Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

Stitched Up

After a week that saw the arrival of The White Room  and Sleuth 101, plus the return of Hungry Beast, one question leaps to the top of every comedy fan’s list: where are the good comedy shows going to come from? Because just quietly, surely Australia’s attempted every possible variation on the comedy game show format by now without once striking gold. It’s over, it’s done, we get it. Comedy game shows are for people who think they like to laugh but in reality just like to be distracted. If someone figures out a way to make a hilarious crossword puzzle all other forms of comedy in this country will be dead by the weekend.

If you want even more proof that “comedy” in our once great land now simply means “game shows featuring people you might, with a gun to your head, describe as comedians”, consider this: while the ABC seemingly didn’t blink twice before giving Sleuth 101 the eight-episode green light, the fate of actual scripted comedy on the national broadcaster looks more like this press release:

ABC TV is pleased to announce that three outstanding new TV comedy projects will receive development funding in 2010 as a result of the Film Victoria/ABC TV comedy initiative STITCH, designed to develop the skills of comedy performers in writing longer-form narrative.

Clearly people coming up with comedy game shows don’t require “skill development” – just hand out the cash and away they go. We’re only one paragraph in and already this smells like something you do when you need to be seen to be doing something you don’t really want to do. After all, if they actually wanted to make “longer-form narrative” comedy, it’s not like they don’t know where to look.  A friend of a friend’s friend was talking to Bob Franklin a few weeks back, and he said he’s giving up pitching shows to TV networks because they’re not interested.  And yet they’re interested in this:

Next of Kin – (Josh Thomas (writer/performer and stand up comedian, currently on Talking „Bout Your Generation), and Todd Abbott (producer), a comedy about a boy who would like to be an adult and do adult things, like moving out and sleeping with girls. But his mum has other ideas.

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Bruce – Warwick Holt, Mat Blackwell (established writers whose work you’ve laughed to on many shows including Good News Week ), Jason Byrne (producer), and Tony Rogers (director), a gritty black comedy about life in an ordinary Aussie share-house, that just happens to be a convict tent in 1788.

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TwentySomething – Josh Schmidt (writer/performer), and Jess Harris (writer/performer), a comedy series about best mates, Jess and Josh, who never went to uni, never had a clear talent and never really had a drive to grow up.

Can you guess which one is going to be any good?  If you picked anything but TwentySomething, get off my lawn. Not because TwentySomething already exists, being a pretty funny show that screened on community television a few years back, but because it’s the only show of the three that doesn’t sound like a crap sketch comedy idea.

Think about the great sitcoms of the past. Despite being called “situation comedies”, all their premises are frustratingly vague: Seinfeld is about a bunch of friends (as is Friends), Married… with Children does what it says on the lid, Cheers is about people hanging around a bar, The Simpsons is an animated family, 30 Rock is behind-the-scenes at a comedy show, The Young Ones is about four students, Father Ted is about priests… I could go on, but we’re getting into Herman’s Head territory.

When you lock a show into a tight set-up, you lock out most of the opportunities for jokes. A freewheeling format doesn’t mean you’re going to be a kak – Hey, Dad could have gone anywhere, but it never left the kitchen – but when you make a one-gimmick sitcom, you get Wilfred: a series than runs in ever narrower circles, desperately trying to wring laughs from a concept that can’t be shaken off or broken out of. Yep, really looking forward to that second series.  You say there’s a cat in this one? Excellent.

So what has the ABC sunk money into in the hopes of igniting a bright new comedy dawn? A Gen Y version of Mother & Son and a “dark” version of Bligh. Thanks. What we have here is a prime example of whoever it is with the money deciding to go with the concept rather than the talent. Because again, as we never tire of mentioning here, Australian comedy has plenty of proven talent out there champing at the bit to get a TV show made. Unfortunately, “proven talent” is the one thing television executives aren’t interested in.

