Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2023

Welcome to the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards, in which we honour the best and worst of Australian comedy in 2023.

Last year wasn’t the worst year in Australian television comedy, but that wasn’t for lack of trying. Actually, maybe it was: 2023 felt like the year when Australian comedy just gave up. Forget coming up with anything fresh or surprising, let alone new. If you like comedy and you were born this century, good news! The joke is, there is no good news.

Sure, on a series-by-series level the year ticked along in a manner that, from a distance to a disinterested viewer or ABC executive, may have suggested a sustainable industry. Aunty Donna finally got a show on the ABC (it was later cancelled); Working Dog continued to provide the goods with Have You Been Paying Attention? and The Cheap Seats (then they brought back Thank God You’re Here). We didn’t get any Hey Hey It’s Saturday specials. Chris Lilley didn’t make a comeback.

But you can’t keep an industry running just by keeping Daryl Somers out, and otherwise all we got in 2023 was more of the same. More The Weekly, more Wil Anderson, more Chaser faces turning up a decade after we thought we’d said goodbye. What little new comedy there was felt like a contractual obligation, a series of half-baked ideas and half-hearted dramedies that bubbled up from the bowels of various funding bodies with no clear audience in mind. So hey, slap a big COMEDY label on them and just don’t mention the ratings after the first week.

Comedy can’t go on like this. When the big news for 2024 is that Shaun Micallef is coming back to the ABC – and yes, we’re as excited as anyone else, but we’re making a point here – things are looking just a touch grim. Micallef left the ABC in 2022 saying he hoped his departure would free up resources for new comedic talent; when management finished laughing, they axed everything that featured anyone new and offered him his old job back.

Comedy used to be for the young; out in the real world, it still is. But on our screens, you’re expected to wait decades to get anything more than a guest appearance on a panel show that might as well have been made in 1996. The people who made The Late Show in 1993 are now making pretty much every Australian comedy show on commercial television in 2023; it’s not that we don’t appreciate their hard work, but you’d think someone else might have stuck their head up in the last 30 years.

So even if individual shows didn’t suck (don’t worry, most of them did), the Australian comedy scene – at least as far as television is concerned because shit, movies are in a whole ‘nother category that is so much more depressing to contemplate – just keeps on getting increasingly stuffed. When was the last time anyone new came along to stir up some real interest in local comedy? What was the last sitcom that attracted attention beyond the kind of people who are reading this?

Comedy is meant to be the most popular of popular art forms, something that cuts through barriers of race and class to unite us all in the singularly human experience of enjoying something funny. Young, old, rich, poor, red-faced racist crank or unicycle-riding inner-city greenie, who amongst us doesn’t like to laugh?

Well, if we had to guess, the people behind a lot of the following.


Worst Sketch or Short Form Comedy

Runner-up

Australian Epic

25% of the total votes

The cast of Australian Epic

Arriving at least 10 years too late to ride the “everything’s funnier if you turn it into a musical” wave, Australian Epic arrived late and turned everything into a musical anyway. With the exception of the final episode on Tampa, which was a long-overdue howl of rage at 30+ years of Australian government policy on refugees, the rest of the series was, at best, a pointless waste of everyone’s time. But with jazz hands.

Runner-up

The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers

39% of the total votes

Four men in their twenties walking towards a camera

Every decade or so, one of the commercial networks sees the gaping comedy hole in their schedules and green lights a prank show. Remember that one with Rebel Wilson? We barely do too! In The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers, the four members of the team take turns to both set up and be the primary victims of the pranks. It’s all about challenging each other and making each other laugh, but don’t worry, they’re all great mates really! As a psychological study of how straight white guys form relationships with each other, it’s possibly quite interesting. For anyone watching who was hoping to be entertained, it was mainly weird and uncomfortable.

Winner

The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering

54% of the total votes

Charlie Pickering looking serious and determined at Sydney Harbour

Speaking of straight white men, and weird and uncomfortable, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering continued to do what it does best in 2023: inexplicably stay on air. Relying heavily on guest-authored segments to be watchable, the rest of the show consisted of middle-of-the-road summaries of recent-ish current affairs stories and wacky clips packages about… things? We honestly forget. And while being unmemorable (not to mention unprovocative, unincisive, dumbed-down and way too safe) presumably prevented it from being a target for the anti-ABC culture war mob, you’d be hard-pressed to make a case that The Weekly… is doing its job. Satire should be funny and challenging. The government should be quacking in its boots. Instead, here’s a softball interview with the Prime Minister. Followed by more wacky clips or something.


