Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

Outrage Without Alcohol

Sam Simmons must be kicking himself. If only he’d done The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote in blackface, people might be actually talking about it now. Instead… well, pretty much nothing. Which, let’s be fair, it what it deserves: it’s not all that good. But even if it was the most amazingly hysterical comedy made in this country to date, chances are you wouldn’t hear much about it in the media. Because in 2009 in Australia, comedy no longer equals funny: it equals OUTRAGE.

How do I know this?  Because comedy shows told me so. Hungry Beast crapped on about the nature of OUTRAGE just last week. Ryan Shelton’s latest segment on Rove had a bunch of jokes about the dangers of stirring up OUTRAGE, followed up by Rove hosting an OUTRAGE segment titled “PC or not PC”. And The Jesters – which is about a Chasers War on Everything-style show, making OUTRAGE it’s bread and butter – has made plenty of gags about the need to stir up OUTRAGE to get press.

Even if I wasn’t foolishly watching every Australian comedy show I could lay my hands on, a brief flick through the papers or listen to talkback radio over the last few months would have provided me with a steady stream of comedy-related OUTRAGE, from minor flutters like the Hungry Beast “netball rape” promo and the Double Take school bullying sketch to flow-blown shoutfests like The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch and John Safran’s African-American impersonation. And yeah, I guess that Hey Hey blackface act counts too.

Whatever happened to comedy having to be funny? The one thing that unites every single skit or segment running on OUTRAGE is that they’re not that funny – even the Safran one, which is actually more of an social experiment than a non-stop gagfest. OUTRAGE is the cheap option you go for when you can’t figure out how to get a reaction any other way: no-one in their right mind thinks the OUTRAGE-heavy episodes of The Chaser’s War on Everything were funnier than CNNNN or that the Double Take school bully sketch wasn’t just a collection of tabloid taking points turned on their head. As for the the Hey Hey skit, there should have been a public OUTRAGE simply because it was completely pointless and laugh-free on every level. Unless you find blackface funny in and of itself, in which case I believe Channel Nine is currently hiring.

But in 2009, for whatever reason – slow news year, a lack of political power forcing conservatives to strike out in other areas, The Chaser pissing in the pool and ruining it for everyone else, the ABC press department thinking that stirring shit up is the only way to get people tuning in – it’s increasingly assumed that comedy is setting out to OUTRAGE. Which is bad news for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, as previously mentioned, OUTRAGE makes for crap comedy. It’s possible to laugh because something has gone too far, but if you’re just trying to go too far chances are you’re not going to make people laugh. It’s hard enough to get our television writers and producers to do one thing right; distract them from the goal of getting laughs and chances are they’re not going to even come close to raising a chuckle.  Or put another way, rating-wise the biggest comedy hits of this year – Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation and the most recent series of Thank God You’re Here – didn’t OUTRAGE anyone. Though TGYH’s increasing tiredness should have.

More importantly, with comedy now well established as a breeding ground for OUTRAGE, it’s that much more difficult for decent comedians to mine sensitive areas for laughs. It’s perfectly possible to get laughs from putting a white person in blackface – Bean is a Carrot has mentioned here that getting comedy writers to perform their own material where possible is the best way to make it work, and doing impressions of specific individuals shouldn’t be confined by race (amongst other things, blackface is a generic insult to all people of colour, dismissing an entire race as identical figures of fun) – but with fingers constantly hovering over the OUTRAGE button even a clearly well-thought out and justifiable effort like Safran’s is going to bring down a media shitstorm.

[that said, the tabloids’ interest in Safran’s new show might actually help him. After all the build-up to how outraged we’ll all be once we see it, anything less than riots in the streets will be an anti-climax for The Herald Sun and its ilk. And even if people do complain en masse, the ABC can turn around and say “hey, it’s not like you didn’t know what you were in for after three weeks of wall-to-wall coverage – why should we take you seriously when you clearly just tuned in to piss yourself off?”]

Sadly, it seems increasingly clear that even as shit comedians push harder and harder for bigger and bigger doses of OUTRAGE (and who could forget The Ronnie Johns Half-Hour actually sending out press releases complaining that their “Jesus” character wasn’t causing enough OUTRAGE in the community during their second season? Clearly we all had some perspective on things back then), the comedians who just want to make people laugh – AKA the good ones – will shy away from controversial topics. Partly because OUTRAGE isn’t what they do, and partly because when people are full of OUTRAGE, they’re usually not laughing. And once upon a time, laughing was what comedy was all about.

Neither black nor white

Reaction to the Hey Hey blackface incident keeps coming – and not just on this blog. Hungry Beast gave us Blackface for Beginners last night, a two and a half minute history of the genre, which is probably the best thing they’ve done so far, so kudos for that. Monday night’s Media Watch also delivered an interesting insight or two; first they helpfully pointed out which part of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice you might like to mention in your letter of complaint to Channel 9, and secondly they explained why it has to be a letter. Meanwhile, on Wikipedia, the entry for Hey Hey It’s Saturday has been edited and re-edited by users wishing to make sure their view on the incident was known, with mixed results.

On Tuesday I had a look at the Wikipedia entry for Hey Hey It’s Saturday to see how the blackface incident had been covered. The first line under the sub-heading “Reunion” read “There has been “considerable interest” from those of a lower social-economic and poorly educated background in the reformation of “Hey Hey It’s Saturday” in some capacity.” Later, the Jackson Jive’s performance was described as “a demeaning “tribute” act to the Jackson 5”. Throughout the rest of the article were further obvious edits, such as inverted commas placed around words which had been used to describe the show, such as “comedy”, “humorous” and even “music”. There were also several more pops at the show’s audience, who were again described as “uneducated” and from “lower socio-economic backgrounds”. But when I looked yesterday I found that these additions had been removed, and if you have a look at the article’s history you’ll find that the article was “restored without offensive POV changes”, almost 48 hours since the changes were made.