You see, there’s no upside for execs in giving proven talent their own show: if the proven talent fails, then the exec has overseen a failure, which is bad. If the proven talent succeeds, then there’s no glory left for the exec – after all, everyone knows the talent was up to the task so what did the exec contribute? Nothing.  Which is also bad –  not for the viewer of course, but for the exec, and they’re what counts, right?

In contrast, giving an unknown a shot is a much better deal for our exec. If the unknown fails, sure, failure is bad, but the exec is a good guy for giving people a helping hand.  And who knows? If the unknown somehow becomes a big star further down the track, they might feel some gratitude towards the person who helped them out. In contrast, if they succeed who was the bright spark who saw something in a complete nobody and bravely took a chance that paid off? Big ups for the TV exec right there. Plus with an unknown, you never really know: maybe they’ll turn out to be the next Chris Lilley. You hire Ryan Shelton, and you’re just getting Ryan Shelton. Which would be an improvement, but we’re in the minority there.

I could go on – the line “established writers whose work you’ve laughed to on many shows including Good News Week” is funnier than the show they’re working on ever could be – but let’s look on the bright side: TwentySomething is already a halfway decent show. So while Josh Thomas is chucking some kind of whiney random tantrum because his mum won’t let him get a root and Bruce is suddenly making incongruous references to iPads in episode two, Jess Harris and Josh Schmidt might actually make us laugh.

(oh, who am I kidding – the ABC’s only going to fund the Josh Thomas show and everyone else will be lucky to get a guest slot on Spicks & Specks.)

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.

Not the Good Scissors!

Good comedy is a fragile thing, and there’s no better way to nip it in the bud than with bad editing. Just take a look at the sketch Tony Martin did on last Friday’s 7pm Project (they’re doing sketches now? But more on that later) with the extended version available here on the show’s website. Both versions work – and on the broadcast version you get the advantage of Tony’s very funny outro, which is a callback to an earlier story – only the extended version features more Ed Kavalee (in the world’s tightest flannel shirt) and a coffin-shaped VHS tape cover (where was the legendary cover to The Crays complete with fake blood?  Oh wait, the R4 DVD of the third season of Dexter did the exact same trick) plus an extended run at classy video store “The Movie Reel”. They don’t make a huge difference to the running time but they do give the comedy time to breathe. Making it noticeably funnier.

It’s hard to know whether the broadcast version was edited down by Martin or The 7pm Project. It’s not like Martin doesn’t have form when it comes to handing in projects that have run long: some of the reports about the infamous “funnyman feud” between Martin and Mick Molloy over Martin’s Boytown Confidential documentary (which remains, in potential at least, possibly the funniest film made in this country this century) claimed the difficulties began with Martin handing in an over-long cut of the mockumentary. Judging by the brief clips available on the DVD of Boytown, a five hour version would be just fine by us; cutting it down to barely a minute seems to be taking the whole concept of “editing” a little too far.

That’s not Martin’s first encounter with overly harsh editing, though in the case of The Late Show DVD (and the VHS tapes that came before it), he may have been the one wielding the scissors. There’s no argument that the Champagne Comedy DVD collection of The Late Show hits pretty much every high note of the series, and to be fair much of the collection was put together when legalities, combined with the time and space limitations imposed by VHS tapes, made savage editing a necessity (the DVD collects the three VHS compilations, with extra bits only available on DVD). But if you’ve got access to the original recordings, whether recorded at the time or grabbed off the ‘net, it doesn’t take long to realize that while all the best laugh-getting moments made it to the collections, the build-ups that often made those moments so funny didn’t always make the cut.

The DVD version of The Late Show often makes it look like a rapid-fire sketch show pumping out the gags, jumping all over the place and never sitting still for a moment. It’s a great collection, but compared to the original it loses a fair bit of the series’ charm. The show that went out on the ABC was often a bit of a mess, a ramshackle affair held together at times solely by the fact that everyone on-screen seemed to be having a whole lot of fun. That setting often made the classic moments so great: Graham and The Colonel is all but incomprehensible without the forty or fifty minutes of show (and seeing Rob Sitch and Santo Cilauro acting together in other sketches and segments) that proceeded it, and even then it took a good few weeks to work out exactly why seeing them throw away pages of script was so much fun.