What the voters said about The Weekly with Charlie Pickering

The Weekly‘s ongoing sketch where Margaret Pomeranz reviews things Margaret Pomeranz wouldn’t normally review is one of the freshest ideas of 2004.

Weirdly, over nine series searching for a formula and a removable supporting cast, The Weekly has slowly morphed through slightly different versions of the same bad show, like Captain Charlie helming his own Ship of Theseus of shit.

The Weekly is proof that you cannot fire anyone from the public service for rank incompetence.


Worst Sitcom or Narrative Comedy

Runner-up

Gold Diggers

28% of the total votes

Two women in 1850s dresses putting on a theatrical show

A strong cast, good costumes, the type of setting few Australian sitcoms have explored before…that’s all we can come up with that’s positive to say about Gold Diggers. The principal problem of this eight-episode series (eight episodes!) was that the script felt like a first draft, with the concept half-baked and the opportunities for jokes barely explored. Still, it featured some women in the 1850s speaking in contemporary social media talk and being all feminist and shit. LOLZ!

Runner-up

Ja’miezing

30% of the total votes

Ja'miezing

Chris Lilley may have been “cancelled” by TV but in podcast land, he can do whatever he likes. And whatever he likes is this rambling, barely entertaining and certainly not funny continued exploration of Ja’mie, his over-privileged ex-private schoolgirl character. Now in her early 20’s, Ja’mie is a wannabe influencer and fashion designer living in L.A., trying to make it. In the hands of a better comedian, there would be plenty to be said about her and her world. In the hands of Chris Lilley, you will unsubscribe in frustration at how infrequently he has anything funny or interesting to say at all.

Winner

Mother and Son

53% of the total votes

A woman in her 70s and her son in his late 30s in a burnt out kitchen

The original Mother and Son may have got uncomfortable laughs out of… dementia? Alzheimers? memory loss? …it was never quite clear, but at least it got laughs. This reimagining fell into the same traps that most contemporary sitcoms fall into: it focused on drama and realism and forgot to include jokes. It was only when Jean Kittson turned up as Maggie’s friend Heather that the show got genuinely funny. Turns out a bit of chemistry between the performers and some actual comic situations are quite entertaining. Who knew?


What the voters said about Mother and Son

The reboot of Mother and Son is essentially a contemporary version with no humour, no laughs, no joy, no touch of finesse and no chemistry between the main actors, in yet another feeble attempt to stroke Matt Okine’s already inflated ego.

Was very sceptical of Mother and Son when it was announced then softened over time until I saw it. Denise Scott is easily the best thing about it but damn is it a slog.

Mother and Son frustratingly hinted at what it could have been, when it wasn’t busy being season 2.5 of The Other Guy. Okine isn’t a strong enough performer to hold up his half of the premise.


Worst Panel, Game or Stand-up Show

Runner-up

Gruen

27% of the total votes

Wil Anderson posing on the set of Gruen

Can you imagine actually telling anyone you still watched Gruen? It’d be like getting excited about the new Rolling Stones album or something. There’s a point where being a long-running success starts to say something unpleasant about both your audience and your inability to challenge them in any way – but we’re talking about a show where one of the regulars is also a Qantas board member, so it’s not like being embarrassed about being a toxic blight on society is ever going to happen here.

Runner-up

The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers

29% of the total votes

Four men in their twenties walking towards a camera

Pranks! They don’t always suck, but after what feels like a few thousand years worth of television programs based entirely around treating innocent people like easily duped chumps, you really need to do better than this. At least a lot of the time the joke was on the other members of the team, which made the whole exercise watchable in a “guess that’s yet another half hour of the only life I’m ever going to have that’s gone forever” sense.

Winner

Question Everything

41% of the total votes

Jan Fran and Wil Anderson pose holding open newspapers

One of the many, many frustrating things about the ABC is that while plenty of perfectly decent programs get the axe for the slightest of reasons, a handful of turds just keep on coming back despite generating no interest or excitement whatsoever. Good luck trying to figure out why these particular duds are the chosen ones of management; while audiences ignore them at best and openly loathe them at worst, they keep on returning time and time again, providing nothing of value while chiselling further away at the idea that the ABC has even the slightest interest in what the viewers at home would like to watch. Bizarrely, this was never one of the questions raised on Question Everything, which was back in 2023 for a third season.


