Australian Tumbleweeds
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.
Whatever happened to Whatever Happened to That Guy??
With the Tumblies finally put to bed, I thought I’d take just one last look at Australian comedy in 2009 before plunging headlong into 2010 (Good News Week – back tomorrow!!!!). In August last year Tony Martin (yes, him again) wrote a piece for The Scrivener’s Fancy called Just While We’re Waiting, in which he listed some rejected ideas for his weekly column, one of which was “Whatever happened to Whatever Happened to That Guy??” It was a funny question, and one I feel worth expanding on, so hopefully Tony won’t mind me stealing it.
Whatever Happened to That Guy? was a Curb Your Enthusiasm-style sitcom, co-written by and staring Peter Moon as himself, which finished airing on The Comedy Channel in July. Like most Foxtel sitcoms it looks set never to be released on DVD, which is a pity because from what I’ve seen of it, it was one of the best Australian comedies of recent years. And if you’re surprised by that last statement, then I don’t blame you, because who on earth would have imagined that Fast Forward and Let Loose Live alumni Peter Moon could co-write and star in a Curb Your Enthusiasm rip-off – and be funny? But he did, and here’s why: unlike many recent Australian sitcoms (and indeed, many Curb Your Enthusiasm rip-offs) Moon and fellow writers Brendan Luno and Marilyn Tofler, didn’t make a realistic, semi-improvised, and largely joke-free wank, but a fairly traditional sitcom, with lots of straight-up funny lines and situations, and the odd bit of slapstick.
Like many traditional sitcoms (and, let’s face, almost all of the “realistic” ones), the characters were broad and cliched. Moon’s character was a lazy, fat slob, and self-obsessed C-list celebrity, who missed the spotlight, had trouble getting acting work, couldn’t get his film script made and got angry whenever someone asked him about Fast Forward (because the question was usually “What was it like working with Magda?”). The first episode opened with him watching Fast Forward in bed, dressed only in his underpants. His wife Andrea (played by Andrea Powell), who was being kept awake by his laughing, said “It was 15 years ago – get over it!”, and then spent the remainder of the series delivering a series of sarcastic put-downs, which made the self-inflicted, difficult situations that Peter found himself in even more funny. And there were plenty more clichéd characters and situations to enjoy, like Peter and Andrea’s cynical university-age kids, who Peter foolishly tried to relate to; and Joshua, the young boy next door, who Peter accidentally managed to corrupt, much to the annoyance of his pushy South African Jewish parents.
Moon took full advantage of his ugly, fat, hairy, ageing body, fading celebrity status, and reputation for playing over-the-top, sleazy and occasionally borderline-racist comedy characters (such as Soviet newsreader Victor, Persian rug salesman Abdul, advertising executive Barry, The Guru and the Kung Fu master) and took the piss out of all of them. And as if that wasn’t enough for the train-spotter, there were numerous references to Australian television in the 80’s and 90’s, and cameos from some of its stars, such as Alyce Platt, and the “has beens” – Michael Veitch, Wilbur Wilde, Red Symons, Pete Smith and John Blackman – who along with Moon appeared at a series of auditions for advertisements requiring ageing male celebrities to endorse the sort of products that no one else would touch.
Then there’s the film script Peter was working on with writing partner Bruno, a slapstick comedy set in a funeral home, which eventually got made judging by this clip on YouTube – I don’t know for sure, I haven’t been able to track down to the last two episodes (if you can help please get in touch).
Whatever Happened to That Guy? wasn’t subtle, original or ground-breaking, but it was the funniest Australian sitcom of 2009, beating the lacklustre second series of The Librarians and Chandon Pictures, and the débuts of :30 Seconds and The Jesters into a cocked hat. Here’s hoping someone will give it a DVD release and a second series. Or, on a personal note, that someone will send me the final two episodes. If you can help please do, for one thing I’ve got a theory about this series that I can only confirm if I’ve seen all of the episodes – and aren’t my crap theories what you come to this blog for? What do you mean “No!”?
It’s here!
… by which we mean, the promo video for the 2009 Australian Tumbleweed Award. Oh yeah, the Awards are up as well if you’d like a look.
So far response has been mixed – The Scrivener’s Fancy had a positive tweet about Tony Martin’s effort in winning the Best Comedy for A Nest of Occasionals, while word is Dan Ilic is a bit disappointed at the numerous swipes aimed his way (he’s going to be on-air in season two of Hungry Beast, unlike 70% of series one’s on-air team, so don’t feel too bad for him). Otherwise… well, if nothing else there’s an awful lot of words up at the awards. Many of which seem to be “turd”. Enjoy!
A Week or so to go…
… until this year’s Tumblie Award winners are announced in one of our trademark “glittering” ceremonies. Who will win the coveted “worst stand-up”? Which sitcom was the worst of 2009? How many times will Daryl Somers’ name come up? All will be revealed – and a fair bit more besides – in roughly a week or so.
And once that’s out of the way we can get back to our regular mix of good news (Bob Franklin’s got a book out next month! They’re going to film an episode of Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation in 3D!) and snarky comments (Swift & Shift is coming back! That 3D episode of TAYG is going to entirely focus on Josh Thomas’ hair!). In short, we know it’s been quiet here, but (hopefully) it’ll have been all worth while…
And they’re off!
The polling booth has been open for almost a week now and surprise surprise, votes have actually been coming in. It seems that people really do want to take advantage of the opportunity to express their dismay with much of the current crop of Aussie comedy. But with our rising fame comes the dark side of success – voting scandals! Yep, a suspicious surge in votes for Lady Julia Morris’s book soon led to this little discovery.
But what to do? There’s no hard-and-fast rule against spruiking for votes – seriously, why would you want to? – but actually wanting to win a Tumblie is the kind of “ironic” appreciation of things that leads to finding much of Chris Lilley’s output funny. Not to mention that, unlike most wacky internet awards ceremonies for lame entertainment, we’re not really the kind of people who secretly enjoy crap or find it amusing in a “so-bad-it’s-good” fashion. Amazingly, we pretty much mean what we say, so all winning a Tumblie earns you is a burst of pointed and often very ugly invective that might not look good in a press release. Especially if we know that a press release is what the winner is hoping to get out of the experience.
Still, it’s early days yet, and a bunch of Wil Anderson haters could still lurch out of the woodwork to snatch Lady Morris’ prize from her grasp. All this year’s nominees would make for worthy winners in our book. Just keep in mind that, as uncool as it might be in yet another age of irony (what is this, the fifth?), these awards operate entirely at face value. So if you’re going to vote, make sure you mean it: ironic or not, shit is still shit.