While I agree that “demeaning” is an appropriate description for the Jackson Jive’s act, and was amused by the liberal use and hilarious invoking of inverted commas throughout the article, the description of the Hey Hey audience was appalling and unwarranted snobbery and it was right that this was removed. If the Jackson Jive’s act was “demeaning” to black people, so is the stereotyping of Hey Hey‘s audience as “uneducated” and from “lower socio-economic backgrounds”, unless evidence can be found to support it.

And whether you’re a Wikipedia vandal out for a laugh or someone with a political point to make, is allowing yourself to be so open to attack a good idea? Isn’t the point to have your edits online for as long as possible? A better tactic might have been to insert some quotes from the Daily Telegraph interview with Kamahl into the Hey Hey article – they’re funny, political and from a newspaper which people pay money for (which means it’s less likely to get deleted because it can’t be characterised as some irrelevant blogger or disgruntled Wikipedia vandal mouthing-off [although, let’s face it, the more you read that Daily Telegraph article, the more you suspect half the quotes and most of the story were made up!]).

But if Wikipedia politicking and vandalism wasn’t working out for anti-Hey Hey/Jackson Jive types, this week’s Scrivener’s Fancy column by Wikipedia vandalism advocate Tony Martin was praised by many comedy fans. Towards the end of it he wrote about the three times he blacked-up on The D-Generation and the several times he didn’t on The Late Show, insisting real Asian or black actors take the parts. This raised the question: should comedians be able to play other races in sketch comedy shows, or should those roles always be played by an actor of the relevant race?

In my last blog I explained my view that comedians should be able to impersonate people of other races as long as no stereotyping or degrading of that person’s race occurred. Tony Martin may feel guilty about portraying Botswanan members of the IOC or Indian waiters, but he’s not seriously arguing that he demeaned Botswanans or Indians by portraying them, if anything he seems to be arguing that he demeaned them by not allowing a Botswanan or Indian actor to play the role. And indeed in the late 80’s and early 90’s there was a considerable movement within Equity to ensure employment for non-white (and disabled) actors using this argument.

One reason cited by Tony Martin for his blacking-up, however, is budgetary. In The Late Show, he says, it cost $3000 to hire extras for the naturalisation sketch, and it’s not hard to appreciate (or think of examples of) how similarly cash-strapped sketch shows have made use of the regular cast, who are generally white, to play non-white roles.

It is also accepted tradition that the writer-performers in a group sketch show play all or most of the parts, and there are plenty of reasons why this works so well. Writer/performers in sketch groups write for themselves and the rest of the team, whose strengths they know well. Compare Peter Cook’s version of his sketch Interesting Facts with Kenneth William’s and it’s clear that no one can get as many laughs from their own material as the person who wrote. And in the case of some sketches, like Mrs Premise and Mrs Conclusion from Monty Python Flying Circus, part of the joke is that it’s inappropriate performers playing the roles rather stupidly – with real women in the parts it wouldn’t work at all.

When it comes to comedy, context and intent is all. In some cases an actor with the right look will work best, in other cases a specific set of performance skills are required. And the bigger issue for non-white actors trying to eek out a living in Australia? Judging by the number of roles where the character could be any number of races, but has been cast as white, colour-blind casting is not being practised. That, rather than the odd comedian in crappy make-up, is the bigger crime.

Short Thoughts

This week’s Hungry Beast proved to be more of the same: unfunny sketches and stuff we already knew. (Snack bars for kids are packed full of sugar, apparently. What next? They tell us the world’s round?!) But at least that netball group sex scandal sketch turned out to be a joke (and I don’t say that because I agree with The Daily Telegraph that the sketch was an “outrage” and “poor taste humour” that “raise[s] new questions about the judgement of senior ABC staff” – the only outrage and misjudgements here are that a sketch so unfunny could make it to air), and anyway, as the Hungry Beast team gleefully informed us during the opening to episode 2, the real joke wasn’t that netballers would get themselves caught in such a scandal, it was on us. Ha ha – fooled you! You thought we’d actually do a longer version next week! You idiot! Sucked-in!

Anyone feeling bullied by the show, or patronised by the screaming claxons the team used at several points during episode 2 to indicate that a joke had just been made isn’t alone. There was no indication that the netball group sex sketch might be fake, and with it appearing during the first episode of the show, viewers were not familiar with the style or format of the show and couldn’t reasonably be expected to have spotted that it was a fake. It’s a bit like telling someone from a different culture that in Australia we all take shits in the gutter, and then laughing at them as they do it. And the even bigger crime: the claxons gag wasn’t funny. Still, at least we know the team’s smug arrogance isn’t confined to its better known members, and with said arrogance and smugness on display only seconds in to episode 2, I think we know more than enough about the Hungry Beast team to switch off.

* * *

Another arrogant TV berk who showed his true colours this week was Daryl Somers. My colleague 13 schoolyards has brilliantly picked-apart the blackface scandal, but the news just to hand is that singer Kamahl, so often the victim of racial taunts back in the show’s hey day, is supposedly threatening to sue the show for including an Andrew Fife cartoon of him during the Jackson Jive’s appearance.

“I used to laugh along when I was a guest but deep down I was thinking why are people so unkind? It’s just the same old rubbish.” Kamahl told The Daily Telegraph. “Hey Hey is devoid of any real wit…It’s desperate. It’s toilet humour and it should be flushed.”

* * *

Many Australian comedy fans have been debating the blackface saga online in recent days and one issue which has come up is the long list of comedians who have blacked-up in the past. The Fast Forward team are guilty of this in their parody of The Cosby Show (which isn’t on You Tube, but is in The Fast Forward Book, if you happen to own it); a more recent, and seemingly more obvious comparison to the Jackson Jive, is The Chaser’s ALP, a re-working of the Jackson 5’s ABC which sends-up the move to the right by Labor under Rudd.

Where the Fast Forward and Chaser sketches differ from The Jackson Jive, and what in my view makes them acceptable, however, is that these sketches were accurate and funny send-ups of complex human beings who happened to be Afro-American. The make-up artists took care to give the white performers the correct skin-tones (Steve Vizard as Bill Cosby had darker make-up than Marg Downey as Phylicia Rashad) and the performers impersonated the vocals of whoever they were playing as best they could. In contrast, the medicos involved in the Jackson Jive simply slapped on a bit of boot polish and put on the sort of “happy go-lucky darky” voices associated with the long-dead US theatrical tradition of blackface.

