Jesters.
You sort of feel sorry for the show’s writers, Sean Condon and Rob Hibbert, even if their script wasn’t that funny, although in some ways it was probably a more biting satire on sketch comedy than The Jesters. The show centres around two scriptwriters Sean Conlon (Colin Lane) and Bob Hilbert (Toby Truslove), who are under pressure from producers Frank (Patrick Brammell) and Kate (Kitty Flanagan) to come up with enough material for a sketch show. Frank is an unhinged coke-head who wouldn’t know comedy if it bit him on the bum, and Kate’s a hard-nosed bitch who’s recently come back from what appears to have been a very lonely period working in TV in London. The show is dotted with examples of Sean and Bob’s scripts, all examples of the sort of lame, repeated sketches you find in shows like Comedy Inc or Double Take, and they also have to contend with Buddy Bishop (Randall Berger), an ageing, fat, sexist, alcoholic, has-been American light-entertainer from the 70’s (slightly modelled on Don Lane presumably, well, there’s a glass coffee table reference) who’s a consultant on the show.
What makes this a little more biting than The Jesters is that the show seems to be full of references to the people Condon and Hibbert encountered on their torturous journey to get their show on-screen – like executive producer Frank, who’s doesn’t understand comedy and is obsessed with the latest internet-based comedy trends – although the main laughs come from how awful some of Sean and Bob’s sketches are.
Comedy Gold‘s 2008 winner was director/actor Gordon Napier’s My Girlfriend’s Secret Hidden Camera Show, which Napier described as “Recording my girlfriend with cameras inside my house and car and turning our lives into a sitcom without her knowledge. Imagine being on ‘Big Brother’ and not knowing about it”. Apart from a clip on the Comedy Gold website, this show has yet to see the light of day; this is probably a good thing as the clip’s not funny and the concept’s awful, but Napier entered the competition in good faith and at least one episode should be made – and if it is, who knows, maybe it’ll be great.
Which brings me to what seems to have been the problem for both The Comedy Hour and Comedy Gold – the lack of follow-through. Some of the results from both schemes had merit, but there appears to have been little thought about the next steps. Where could the successful writers, shows or characters from The Comedy Hour go? The intention seems to have been for the successful shows to go to television, but if so, why make them on radio, where for them to work well they would have to suit the medium of radio? And what of the writers or characters? It’s not like there are any sketches shows on ABC TV that could have incorporated, say, Alan Brough’s very funny character Piers-Andrew Bolterman, an insane right-wing commentator who provided all of the very few laughs on The Comedy Hour‘s topical sketch show The Seven Day Itch. And with there being no sketch comedies, or even a comedy slot, on ABC radio…what was the point of this again?
Perhaps that upcoming radio comedy from The Chaser will pave the way? I hope so, because a low-key testing ground for comedy on radio is probably a better way to encourage new talent than something like Hungry Beast. As for Comedy Gold, the problem there seems to have been a lack of budget – $25,000 isn’t anywhere near enough to cover a 13 part series, hence the delays and cutbacks for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better.
With comedy writer’s schemes there’s no point in setting them up unless you’re prepared to do something meaningful with the winners. Clearly this shouldn’t mean making any old show, but it should be about identifying what works and developing it; something which seems to be too hard or too expensive for any of those who’ve had a go at it recently.