What the voters said about Question Everything

The question they clearly didn’t ask is “How do we make a funny panel show?”

How many more shows involving questions can the ABC make??

It’s weird that Wil Anderson is still constantly working, but has never felt less relevent.


Worst Topical or Satirical Show

Runner-up

Gruen

27% of the total votes

Wil Anderson posing on the set of Gruen

Hey, here’s a question: is advertising the same as it was a decade ago? To quote the theme song, “nah nah nah nah nah nah nah”. So why is Gruen still the same old same old? Prime time viewing on the commercial networks is basically just hours of advertising disguised as programming: even Have You Been Paying Attention? has live reads as part of the show, while the only way most people see commercials these days is by actively seeking them out on YouTube because they heard Russell Coight was back flogging cars. But to talk in any serious way about the modern world would be a): alienating for the oldies who still watch this advertisement for advertising and b): a terrifying window into a bleak hellscape where everything you do is constantly being auctioned off to remorseless inhuman entities created solely to exploit and commercialise your innermost thoughts and feelings. But hey, just so long as Wil Anderson makes a snarky quip about how AI-generated advertising will soon make every aspect of human creativity completely unwatchable, it’s all good.

Runner-up

Question Everything

37% of the total votes

Jan Fran and Wil Anderson pose holding open newspapers

Remember when Wil Anderson said the solution to the lack of fresh talent on the ABC was to give him another show? Okay, maybe he wouldn’t host it, but… then what would be the point of having him around? So yeah, let’s get him to host it. And if you’ve got Anderson hosting you’d better give him something to do – he can’t just introduce the new talent, that’s not fair to the audience who’ve tuned in to see him. But having a middle-aged white guy hosting yet another ABC show is a bit of a bad look, so better get in a younger woman to co-host, and she’s got to have stuff to do too because otherwise it’ll look a bit obvious that she’s just there for “balance” and… hey, where’d the new talent go?

Winner

The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering

64% of the total votes

Charlie Pickering looking serious and determined at Sydney Harbour

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that you can draw a direct line from the current controversy over the ABC dumping a freelance journalist for (checks notes) having an opinion some powerful people didn’t like, to the ABC’s seemingly endless support for Charlie Pickering. Let’s explain: technically The Weekly is a satirical news program, but it’s really just the latest series to fill a slot the ABC sees as essential but nobody wants to watch – Let’s Make The News Cool. The News is what the ABC (believes it) does best: while they have bugger all interest in getting the youth interested in just about everything else (so music shows, no arts coverage, no dramas not aimed at 60-year-olds, and so on), it’s seen as essential to air news programs that appeal to the next generation of 7.30 viewers. But after decades of conservative white-anting, much of ABC News is pretty much just mindlessly parroting talking points lifted from the nation’s most rabidly right-wing press while struggling to articulate any viewpoint that isn’t earning $200K a year. And you can’t get comedy from a view of the world that sides with the top end of town, that reflexively agrees with power, that only says “We’re just having a laugh” about things that benefit the poor and downtrodden. All you get is The Weekly. And it’s shit.


What the voters said about The Weekly/The Yearly with Charlie Pickering

How is this still on?

I don’t know anyone who actually watches these programs. Like, not even on in the background of a dementia ward.

Can’t beat The Weekly (enough).


Worst Comedy Film

Runner-up

The Big Dog

22% of the total votes

A man talking on a mobile phone standing a balcony with a harbour view behind him

Is financial domination a real thing? Okay, yes, it probably is because every single sexual fetish you can think of is a real thing somewhere out there. But if you want to give loads of cash to someone sexy so they can treat you like crap, why not just pay them to treat you like crap in a way that involves something a little closer to actual sex? Anyway, this movie is supposedly about that fetish, but it wasn’t showing at any cinemas near us so we never got to see it. Do they still release Australian movies on DVD?

Runner-up

Christmess

25% of the total votes

Santa Claus smoking a cigar and holding a bottle of beer

It’s a film about an alcoholic actor who’s now sober but with his glory days behind him who tries to reconnect with his family over Christmas. Nice job getting this out before the movie based on that Paul Kelly “How to Make Gravy” song hits cinemas with a damp thud later this year, but otherwise it’s yet another well-made Australian movie about a pretty depressing situation that we’re told is a comedy because otherwise nobody in their right mind would see it at any time of the year. You know what a comedy movie is? A movie where the cast of a sitcom goes on a vacation to a trashy yet slightly exotic location and oh right, we don’t make sitcoms now either.