It’s important in my view to draw a very clear distinction between a white person impersonating a black person through the tradition of blackface (which is racist) and a white person impersonating a person who is black and in so doing applying appropriate make-up (which is valid). What makes blackface offensive is that the performance (the voice adopted, the physical mannerisms, the use of language and the mode of speaking) is a grossly-exaggerated stereotype which reflects the true nature of no real black person who has ever lived. The physical features of the stereotype are highlighted, by the performer applying jet-black make-up to their face and accentuating their lips and eyes with bright white make-up, making them look rather like gollywogs.

All blackface performers have this gollywog make-up, and all blackface performers adopt the same voice, physical mannerisms and so forth. Whereas Steve Vizard’s portrayal of Bill Cosby was an accurate parody of Cosby, a blackface performer’s act reflects nothing that it is real, lumping all blacks into one. The implication here is that the performer considers blacks to have so little value that they can’t even be bothered to acknowledge their complexities, their very human nature. This is highly insulting and the tradition of blackface is rightly a dead art. The reason the Jackson Jive caused such a furore throughout the English-speaking world is that they, ignorantly, revived this art.

The Nightmare Out Of Time

Here’s a question: what makes the Hey Hey it’s Saturday blackface controversy different from the controversy over The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch, or Hungry Beast’s promo for a fake story about netball rape, or the looming global horror that is John Safran’s Race Relations? It might not seem like an important question in the face of the far more obvious Hey Hey question WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING? (that one’s coming up), but as these kind of comedy controversies seem to be becoming a regular feature of the media landscape in 2009 it’s important to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with here.

See, various commentators have been pushing hard the idea that they’re all basically the same thing: well-meaning but misguided types going too far for a laugh. (others have claimed that Australians don’t know that blackface is offensive, or that other countries don’t understand the Aussie sense of humour: these people are wrong in every direction, and can be safely ignored). Occasionally comedy is going to step over the line, they argue – it’s a shame but we should all just pick ourselves up and move on. Sure, Daryl went too far, but don’t get too smug, leftie PC types: The Chaser also went too far and Safran no doubt will go too far as well. So don’t think you can make this more than it is – and anyway, our on-line / phone survey said that at least three quarters of Australians didn’t see any harm in the skit. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

This is, of course, complete bullshit. Here’s a fun fact: three quarters of Australians can be and often are clueless, ignorant twits. And if you think putting a blackface sketch on Australian television in 2009 is “just a bit of harmless fun”, then you sir or madam, are a clueless, ignorant twit, at least as far as this subject goes. Blackface is not making fun of a black individual: blackface is a shameful, disgusting act of cultural exploitation and denigration, treating an entire race as identical for the purposes of dehumanizing them and mocking them. End of story.

Yeah yeah, but but but. There are no buts here: blackface is indefensible in 2009 whichever way you slice it. “But Harry Connick Jr. did a comedy sketch in blackface in 1996”. Was he made up to look like a Golliwog? No? Then it’s not the same thing (and gee, there’s a real-life black man beside him in that sketch). “But Robert Downey Jr. was in blackface in Tropic Thunder”. Have you even watched that movie, ABC reporter who made the link in the story for the Melbourne news the night of October 8th? The joke in that mostly intelligent, nuanced film – made forcefully, clearly and repeatedly – is at the expense of self-obsessed white Hollywood actors who think something as appallingly racist as blackface is justifiable in their quest for “realism”. “But the Hey Hey skit was equally as intelligent and nuanced”. Oh, fuck off.

The fact that large sections of the Australian public – okay, large sections of the section of the Australian public who vote in phone / on-line news polls – are pretty much clueless in this area isn’t news. What is news – and what makes this controversy different – is that, for the first time in the recent history of Australian comedy controversies, the flames of this particular outrage weren’t fanned by the tabloids.

Many recent “controversies” have largely been tabloid beat-ups; even with The Chaser, where there was clear public anger over the sketch itself, the tabloids ran with it hard out the gate. But this time, for whatever reason – political leanings, commercial ties to Nine and Daryl, lack of interest in internet chatter on the topic – the Australian tabloids weren’t interested in throwing fuel on the fire.

It’s compare and contrast time: on Wednesday October 7th , Melbourne’s Herald-Sun ran a story taking up a third of page three claiming that when John Safran’s upcoming series Race Relations was aired on the ABC people would be outraged. No-one (apart from a rent-a-quote figure who, it was later revealed on ABC radio, hadn’t actually seen the show) was actually outraged yet – the Herald-Sun just figured they’d write up a story about something that might happen in the future. You know, just in case.

Then on Thursday October 8th, the day after the blackface skit went to air, The Herald-Sun ran a small story on page seven about the previous night’s episode of Hey Hey. Mostly consisting of a photo of the Hey Hey team, the short sidebar covered the impressive ratings for last night’s show, and in the final three sentences mentioned that Harry Connick Jr. hadn’t been impressed by a blackface skit on Red Faces. This wasn’t a case where a Herald-Sun reporter thought someone down the line might be offended: this was a case where someone ON THE ACTUAL SHOW ITSELF was clearly offended and with obvious good reason. Not to mention the internet pretty much exploded over it. Three sentences on page 7, huh?  If Daryl had shot someone live on air I’m guessing they would have run that story somewhere up the back under the tide times.

Of course, by Friday’s edition they were right on top of it all, trying to reassure many of their readers – no doubt unsettled by the revelation that laughing at people dressed as golliwogs wasn’t on any more – with polls saying most Aussies didn’t think a shameful act of blatant racism was all that bad. Not to mention a column from the newly returned Andrew Bolt saying Daryl et al were guilty of nothing worse than stupidity. Oddly, when The Chaser were guilty of “stupidity” they were supposed to quit public life forever in shame; Daryl’s punishment for the same crime was supposed to be understanding and hugs all ‘round. After all, he was just trying to make us laugh. No-one was supposed to get hurt.