Probably the best purchasable example of what The Late Show actually was is on the DVD release of Bargearse / The Olden Days. Martin added close to twenty complete sketches and skits from The Late Show as Easter eggs on that disc, and while the sketches themselves might not be classics (The Four Kinsmen singing the Body Count track Copkiller aside), seeing them complete and uncut makes them seem a lot funnier than many of the snippets on the Champagne Comedy DVD.

All that aside, if Tony Martin’ sketch on The 7pm Project proves to be the start of a trend (and it could be: it seems Lawrence Leung has also done a segment in recent weeks) it’ll be a move well worth celebrating edits or not. After six months it’s clear that no one in charge is going to make the hard decisions required to turn that show into something worthwhile –

[basically, they need to decide whether it’s meant to be a comedy or a news show – straddling the middle just means the audience never gets a chance to realize it’s okay to laugh: “millionaire found dead in bushland – now here’s Tony Martin with a funny report on video stores” is not how you sell either comedy or news]

– so the best we can hope for is a sped-up version of what Rove ended up being: a show where individual segments were well worth watching followed by segments you wouldn’t watch in a pink fit. Of course, that’s the formula that doomed Rove, as DVD recorders and YouTube meant viewers could just pick out the good bits and ignore the rest. But if they manages to get a few good sketches on before the axe finally falls, maybe The 7pm Project won’t be a mistake they’ll have to edit out of the history books.

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.

And the nominations are…

The nominations have been counted, and the top three in each category have made it to the final round of voting. So what now?

How to Vote
Please select one choice in each category (or vote only in the categories you wish to vote in), then either post your choices as a comment on this post or e-mail them to australiantumbleweeds@yahoo.com.au. Don’t forget to include your comments on whoever or whatever you’ve chosen in each category, but please be aware that we may publish these when we release the results. Voting closes at 11.59pm EST on 31st December 2009. The results will be released on or about Australia Day 2010.

WORST NEWCOMER
The Handsomity Institute (creators of Beached Az)
The cast of Hungry Beast
Josh Thomas (Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation)

WORST NEW COMEDY
Beached Az
Double Take
Hungry Beast

WORST ACTOR
Paul Hogan (Charlie & Boots)
Dan Ilic (Hungry Beast)
Sam Simmons (Urban Monkey)

WORST ACTRESS
Emily Rose Brennan (:30 Seconds)
Veronica Milsom (Hungry Beast)
Caroline Reid (Pam Ann Show)

WORST ENTERTAINMENT PERSONALITY
Wil Anderson (The Gruen Transfer)
Dave Hughes (The 7PM Project)
Daryl Somers (Hey Hey It’s Saturday – The Reunion)

WORST ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMME
Good News Week
Hey Hey It’s Saturday – The Reunion
Hungry Beast

WORST SITCOM
:30 Seconds
Beached Az
Chandon Pictures

WORST STAND-UP
Wil Anderson
Dave Hughes
Sam Simmons

WORST GAME OR PANEL SHOW
Good News Week
The Gruen Transfer
The 7PM Project

WORST FILM
Charlie & Boots
Going Down Under
Guru Wayne

WORST SKETCH SHOW
Double Take
Hungry Beast
The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote

WORST OVERALL COMEDY
Double Take
Good News Week
Hey Hey It’s Saturday – The Reunion

WORST OVERALL CHANNEL / NETWORK FOR COMEDY
Nine
Seven
Triple M

WORST RADIO COMEDY
Hughesy & Kate (Nova 100 Melbourne)
Kyle & Jackie O (2Day FM)
Sam Simmons (Triple J)

WORST RADIO PERSONALITY
Scott Dooley (Triple J Drive)
Kyle Sandilands (2Day FM Breakfast)
Matt Tilley (Fox FM Breakfast)