Winner

Jones Family Christmas

31% of the total votes

A family surrounded by Christmas presents

Look, it was on a streaming service you’d already paid for anyway, what more do you want?


What the voters said about Jones Family Christmas

I had to Google what these movies were because I’ve never heard of them. This has happened for the past five or so years now! Which is a great indicator of how bad and how truly awful the Australian cinema industry is.

No thanks.

Jones Family Christmas is the real big dog.


Best New Comedy

Runner-up

From The Hideout

23% of the total votes

Tony Martin and Pete Smith pointing at Djovan Caro's The Room t-shirt

This inter-generational dialogue between Pete Smith, Tony Martin and Djovan Caro hit the mark early and after just seven episodes it’s set to continue in the same vein. Sometimes it’s a pop culture nerd out, other times it’s an opportunity for celebrity anecdotes, or to give ventriloquism a go. Either way, we’ve liked and subscribed.

Runner-up

Deadloch

25% of the total votes

The cast of Deadloch

In a world where most broadcasters and streamers will only consider making a comedy if it’s a dramedy, there are surprisingly few examples of good dramedies. This is one of them. Deadloch was both a well-scripted, intriguing murder mystery, and funny. It also had more to say about misogyny, class, sexuality and white/indigenous relations than The Weekly… has managed in nine years. A new series of the show, or some kind of spin-off, seems assured.

Winner

Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe

53% of the total votes

The cast of Auntie Donna's Coffee Cafe

Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe was one of the best new sitcoms from the ABC for ages, so naturally, they axed it. The Aunty Donna guys will be back with something new and brilliant, of course, but the ABC’s failure to recognise and reward the inventiveness, originally and sheer hilarity of this series says all we need to know about the ABC in the 2020s.


What the voters said about Auntie Donna’s Coffee Cafe (and Deadloch)

Aunty Donna are consistently sensational.

Trust Aunty Donna and The Two Kate’s to bring the comedy thunder this year. Both very different, but equally brilliant. Endlessly rewatchable; just more of both please.

Aunty Donna. World class.


Best Comedy

Runner-up

Tony Martin’s Sizzletown

30% of the total votes

Matt Dower and Tony Martin pose between a warehouse and a wire fence

77 episodes in and Tony Martin’s Sizzletown is as fresh and funny as it was when it started six or so years ago. How can it still get big laughs from the same set of characters month after month? Combine Tony Martin’s well-honed ability to take the piss out of traditional media, everyday idiots and old films and TV, with Matt Dower’s top-notch editing skills, and you have a show which will probably never get tired.

Runner-up

The Backside of Television/The Last Year of Television

32% of the total votes

Mitch McTaggart sitting with an old television on his lap

It might be difficult to believe if you’ve been watching a certain kind of Australian comedy, but being funny doesn’t have to mean being stupid. One of the many, many joys of watching the work of Mitch McTaggart is that the man clearly knows exactly what he’s talking about. Sharp, insightful, balanced – when he starts throwing insults they’re both well-judged and well-deserved – and above all funny, at times it feels like McTaggart comes from a parallel world where television doesn’t automatically mean garbage. Or maybe he’s just really good at his job.

Winner

Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe

33% of the total votes

The cast of Auntie Donna's Coffee Cafe

It pretty much sums up the current state of comedy that the winner of this award for 2023 was axed after one season due to a management change at the ABC. Seems the new guy decided that Aunty Donna wasn’t a good fit for his vision of ABC comedy – a vision which we can only assume consists of the words “be less funny”. Traditionally the winner of this award is some long-running classic of Australian comedy held aloft by all and sundry as the kind of top-notch work that will run and run until those responsible retire or die – you know, efforts like Clarke & Dawe or Mad as Hell. Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe was the equal of those shows; it seems that in 2023 being the best comedy of the year isn’t good enough for ABC management.


What the voters said about Auntie Donna’s Coffee Cafe

The Aunty Donna show had so many jokes. Great to see an actual comedy, not a ‘dramady’.

True Australian comedy.

They are very funny.


We asked our readers… What did you think of comedy in 2023?

There was some great stuff, though more comedies should aim to be as funny as NCIS Sydney accidentally is.

We’ve left sketch comedy behind and evolved into something more… not sure what it is, but it’s something.