Only thing is, anyone with even halfway clear memories of how Hey Hey operated during its’ final decade knows that someone always got hurt. How many poof jokes were made about Molly Meldrum? How many jokes were made against women by the Hey Hey boy’s club? Seriously, Jackie MacDonald was the only woman on the show and her theme song was “folks are dumb where I come from”? And then her replacement Denise Drysdale left because it was obvious to everyone watching that Daryl didn’t like her getting more laughs than he did. There’s a good reason why hardly any YouTube clips of the show come from the 1990s: the truly memorable moments of the final decade mostly involved Daryl glaring at anyone who got in his way.

Hey Hey it’s Saturday, which in its early years was a highly entertaining muck-up involving a bunch of people clearly having a good time doing what amused them, became a stale, humourless ritual humiliation long before the axe finally fell. That’s why – for anyone capable of looking past their own warm fuzzy memories to the reality of what actually went to air in the 1990s – the return of Hey Hey was always a disaster waiting to happen.

Beyond the silly segments and miming “live” bands, in its final years Hey Hey was a mean-spirited show that largely got its laughs from picking on groups seen as “weak”. Seeing it back on our screens was seeing some nightmare from a nastier age returned to remind us that some people are still getting cheap laughs from mocking others.

Kind of like tuning into Australian television in 2009 and seeing a blackface act on air.

History Repeating

Yes, it’s time once again for yet another slice of manufactured, pre-packed outrage – courtesy, as seems to be increasingly the case, of Melbourne’s Herald-Sun. In case you missed it here, pretty much all you need to know is this:

THE ABC is facing another barrage of public anger over a new TV show in which shock comedian John Safran simulates sex acts to an image of US President Barack Obama.

Canny readers will have already noticed the all-important word there: “facing”. That’s right – this is a news story about something that hasn’t actually happened yet.  Someone at the Herald-Sun checked out the first episode of Safran’s show Race Relations (the first two episodes are floating around, having been sent out to media last week) and thought “if I beat this up hard enough, there’s a page 3 story here”.

Not much of a story, mind you. The only person outside of the journalist, ABC sources and government spokespeople who actually go on the record is a spokesman for Australian Family Association, Mr John Morrissey. He called it “filth”, and according to this story said “it would be the lowest point in Australia’s television history.” Thank you Mr Rent-a-Quote. It’s be interesting to know if he’s actually seen the show or merely had it described to him by the Herald-Sun writer down the phone: either way, the fact he’s not a fan isn’t exactly news to anyone not breathing through their mouths. Guess Fred Nile wasn’t taking calls that day.

Disclousure time: I’ve seen the first episode of Race Relations.  And guess what? Probably not for everyone.  Mostly not for people without a sense of humour, but seeing Safran steal a varity of (seemingly) unsuspecting women’s undergarments and then sniff them is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But when / if you actually sit down to watch the show, one thing becomes very, very clear: the joke is always on Safran himself.

In Race Relations – at least in the first episode – Safran often comes across as a fairly creepy perv. Maybe not someone Herald-Sun readers would want to hang out with, but who cares? This is a comedy show, and creepy pervs are a great source of laughs. Just dig up then ask Benny Hill.  Cheap comparisons to Kyle or The Chaser will be made by various media types (the Herald Sun you say?), but again, the show makes it very clear that Safran is taking the piss out of himself – and perhaps, in the sperm banks sketch, also having a swipe at a fairly unsettling form of genetic segregation.  And you’d kinda think that, as a Jew, Safran is entitled to stick his oar in there a little bit.

That said, the real laughs in all this come from the Herald-Sun‘s outraged editorial. Highlights include: “If the public gives a shocked thumbs down to the first episode of Race Relations, director of television Kim Dalton would seem to have no choice but to sack himself.” So presumably if it turns out to be a ratings smash he’ll have no choice but to give himself a raise?  And just in case you were planning to make up your own mind about all this, don’t bother: “This is trash TV. It’s not funny and it’s grossly insulting.”

Insulting to who? Presumably, judging by the first line of their news report, they mean President Obama.  Gee, somehow I think he can take it. Otherwise, well, Safran himself is insulted a fair bit, and the idea of preserving a unique and seperate Jewish and Palestinian genetic heritage takes a few knocks, and he flies to Africa to ask if a African guy who does well with the white ladies in Melbourne would be considered handsome back in his home country so perhaps some of the un-named and un-identified white women with jungle fever might feel slighted. Those cases aside, the Herald-Sun editorial really seems to be big on rage but short on facts. So again, no news there.

Somewhat surprisingly, the real hero of this story is revealed in one sentance:  “Communications Minister Stephen Conroy refused to buy into the outrage.” Fingers crossed the rest of this supposedly level-headed nation does likewise.

A Beast of a programme

This week’s most overlooked debut was Hungry Beast, which inevitably stood no chance against the Hey Hey reunion and the premiere of Celebrity Masterchef. That’s probably just as well for those “19 newcomers to television” who are involved as “tell us something we don’t know” – the show’s motto – it didn’t.

The show’s first story concerned a spoof survey on gullibility put together by the some of the team and distributed by them posing as a fictional organisation called The Levitt Institute. They aimed to prove that today’s media are so time-poor and under-resourced that they’ll accept anything in a legitimate-looking press release as true, and succeeded in doing so, with the gullibility survey’s results being reported on websites, in newspapers, on radio and even The 7PM Project.

Sadly, the thunder for this admittedly rather good prank was stolen by Media Watch, who’d received a tip-off that the survey was fake, done some digging, established a connection with the about-to-start Hungry Beast and aired a story which pipped Hungry Beast to the post by two days. Media Watch‘s story included the comments of Mike Osborne, Editor of AAP – “No-matter what the rationale behind this hoax, it is cheap and mischievous” – and ended with Jonathan Holmes’ warning “No doubt many of you would reckon it’s pretty funny too but there’s another lesson for the folk at The Hungry Beast in all this: it’s a cut-throat world out there. If you think you can put a hoax on the web two weeks before you go to air, without anyone else spotting it you’re living in fairyland. The Beast is much too Hungry for that.”