WORST PODCAST OR CD
Hughesy & Kate (Podcast)
Robbie, Marieke & The Doctor (Podcast)
Matt Tilley’s Gotcha Calls: The Final Call (CD)

WORST BOOK OR ITEM OF SPIN-OFF MERCHANDISE
The Chaser Annual 2009: The E-mail Eunuch
Don’t You Know Who I Used to Be? by Julia Morris
Friendly Fire by Wil Anderson

WORST DVD
Dave Hughes is Handy (Dave Hughes)
Make Deadshits History (Heath Franklin’s Chopper)
Wilosophy (Wil Anderson)

MOST USELESS PANEL / TALKSHOW GUEST
Amanda Keller (Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation)
Ruby Rose (The 7PM Project/Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation)
Josh Thomas (Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation)

THE ROBERT FIDGEON MEMORIAL AWARD FOR WORST CRITIC
Marieke Hardy
Gerard and Mark Henderson for their attacks on “left wing comedy” (i.e. The Chaser and Clarke & Dawe)
Neil Mitchell for his attack on Shaun Micallef

MOST OVER-RATED COMEDY
The Chaser’s War on Everything
Spicks & Specks
Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation

MOST UNNECESSARILY OVER-EXPOSED COMEDIAN
Dave Hughes
Charlie Pickering
Josh Thomas

LEAST HOPED-FOR RETURN
The Chaser’s War On Everything
Hey Hey It’s Saturday/Daryl Somers
Thank God You’re Here

MOST DISAPPOINTING COMEDY
Hungry Beast
The Jesters
TV Burp

MOST DISAPPOINTING COMEDIAN(S)
The Chaser team
Rove McManus
Charlie Pickering

THE ‘PISSING ON THEIR LEGACY’ AWARD
Hey Hey It’s Saturday/Daryl Somers
Paul Hogan
Working Dog

MOST IRRITATING OR POINTLESS CAMEO
Tony Martin in anything which isn’t his own show (because c’mon – he deserves his own show more than anyone currently with a show)
Sitcom writer/producers awkwardly shoe-horning their comedy mates into guest roles (e.g. Peter Moon’s mates in Whatever Happened To That Guy and Robin Butler and Wayne Hope’s mates in The Librarians)
Steve Vizard in The Jesters

MOST HYSTERICAL TABLOID HATE CAMPAIGN
The Chaser’s “Make A Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch scandal
The Double Take school bullying sketch beat-up
Herald Sun vs John Safran’s Race Relations

THE ‘TRIPLE M RE-ALLOCATING RESOURCES’ MEMORIAL AWARD FOR BIGGEST MANAGERIAL COCK-UP
The ABC’s cowardice over The Chaser’s “Make A Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch scandal
Nine bringing back Hey Hey
Seven giving Double Take precedence over TV Burp

MOST BLATANT PLAGIARISM
:30 Seconds of The Gruen Transfer
The Chaser of many, many things
Hungry Beast of Media Watch, “yoof TV” and UK critic Charlie Brooker

THE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR CRAP COMEDY
John Blackman
Andrew Denton
Daryl Somers

BEST NEW COMEDY
Dave in the Life
Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure
John Safran’s Race Relations

BEST COMEDY
A Nest Of Occcasionals by Tony Martin
Clarke & Dawe on The 7.30 Report
His Generation by Shaun Micallef

Shameful Joy

Just a quick reminder that there’s only a week or so to go until nominations close for this year’s Aussie Tumblies.  So what, you might be thinking. After all, there’s only so much crap comedy to go around – surely the shows you know and loathe will turn up somewhere on the ballot for you to vent your spleen. And maybe you’re right. But consider this: Triple J’s Robbie, Marieke and The Doctor breakfast show is winding up at the end of this year. Which means this is your last chance to give it a good solid kicking.  But what if it doesn’t make it onto the ballot – because, as always, the radio category isn’t exactly short of deserving winners – and you’re left seething with bile and no-one to splash it over? What if the radio ballot is full of people – Kyle Sandilands, Hamish & Andy, Dave Hughes – who are going to be there until the friggin’ end of time itself, but because you couldn’t be arsed nominating Marieke Hardy and her Innocent Bystanders your last chance to hate on her radio career goes begging?