On one hand, we’re all sick of seeing the same people fronting or guest starring in every show, but when they get newer performers in (as is the remit for Question Everything), they just aren’t very good. So I think 2023 has been another year of the Catch-22 of comedy that has existed for a few years. Also, is there any work for actors or journalists anymore, or is it just comedians stepping into every role in every show/ film/ advertisement? Why would one go to drama school or train in journalism when your best bet for any media work is to go to Gaulier or do the stand-up circuit?

Needs more help from government and more opportunity.

A few drops of positives amongst an ocean of negatives.

I could do with fewer panel/topical shows. At the very least, the formats could stand to be more adventurous.

You know things are bad when Paul Fenech is the standard bearer of comedy. He is the only one that has successfully cultivated an audience and knows what they want and sees themselves (sometimes literally) in his work. He is the only one that will keep working 10 years from now while others have faded into obscurity or are doing a show filled with member berries trying to recapture former glories that didn’t really exist in the first place. This isn’t necessarily praise, more just an observation of how truly dreadful Australian comedy has been for the past decade. This needs to be fixed urgently.

Horrible state of comedy on TV is reflected by the AACTA awards. Best shows were Aunty Donna and Mitch McTaggart. Neither nominated. But Gold Diggers is!

Commercial television is dead. It’s a shame, but it’s true. While it’s great to have a few reliable staples (Have You Been Paying Attention, Thank God You’re Here), mixed with some truly brilliant fresh blood (Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe, Deadloch), the majority of offerings have been nothing but dreck.

In 2023, I listened to more podcasts then any other medium combined. The comedic shift is here, bebe.

Summed up with the statement that I will never, as long as I live, understand the mania for Colin from Accounts.

Again it’s the ABC and some streaming services that bring us the gold. 7 took a shot at it with We Interrupt This Broadcast which did have some great sketches in there. Shame it’s been removed from their streaming service. Then they gave Fenech another show. Am I alone in thinking sketch comedy should be far bigger at the moment given increasingly short attention spans?

The funniest Australian comedy moment of the year was Sam Campbell brute-forcing discussion of Plucka Duck into Taskmaster, and Julian Clary saying being on Hey Hey it’s Saturday was “not a career highlight”.

All round another disappointing year for Australian TV comedy (the same could be said for the past 10 to 15+ years). Almost the only things worth watching were the same popular shows of the past few years. Fortunately we had a few decent efforts from Aussies on YouTube (Damian Powers’ Expanded Minds Only and a short or two from Hot Dad productions come to mind) and I can’t help but think next year will be an identical case. I hope I’m wrong. What a shame when there are so many Australian comedians and comedy writers doing great things overseas right now. Whilst I don’t think “defunding the ABC” is the answer replacing most of their dinosaur conservative staff and eliminating bonuses and promotions for those that play it safe could go a long way towards promoting fresh comedy talent.

Vale Cal Wilson, kind, generous, funny and gone too soon. Perhaps someone can reboot Sleuth 101 in her honour.

Quantity begets quality, at least in part. 2023 on TV had something at least half decent for everyone. Betoota and Australian Epic for the edutainment crowd, Thank God You’re Here for people who haven’t watched TV since it was on telly last time. Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe was too scrambled for my personal taste, but I’d take it over season 10 (!) of The Weekly any day. Deadloch likewise was very popular with people who I know don’t otherwise engage with Australian TV. Of course real stinkers like The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers kept local TV humble, and the misguided Gold Diggers wasted a strong cast on terrible material. We Interrupt This Broadcast a patchy but enjoyable show of mostly new-to-TV talent; in some ways the most exciting thing of all… and of course we can’t be having any more of that.

In podcasts, From The Hideout might have great talent but it’s still three blokes sitting around gasbagging. Starship Q Star (technically a December 2022 debut, sorry) showed what can be achieved with strong sitcom writing and talented comedy performers. The Sizzletown train shows no sign of slowing down, having become one of the most dependable regular releases in the country. Not wholly a comedy due to its episodic nature, but I also enjoyed Simon Hall’s Minuscule Musical.

The above is a selection of the many comments we received. Thank you for voting and commenting, now comes 2024…

Vote now in the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2023

It’s almost the end of 2023, which means it’s Tumblies time! And as always, you get the chance to cast your votes for the best and worst Australian comedies of the year.

You have until 5th January 2024 to cast a vote, so start voting now!

Some people voting in an Australian election
Look at all the people voting in the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards!

We’ll announce the “winners” on or about Australia Day.