Hungry Beast‘s response? They included part of the Media Watch story in their story, and cheeky little beasts that they are, ended by accusing Media Watch of cross-promoting their show. Zing? Probably not. Witness how often ABC TV stars appear on ABC radio to promote their shows. Media Watch probably hasn’t breached any rules, it just beat Hungry Beast to the punch on a topic they’ve been covering for years. The real problem here is that for any regular viewer of Media Watch (or anyone who’s read the book Flat Earth News, or thought about the media for more than a second) this isn’t “something we don’t know”.

An even bigger problem was that that was Hungry Beast’s best story. Thereafter we were treated to a spoof of commercial current affairs shows beating things up (a mix of the kind of stuff already well covered by Frontline and Media Watch, as seen through the eyes of someone trying to ape British comedian Chris Morris), a tit-for-tat debate about whether pandas are worth saving (among other things, panda’s inadequate sexual organs make it hard for them to reproduce – as discussed in numerous nature programmes and in the 90’s stand-up of Sue-Anne Post), a short segment where it was pointed out that by signing up to a cause on a social networking site you’re not actually achieving much apart from making yourself look like you care (even John Safran at his most glib on Sunday Night Safran probably wouldn’t bother with something that obvious) and an interview with Susan Staden and Bree Till, the mother and wife (respectively) of Brett Till, an Australian soldier who was killed in Afghanistan in March.

The Staden/Till interview was meant to be a different look at the long-running story of Bree Till’s plight as the pregnant wife of a dead solider, and was intended to show the family’s dignity in the face of the media hype surrounding Bree’s battle with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs for some compensation for her unborn child, and the children from Brett Till’s previous marriage, for whom she cares. The resulting piece showed Staden and Till sitting at a table talking about Brett. For about 5 minutes. As therapeutic as it may have been for the pair to share a few memories, it wasn’t very interesting television and basically told us exactly what we’d expect a dead solider’s mother and wife to say: Brett Till was a decent bloke and a good father who they miss very much.

There are plenty of interesting things to say about the Afghan war and the lives of military families, but this wasn’t the way to cover it. Similarly, there are plenty of interesting things out there that “we don’t know” and expecting a bunch of newbies to find them is probably expecting a bit much.

As with so many new programmes, much of the problem comes from over-hyping a damp squib. Even if the marketing team had inserted “probably” into the show’s motto, it might stand a better chance….although it’d stand an even better one if it was funny, incisive and entertaining. And judging by the promo for next week’s show, which promise an hilarious spoof of the rugby “group sex” scandal with the oh-so-wry twist that Liz Ellis and the Diamonds had group sex with a bloke, it won’t be. Still, judging by the comments on Hungry Beast website the show’s graphics were a hit. And that graphics are really important for television was something I didn’t know.

Gilding the Lilley

Look what turned up in our inbox at the end of business Friday – okay, you probably already know all this, but it’s always fun to check out the original press release so you can see just how little work is involved in journalism today:

CHRIS LILLEY GETS ‘ANGRY’ WITH ABC TV

In the most hotly-awaited news in television, ABC TV and the USA’s HBO jointly today announces a new 12-part, half-hour series from multi-award winning writer and performer, Chris Lilley.

Angry Boys is a co-production between the team of Chris Lilley and Princess Pictures, creators of the enormously popular Summer Heights High and We Can Be Heroes, ABC TV and HBO.

In an Australian first, the series will be co-produced with HBO, a broadcaster which has built its reputation by offering some of television’s most creative and edgy programming, and in association with the UK’s BBC, the home of British comedy.

Shooting in a mock documentary style, Angry Boys explores what it means to be a 21st century boy by putting the male of the species under the microscope. It will be shot in Australia and overseas locations and goes into pre-production on Monday October 5.

Chris Lilley says he’s been writing the new show for a long time. “There will be new characters and lots of surprises for the audience, and I’m really excited about having a longer-running series to work with.”

Laura Waters, Princess Pictures, says “Angry Boys will be the biggest challenge and most fun we’ve ever had making a television show.”

ABC TV Executive Head of Content Creation, Courtney Gibson says “The scripts are absolutely terrific: Once again Chris is pushing comedy and character somewhere really challenging and ambitious. Moving forward with HBO and the BBC as partners means the series will play on the world stage right after we premiere it here in Australia.”

Sue Naegle, President, HBO Entertainment. said “Chris Lilley combines a wicked sense of humour with fearless insights into human nature, which gives his comedy a universal appeal. We were thrilled to share Summer Heights High with the U.S. audience and are sure that Angry Boys will connect with our subscribers and the media.”

In 2007, Summer Heights High screened in Australia to phenomenal success, with a peak audience of 1.48 million and a 33.5% share (5 cities).

Summer Heights High has not only been a success in Australia but has been seen in dozens of countries around the world including on HBO in the USA and on the BBC in the UK.

It’s the highest-selling Australian comedy TV series DVD. In 2008 it won the Most Outstanding Comedy Series and most Popular Actor Logies and the AFI Award for Best Comedy Series and Best Actor in a Comedy Series.

We Can Be Heroes was also seen in dozens of countries including the US (Sundance Channel) and UK (FXUK), and won the Most Outstanding Comedy Series Logie in 2006.

Chris won the Logies’ inaugural Graham Kennedy Award in 2006 and the AFI’s the Byron Kennedy Award in 2008

Far be it for anyone here to slag off a show before it’s gone to air – or in this case, before it’s even begun filming – but for anyone with even the slightest hope that the clearly somewhat talented Chris Lilley would eventually figure out a way to put that talent to good use, this is pretty much a procession of bad news. Such as:

*”Angry Boys”. What more needs to be said?  It’s going to be a collection of character studies where Lilley acts like various “angry boys” – that is to say, like various shades of rip-offs of David Brent yet again. It might be an all-new cast, but unless Lilley’s been hit on the head with a comedy pot plant and completely changed his personality, the fact that all his characters since Extreme Darren on Big Bite – a character imposed on him by some accounts – have basically been minor variations on passive-aggressive jerks does not leave much scope for optimism there.