Okay, perhaps that’s wishful thinking. And it’s just one example out of many. But the point remains: unless you let us know who you want nominated for a Tumblie, your most loathed Aussie comedy figures might just get away scot free. Especially with the usual Xmas media shuffle pushing at least a few despised figures off into the abyss already…

Vale Rove

The Tumblie awards are ticking along nicely at the moment (which big name star from the world of community television has already been in touch to complain? We’ll never tell. No seriously, we won’t – it kinda defeats the purpose if we start name dropping. So insiders and fellow diners, your secrets are safe with us), but we figured we should take time out from putting the nominations together to salute the departure from our television screens of one of the funniest men currently working in Australian television: Ryan Shelton.

Yeah, okay, so he only had a tiny and occasional segment on Rove. What else were you watching that show for (well, maybe Judith Lucy)? Not PeteSpace, unless you don’t own a radio and so need to get your breakfast-radio quips from elsewhere.  And even then Helliar’s track record on actual radio might have been a clue that you weren’t getting A-grade material there. As for Hughsie Loses It… well, they’re not making enough shoes to throw at the television for that segment, long may it rot.

Rove‘s been getting a bit of praise at the moment (even here a few weeks back) for being a great showcase for Australian comedy. Which is true. Unfortunately, the up-down ratings hinted that neither the viewers at home nor the programmers at Ten (that wildly swinging timeslot sure didn’t help any) wanted to see a great showcase for Australian comedy that featured regular segements from Peter Helliar, the inane Kevin Rudd PM and a bunch of news desk gags that must have been there solely to make Ten’s regular news look good.

Beyond the regular stinkers, most of the Australian comedy Rove was showcasing was bog-standard stand-up material (even if the performer was sitting down at the time). Again, if you’re Judith Lucy this is a good thing, and thumbs up to Rove for giving her a regular slot. But otherwise… well, if you want dull chat and laboured gags you can get that five times a week with The 7pm Project. A view clearly at least someone at Ten also shared if one rumour is true.

[sidebar: for those hoping that Rove‘s demise opens the door for Shaun Micallef to return with a tonight show, the odds don’t look good. Rove was kept on air to some extent to provide a one-stop shop for publicists to place their touring musicians and movie stars. Now that Ten has The 7pm Project – a show they seem to be insanely committed to, what with it going to an hour over summer – they have just such a venue in a much more important timeslot. That’s not to say Micallef won’t get a tonight show – you’d have to think Ten would give him anything he wanted at the moment – but they don’t have to give him one. And television networks rarely do anything they don’t have to.]

So pretty much the only thing on Rove you couldn’t get from bad commercial radio was Shelton’s segment. That’s because Shelton realised he was actually on television and played around with the medium a little instead of just reeling off news gags. The quality and frequency of his segments might have dipped a little in 2009, no doubt due to his radio gig (Shelton’s partner Jess Harris stepped into the breach on Rove, with some solid Shelton-esque segments of her own), but his monthly appearances on Rove remained both the highlight of whichever episode he was on and great comedy in general. Something that can’t be said for ABC2’s various well-meaning but barely competent efforts in this area (Beached Az? The Urban Monkey? Please).

And that’s why Rove – the show, not the man ’cause he’ll be back sooner than we’d like – will be missed.  Because whatever replaces it on Australian television – two words: DARYL FUCKING SOMERS – will almost certainly not give airtime to an (initially) unknown so her or she can mess around with a camera crew for four minutes every week or two. And that’s the kind of thing a real “showcase for Australian comedy” has to do if we’re ever going to get anything more than yet another joke about Britney Spears.

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