Vale Question Everything 2023

So after a few false starts, Question Everything finally figured out what kind of show it wanted to be. No, not a shit show. In fact, it’s even possible to see why those involved might have thought they were making something decent. They weren’t, of course, but it’s been a long year, we’re getting tired, and sometimes you have to play devil’s advocate to get over the line.

The original idea behind Question Everything seems to have been some kind of Gruen spin-off. Only it would look behind the scenes at news instead of advertising, and feature the usual comedy suspects instead of people who knew anything at all about news.

The only thing interesting about this first version was that, due to covid lockdowns, they had to get in fresh faces instead of the usual chumps. Host Wil Anderson wasn’t a fan, so the next series ditched the idea of fresh faces in favour of… Paul McDermott and Wendy Harmer? Okay.

The greatest hits idea also didn’t really work, and meanwhile Jan Fran was stuck with pointless segments trying to raise the audience’s media literacy. So in this series they… just did more of the same, only with slightly fresher guests. Problem solved!

Time to play Devil’s Advocate:

Okay, so this year, Question Everything sometimes felt like a television show and not just a collection of random bits held together by a timeslot. Wil Anderson is a competent host. Jan Fran is also competent at what she does. Nath Valvo is always good value. And… yeah, we’re done. Can we play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead?

Some shows elevate their guests. The Cheap Seats is funnier than it should be. Question Everything is the opposite, a creation that’s less amusing than its individual parts. It’s a frustrating watch, because there are good people and skilled professionals up there working hard to make a show that’s firmly below average week in week out. Why?

To get the obvious points out of the way, this show doesn’t need two hosts. It barely needs one. Why does Wil Anderson do a bunch of gags on each topic when the point is to get the guests to do a bunch of gags on each topic? Also: his gags are pretty shit. Yelling because you’re pretending not to understand something stopped being funny when Dave Hughes stopped being funny. So around 2005?

At the moment, Australian panel shows are dominated by two cartels. Working Dog over on Ten is one: the ABC is the other. Whatever their flaws, Working Dog are trying to make comedy shows that work as comedy shows. If they don’t work, people won’t watch them, they’ll be axed, game over.

For example, compare the way the panelists on HYBPA? interact with the way guests do on Question Everything. HYBPA? largely falls under the heading of “pissfarting around”. They make fun of each other, they build on each others jokes, they’re generally having a good time unless Ed Kavalee’s being weird.

Question Everything is just a collection of bits from strangers who are working alongside each other rather than working together. When someone takes up some else’s joke, it’s to say “I can do it better”*. The vibe is forced and slightly awkward in the way of pretty much all ABC panel shows**. The whole thing feels like a talent showcase rather than a cohesive show. And why?

Working Dog create shows: the ABC uses shows like Question Everything to create personalities. The point of Question Everything isn’t to amuse or entertain you. It’s to keep Wil Anderson in front of audiences in the hope that you’ll tune into the next show or event he hosts.

At this, the show is a dismal failure. Anderson isn’t even necessary; at least Jan Fran has her own (pointless) segments. Anderson is just doing his Gruen act yet again, only it doesn’t work when he’s surrounded by comedians. On Gruen he’s a point of difference, the wisecracking funny guy who deflates the experts. Here, he just laughs at other people’s jokes… but not so much that you ever get the impression he actually thinks they’re funny.

That leaves everyone else fighting for last place. The guests are more interested in one-upping each other than entertaining the home audience***, because in a talent showcase there actually are winners and losers. Again, that’s because the ABC is a network that creates personalities, not decent television. This series they’ve decided we can’t get enough of Mel Buttle; next series, who knows?

To make a news clip show work, you need a bit of energy. The show needs pace; you’re rarely going to come up with great jokes when you’re dealing with clips about misbehaving animals and bungling politicans, so quantity is the goal. Unless you’re Question Everything.

This is a clip show that presents audiences with a clip that hopefully they haven’t seen already. Then we get a couple of clunky Anderson gags. Then he bluntly throws to a guest to do some material they prepared earlier. Sometimes Jan Fran explains what we just saw in case we’ve never encountered the concept of “the news”. The whole thing is flatter than hammered shit, to coin a phrase.

At one stage Fran said “I feel like this is the last episode that will ever air, right?”. It’s a question we can only hope is answered in the affirmative.

.

*they’re not

**a notable exception being Gruen, which might explain why it’s popular

***when the final episode of the year opens with a segment on the word of the year (hilarious) where one person just screams, another does two minutes on “fundle”, and Tom Ballard lumps Optus in with Hamas, get fucked.