* “12 part”. Lilley’s best work to date remains the short sketches he did for Big Bite.  Don’t believe it?  Track down the DVD and check them out for yourself.  Who knew that Mr. G could be funny, or that parodies of crap high school musicals could raise a smile? Of course, that’s largely because there the joke was on Lilley: once he started making his own series he stated to become protective of his characters, to the extent that by the end of Summer Heights High he had hell-bitch Ja’ime shout “State schools rock!”. Out of character? Totally.  A reminder that deep down this monster is a sweet kid at heart? Sure. Comedy fans will note that neither of those things are how you get laughs.

With each project Lilley attempts, the episode length gets longer: We Can Be Heroes: six episodes. Summer Heights High: eight episodes. And now twelve episodes of Angry Boys: War and Peace didn’t take as long to tell, and that wasn’t just some guy in a wig talking to camera. And it’s not like the extended length comes about because of a grander scope or wider range of topics covered: Does anyone really think there was anything more to say about the SHH cast after episode three? The series itself only had enough plot for five or so episodes, with the middle of the series feeling heavily drawn-out. In fact, SHH had less story than We Can Be Heroes, and two more episodes to tell it in. Why? Lilley likes the improv. Just check out the massive amount of deleted scenes on his DVDs.

So it’s fair to say that with twelve episodes, we can expect even less story than SHH – seriously, does it sound like anything more than just a run of character studies – and a lot more scenes that go nowhere. Could this be too much of a good thing? At this stage, who knows? Eight episodes of SHH seemed like a nightmare at the time but there’s no denying its success, at least in Australia (the rest of the globe, not so much). Maybe if Lilley was actually trying something new, but… well, that brings us to the next point:

* “Shooting in a mock documentary style”.  Jesus Christ, where to begin.  Mockumentary has been old news for years now, its cliches milked completely dry of comedy potential long before The Office came along, but Lilley isn’t going to let it go.  Why?  Because in mockumentary, he can talk to the camera as much as he likes.  It’s great for him, because it means he doesn’t have to interact with other actors and share the spotlight – something Lilley’s been loathe to do throughout his career.

His refusal to allow anyone else to get a laugh in his various series is his biggest weakness as a comedian. It limits his work to basically him (no matter who he’s playing) saying something offensive or shocking while everyone else reacts. Even with Jonah in SHH, the various teachers were one-dimensional authority figures he could crack wise against: letting someone else get a laugh simply wasn’t an option. Good news if you want to watch six hours of Lilley wearing various wigs; not so good if you want a bit of comedic back-and-forth.

Going mockumentary also means he doesn’t actually have to do much acting.  He can simply get his characters to explain themselves to camera instead.  Okay, often they’ll say one thing and mean another, but that’s hardly great acting. It is, however, a great way to allow stupid people to think they’re watching great acting: “wow, I thought Ja’ime was a complete bitch but she’s really emotionally affected by what that kid said to her” “You’re just repeating what the character just said YOU TOTAL TOOL!”

For all the talk of how amazing and chameleon-like Lilley is, the fact remains that a lot of his work consists of him dressing up and then telling us he’s someone else. “Show, don’t tell” is how the saying goes when it comes to great writing and acting. Someone might want to remind Lilley of that. Of course, then he might have to live up to the hype, which at this stage would be impossible even if you cloned Graham Kennedy and gave him four extra sets of arms. Even in this press release – press releases not being a genre designed for subtlety – it’s already out of hand:

“Once again Chris is pushing comedy and character somewhere really challenging and ambitious.” What, you mean like with SHH, where he was either a): a man in a dress, b): a bitchy drama teacher or c): a surly teenager making dick jokes? I suppose Lilley did set himself one challenge there: to take these well-worn comedy cliches and get no laughs whatsoever out of them. Mission accomplished.

“Chris Lilley combines a wicked sense of humour with fearless insights into human nature, which gives his comedy a universal appeal.” Fearless insights into human nature? That would be “teenage girls are superficial and bitchy”, correct?  Or were you think more along the lines of “drama teachers are bitchy and self-obsessed”? Perhaps “smart-arse kids are poorly served by a rigid educational system” was what you were thinking of? Once again, maybe it’s time to re-write the dictionary, because mine doesn’t seem to have a definition of “fearless” that means “predictable and superficial”.

The good news in all of this is that, going by the blown deadlines for SHH, there’s very little chance of seeing Angry Boys until 2011 at the earliest. Reportedly Lilley filmed over a hundred hours of footage for the eight-hour SHH: even if he doesn’t go past that ratio here (and as SHH was a big step up in footage shot from We Can Be Heroes, I wouldn’t count on that), that’s at least one hundred and fifty hours of footage he’s got to shoot.  And two out of three SHH characters were ones Lilley had already developed, so if he has to feel his way into a bunch of new wigs – uh, I mean characters – by performing as / in them for a while until he “knows who they are”… well, even 2011 could be a bit on the optimistic side…

Burn GTV9, Burn.

There’s a long tradition in post-apocalyptic film and literature where the shattered survivors of a world after some unimaginable holocaust desperately attempt to escape into the past. From A Canticle for Leibowitz to 12 Monkeys to Wall-E: when things turn to shit, people (and robots) escape into the past. But the return of Hey Hey it’s Saturday to Australian screens tonight must be the first time where the holocaust that wipes out civilisation and the nostalgia people turn to as an escape from the nightmare that remains turned out to be THE EXACT SAME BLOODY THING.

There’ll be time enough for a detailed dissection later – or not, because who in their right mind would want to go through two and a half hours of Daryl and company congratulating themselves on how amazing they are? Not so much an actual television show as yet another congratulatory lap of honour – and let’s not forget that Daryl turned the last few months of Hey Hey into a non-stop barrage of “you’ll miss us when we’re gone” – the smugness radiating off the host was enough to power a small death camp full of a nation’s dreams that entertainment might one day no longer involve a televised version of Celebrity Head.

Long time readers of this blog are probably thinking “but you would say that, wouldn’t you? You’ve been hating on Daryl and the Hey Hey team since day one – can’t you just let the fans enjoy a brief trip down memory lane?” Firstly, who knew that memory lane abruptly stopped at a thousand mile drop into a churning lake of flaming lava where the souls of the damned burn for all eternity? And secondly, what was the first complete sentence out of Daryl’s mouth once the show proper began?  Not “great to be back”, not some smutty gag, but “There should be a show that showcases some Australian talent.”