Vale Australian Epic

At the heart of Australian Epic is an assumption that you will find the concept of the series funny. Musical theatre-style songs about half-remembered events from Australia’s recent past? How hilarious! The problem is, after several decades of ironic musicals (Keating!, Shane Warne: The Musical) the idea of presenting a musical about something seemingly a bit ridiculous to write a musical about doesn’t seem quite so funny anymore.

This means that Australian Epic lives or dies as a comedy based on whether the songs in each episode are funny or not. And in most cases, they aren’t funny songs in and of themselves.

So, with no funny songs to speak of, and its over-arching concept a joke that’s had better days, what is the point of Australian Epic? This is something we were wondering until we watched the final episode of the show (airing next week but currently on iView) on the Tampa crisis.

The Tampa crisis was a moment which divided the nation. For those who were on the side of letting the Tampa refugees into Australia, it was also a time when the true colours of many ordinary Australians were laid, bleakly and shockingly, bare. Was this really what people thought about refugees? Yes, it really was.

An Afghan refugee is led off by the SAS in a scene from Australian Epic
An Afghan refugee is led off by the SAS in a scene from Australian Epic

The Tampa episode of Australian Epic is intercut with footage of John Howard electioneering on the issue, and a contemporary interview with then Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, showing how cynically the then government dealt with the issue. Ruddock, asked what he thinks now about the decisions the Howard government made, says, with a coldness that will chill your bones, that he sleeps very well at night, thanks very much. Meanwhile, Abbas Nazari, one of the Tampa refugees and a child at the time of the crisis, who was later accepted as a refugee by New Zealand, turns out to have become a Fullbright Scholar, reminding us that we not only missed an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better but that we missed out on their potential. Shame on us.

But it’s the final song in the Tampa episode of Australian Epic that really hammers this point home. Entitled “Thank God That’s All The Past”, it’s the rundown of the legacy of Tampa, in which over the past 20+ years, right up until today, Australia has locked up, mistreated, abused, and killed refugees, irrespective of who they are, or which political party’s been in charge. It’s not exactly hilarious, but it’s probably the pithiest piece of satire on Australian TV since John Clarke’s untimely death in 2017. So, on that basis, Australian Epic did have a point. And a very good one at that.

History Repeats: Time Addicts

It has not been a good year for Australian comedy films. Then again, there have actually been a few Australian comedy films, so it could have been worse. Streaming service Stan has come up with yet another Christmas comedy in Jones Family Christmas; The Big Dog, a presumably comedic tale of a chump whose love of financial domination messes up his life, scored a limited cinema run. And then there’s Time Addicts*.

The story of a pair of fairly abrasive bickering junkies who stumble upon a drug that can send you through time, it feels like the answer to a film school challenge: “write a feature length script with the smallest possible cast and lowest number of locations”. Once they discover the drug, they never leave the house – but they do spend a fair bit of time criss-crossing the time stream inside its four walls.

So it’s an Australian film about junkies; we’re laughing already. Unfortunately, we’re not really meant to. It doesn’t take long to figure out this is one of those “comedies” where the comedy is entirely in the premise. It’s a movie about time traveling junkies, so obviously the whole thing is hilarious, right? Uh, no.

Depending on your tolerance for junkies, there’s some wry humour early on as Denise (Freya Tingley) – she’s the angry one – and Johnny (Charles Grounds) – he’s the one who won’t shut up – argue and try to score from Kane (Joshua Morton). He’s scary, they owe him, he offers them a choice: take a job or he’ll take their thumbs. All they have to do is break into this run-down suburban house, steal a dufflebag from someone inside, and bring it to him. We already mentioned they never leave the house?

There’s plenty of stand-offs, shouting, blood, extremely tense sneaking around, and shock twists that follow. Laughs? Yeah, nah. Sure, if we were to get into spoilers there are the kind of plot twists that sound funny, but rest assured: as they play out nobody’s laughing. None of which – to make this very clear – makes this a bad film. Just not a good comedy.

The script is well put together, the visuals are well shot (especially considering the limits of the location), and the performances turn out to be well judged. The junkies are annoying (as junkies are) until they’re not, thanks to a combination of personal growth and extreme danger.

The recursive plot – you know, we see a scene from one point of view then as the story progresses and people move around in time, we see it from another – always adds something interesting. The story overall remains engaging, with themes that are explored in a manner that’s thoughtful through to the end. If any of this sounds remotely interesting to you, it’s worth a look.