That’s right: the same tired line we’ve heard from every no-talent, rightfully unemployed hack trying to guilt a nation into giving them a career as a public service rather than making them earn one through talent and entertainment. But maybe he has a point? After all, television exposure is the kind of thing up and coming acts desperately need. So what was the first act showcased by this much-needed venue to highlight Australian talent? That struggling young artiste Jimmy Barnes. Who got a gold record after his song, and then promptly gave Daryl one in return.

What word means more smug than “smug”? MegaSmug? Smug 2.0? Doubleplus Smug? The guys down at the dictionary will be working overtime trying to coin a word that can cope with the strain Daryl’s putting on plain old “smug”, and the show’s barely into the first ad break. It might sound like snark and maybe it is, but for years and years Daryl has run hard on the line that Hey Hey shouldn’t have been axed because it provided a showcase for Australian talent. So his dream came true: he got his show back.  And when it was time to shit or get off the pot as far as showcasing Australian talent, we get Jimmy Barnes. Oh, and Akhmal Saleh.  And The Amazing Jonathan. And John Farnham. And some Aria-award winning band who’s name Daryl fluffed three times. And Kylie Minogue. And an a cappella band singing Stayin’ Alive, which I guess wasn’t something you’d see anywhere else.

And a live cross to John Farnham’s concert? What in the name of… well, all the clearly hefty deities that Farnzie’s eaten over the last fifteen years? If they wanted to love-up Farnzie that much, why not just forget about reviving Hey Hey and just show his concert? If Daryl just wants to cut to people who aren’t even on the damn show, why not cut to an episode of The Mick Molloy Show? Daryl doesn’t even want to put on a show, he’s just sticking his mates on the TV now. So I guess that hasn’t changed either.

There’s plenty of other grounds to sink the boot in, from doing the Great Aussie Joke with a CGI Morrie Fields (aieee!) and then making sure no-one was actually laughing by getting all emotional over the digital resurrection of Morrie (hey, it wasn’t the Great Aussie Eulogy) to having the enjoyably funny Lavina Nixon around pretty much solely to make a joke about her being pregnant to Plucka Duck and then read emails. Actually, the whole audience participation stuff was as creepy as all hell: Hey Hey always cut away to the audience, and they’re the ones to thank / blame for its return, but if they’re so important that we have to hear from them every five minutes why not just do the show to them without the cameras? Or just put up the facebook fan page address for two and a half hours so the fans can high-five each other there? Oh wait, now they’re telling us that Hey Hey is the number one topic on Twitter.  Gee, that’s gripping news.  Wasn’t the show’s increasingly insular appeal aimed solely at rusted-on fans the reason why the show was axed in the first place?

At the start I mentioned the nostalgia theme running through a lot of post-apocalypse fiction. The best riff on that theme turns up in the first Terminator movie, where during one of Kyle Reese’s flashbacks to his past in the future (hey, it’s a lot easier to follow than anything in T’s 3 or 4) we see a couple of children huddled together watching a television set. What show could they possibly we watching that could distract them from the devastation all around? How could a television set even work in the ruins? The joke, of course, is that they’re watching a fire burning in the remains of the broken set. After tonight, I envy those kids.

It’s not you, it’s the format

I haven’t had time to watch much comedy in the past few weeks apart from catching up with LOLZ RANDOMS-magnets Beached Az and The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote – hey, at least they’re short! – and fast-forwarding through several weeks worth of Rove to see how Judith Lucy’s segment’s been going – she’s great, but as someone who’s always divided audiences I worry how long she’ll last…which kinda brings me to what I have had time for: Tony Martin and Tony Wilson filling in for Derek Guille on 774 ABC Melbourne and ABC Victoria’s evening show.

Martin and Wilson, sometimes known as the Two Tones, have come off the subs bench for various people on 3RRR throughout the year, to much acclaim from their fans. But while the laid back, youthful, free-wheeling style of 3RRR has suited the Tones, their time on ABC Local has been a different experience.

As fill-ins, Tony and Tony couldn’t mess too much with the established format, which was fine when the topics of discussion were crime fiction, music, cinema, or even AFL (although Wilson obviously did the heavy lifting there), but when it came to more serious matters, like a segment on sexual assault, Tony Martin in particular struggled to find something appropriate to say.

Perhaps the clash of radio cultures was most strikingly obvious during the phone-ins. Whatever the topic, the majority of callers had anecdotes so deathly dull that Tony Martin could barely stop himself from laughing at whatever ageing waffler was telling them, while Tony Wilson tried as quickly and politely as possible to wrap said waffler up, and move things along.

It’s also fair to assume that such wafflers, who make up ABC Local’s core audience of baby boomers, radiophiles and the elderly, weren’t universally won over by Tony and Tony’s style of playing eclectic music between lots of joking around and obscure pop culture talk. Such listeners are essentially wowsers, used to hearing a very detailed, very serious and very long weather forecast at a certain time each evening, and definitely not the type to actively encourage Tony Martin to talk about Corey Haim or reference Blakey from On The Buses.

And herein lies the problem for Tony Martin, as brilliantly talented as he is, he’s a man with a distinctive style that doesn’t endear him to everyone. Opportunities at the increasingly bland youth-focused commercial radio stations are probably closed to him even if he wanted to go back (witness the failure of any of them to sign him after the demise of Get This), ABC Local tends to suit a more everyman personality (because as Tony pointed out repeatedly during the two weeks – on the ABC you can’t comment on anything), the commercial stations aimed at more mature audiences wouldn’t be right either (as proved when Tony filled-in on Melbourne’s Gold FM breakfast show and took the piss every time he had to do a live read – funny, but not something likely to keep you your job, even if it’s how Graham Kennedy kept his), and 3RRR, which does suit him, can’t pay him.

A different, but related problem is that whichever format a station’s gone for, that format is king. For someone like Tony Martin, who basically has his own format, the only possibilities are that:

  1. he tries to adopt a different persona in order to get work (unlikely)

  2. he is given a slot somewhere and is allowed the freedom to make it his own, with obscure pop-culture talk a-plenty and sketches consisting of clips of Julia Gillard using ill-fitting metaphors to describe the school’s stimulus fund being cut into Little Boot’s Remedy (sadly, also unlikely)

  3. digital radio takes off enough to make “minority interest” channels of the type that would suit Martin viable (again unlikely, if the British experience is any guide quirky start-up channels will either die on their arse or realise they have no option but to bland down in order to attract an audience)

  4. he plays the long game and sticks with 3RRR until someone offers him a paid gig elsewhere (things will get better soon, right?)

  5. he leaves the industry and starts a video shop (well, I’d join).

And if that doesn’t make you weep for the future of both comedy and radio in this country then clearly nothing will.

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom. Generation X are now in their 30’s and 40’s and starting to outgrow the youth-focused stations like Nova, the Today Network and Triple J. Amongst the alternatives for these increasingly settled and family-oriented Gen Xers is ABC Local, which every couple of years manages to sign up someone a bit younger than their traditional audience, indicating that they’re not adverse to trying to attract the newly middle aged. A Gen X hero like Tony Martin could draw such people to a station like 774, but only if he were allowed the freedom to do what he does best.

Comedy Free Comedy

The number one thing a comedy has to do is make people laugh. But that’s kinda hard, so every few years there comes along a sweeping trend in comedy – one that doesn’t involve comedy at all. Instead of simply trying to make people laugh, the people behind these trends will claim to be “breaking new ground” in comedy by adding something to the mix to distract viewers from the fact that they don’t really seem to be laughing at anything they’re seeing. The most recent version of this – the Ricky Gervais / Chris Lilley school of saying something crass or offensive and just lingering on it until the viewer hopefully laughs out of nothing more than sheer embarrassment – has been pounded into the concrete enough for now. So let’s instead take a look back at the attempt before that to create comedy-free comedy, an approach that’s best summed up by three words that’re enough to send a chill down any eight-cents-a-day viewer’s spine: Dog’s Head Bay.

In the late 1990’s, the ABC found itself with an unexpected hit on its hands: Seachange. Why it was unexpected is a bit of a mystery today: a more nakedly commercial program it’s hard to imagine, what with the family-friendly mix of soft-sell romance, lightweight drama, and a few decent laughs (let’s not forget that Seachange’s co-creator was Andrew Knight, the guy next to Steve Vizard during the Fast Forward / Full Frontal days). Seachange’s effect on Australian television drama was massive: basically, apart from The Secret Life of Us and Underbelly, you can’t make a successful Aussie drama without ripping off either its tone (Packed to the Rafters, anyone?) or the whole damn thing (Always Greener, East of Everything).

But who watches Australian drama? We’re here for the comedy, and Seachange – combined with shrinking ABC drama budgets – put forward a new model for Aussie comedy, one where the numerous laugh-free spaces could be filled with the kind of quirky drama that audiences had refused to pay for at the cinemas since the late 1980s. Presumably in this climate hiring noted playwright and unfunny bastard David Williamson and his wife to write a 13-episode sitcom seemed like a good idea, as did sticking solid dramatic tree stump Gary Sweet in the lead; whoever was supposed to check the quality of the finished product was clearly asleep at the wheel and the wheel wasn’t attached to anything in the first place because the second this crapfest went to air the ABC found its budget pretty much cut in half out of sheer disgust at the contempt being shown for the very concept of entertainment.

At this point it’d be great to post a few links to clips or reviews to illustrate just how amazingly bad it and its reception was – and trust me, it was bad. But you will just have to trust me, because the second this turd started stinking up the ABC’s bowl everyone involved ran a thousand miles. There was no video release; no DVD release is planned. The reviews – scathing at the time –are locked away in mouldering piles of print down at your local library. There’s next to no information on the show itself to be found on the internet: if you didn’t know anything about it, you might even think it was a halfway decent (or at least, misunderstood) show.  And this kind of mass forgetting of how our home-grown television is often made for the enjoyment of everyone but the viewer is how we come to having a series – not one, but a series, with each episode two and a half hours long – of Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunion specials.

Dogs Head Bay wasn’t quite enough to kill the idea of quirky Australia dramedy stone dead, sad to say. Corridors of Power was a six-part political-themed stab at the comedy / drama crossover that managed to combine the few crap parts of Frontline with the barely noticeable weak points of The Games into a series about a pre-selection struggle that felt like being bailed up at a party by a junior public servant desperate to tell someone about the amazing new insights he’d had into preventing rorting of the internal mail system at their Reservoir depot. It did, however, get slightly better reviews – unfortunately, they almost entirely gave off the impression that this was a show that was good for the nation rather than something a sane person would want to watch.  A televisual version of steamed broccoli might have sounded like a good idea inside the ABC, but out in the real world lessons on how the country is run are about as popular as Corridors of Power turned out to be.

And then there’s Bad Cop Bad Cop. Coming in half-hour chunks, this one actually looked like a sitcom – a curiously laugh-free version based around the antics of two corrupt cops running through various dodgy schemes while both sleeping with the same mildly sexy bent lawyer. To be honest, this did feature semi-decent plotting and some halfway effective performances (especially Michael Caton as the older, more laid-back of the two corrupt cops) – only problem was it was being sold as a half hour sitcom when it showed next to no interest in making anyone laugh. Whether the makers simply thought “two corrupt cops getting tangled up in various schemes – that’ll be hilarious!” and left it at that or tried to put in jokes but they were so bad no-one outside the writing staff realised that that’s what they were meant to be and so the actors simply played them straight… well, at this stage who cares.

It was around this point that the ABC suddenly seemed to realise that if they were going to bother making comedies, they probably should get comedians to make them. Seachange’s legacy lives on in the drama department – I did mention the strident and painful East of Everything, didn’t I? – but the comedy side of the street seems to have shrugged it off for good. Well, on the ABC it has: Seven’s Packed to the Rafters probably counts as comedy to some, what with a wacky neighbour called (for Christ’s sake) Carbo…

Australian Tumbleweeds is Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.
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