But again, it’s not a comedy. If only the funding bodies had given us the cash to make our version, where the junkies go directly back to 2002 and spend the rest of the movie in a cinema watching Crackerjack.

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*in cinemas now!

Vale The Cheap Seats 2023

You can get away with a lot when you’re funny. The Cheap Seats is the kind of show that Australian television loves to throw together, throw at a screen, then throw in the bin when nobody tunes in. And yet it’s one of the big successes (the only success?) of recent years, a sure-fire winner week in week out. So what’s the secret?

Chemistry. It’s the chemistry.

Whether they’re making fun of each other or being concerned when a joke may have worked a little too well, the connection between hosts Mel and Tim makes The Cheap Seats work. Turns out, when you build a show around funny people who work well together, you get good comedy. Who knew?

So it was a pretty big speed bump when Titus O’Reily pulled the pin early in the year. He wasn’t a seamless fit, but neither is sport in general for a show built on regional news gaffs and crap reality TV. An expert who’s also funny and also doesn’t take it too seriously is hard to find on any topic. When it comes to sport, presumably The Front Bar has them all under lock and key.

Once Titus was gone, the show struggled throughout the year to replace him. Sporty types weren’t funny enough; comedians were just taking the piss. Isn’t Australia full of dickheads who love sport and think they’re funny? Hopefully one of them steps up in 2024.

That said, losing one of their lynchpin regulars didn’t really slow things down. Clearly it doesn’t hurt to have a big behind-the-scenes team scouring the world of television for clips. Across a full hour it rarely feels like they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, and when they do serve up a dud the hosts are almost always able to salvage it with some banter.

Even the interviews, which honestly are often the weakest part of the show, are still pretty good. They’re loose and freewheeling; getting laughs and being entertaining is always the top priority. Not everyone clicks with the tone of the show, but even the bad interviews rarely go off the rails (unless it’s Costa laughing so hard he’s literally unable to speak).

So if it’s so easy, why isn’t everyone doing it? After years of being (rightly) scared off news clip comedy after a string of massive flops, the ABC has started dipping their toe back into the water with Question Everything. As an ongoing example of how to make this kind of thing work, The Cheap Seats is right there. With that as a guide, you’d think the ABC would be able to punch out a decent take on the concept, right? Right?

Again, it all boils down to chemistry. For whatever reason, the ABC seems to only have a limited roster of hosts and guests, almost none of whom seem to have much on-screen charm or warmth. If you want to do a show where stand-ups come on to do short bits of scripted material, then focus on that. If you want to make a show making fun of news clips, you know what to do.

Mel and Tim aren’t television personalities the way Wil Anderson is, but they’re a lot funnier and more likable on The Cheap Seats than he is on Question Everything. Their show is one that invites the audience in to share the joke; his is one where the guests forget the audience in favour of trying to one-up each other. Which would be fine if the end result was funny, and not just slightly awkward.

The Cheap Seats: looks easy, turns out it isn’t. We’ll be counting the days until it returns.

Clip Joint

Imagine, if you will, a fan of Australian comedy. Not all that long ago, this fandom might have kept them pretty busy; these days it only takes a few hours a week to keep up to date. And yet, even with that meager diet it still feels like they’re watching the same thing over and over – because the only comedy that’s left is news-based clip shows, and they’re all using the same clips.

It’d be unfair to direct most of our stink eye on this subject towards Question Everything. They’re at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to news clips. The Cheap Seats gets almost a full week to scour the news from around the world before it goes to air on a Tuesday. Question Everything airs 24 hours later; not a lot of hilarious news happening in that tiny gap.

And this year has been a bumper year for clip show comedy. Twenty-six hour-long episodes of Have You Been Paying Attention? alongside 28 or more episodes of The Cheap Seats doesn’t leave much over for anyone else.

Both those shows clearly worked hard to avoid stepping on each others toes. They’re also different shows in terms of humour. What might have got a quick answer and moving on on HYBPA? might be two minutes worth of riffing on The Cheap Seats. Yes, there were times this year when both shows – coming from the same production company, so presumably sharing at least some resources – used the same clip. So long as the jokes are different, who cares?

Well, for one, the jokes usually aren’t all that different. Someone makes a weird noise on a news report, you’re going to get a lot of jokes about making a weird noise. Of course, it’s possible to take one clip and get two wildly different gags from it, but that usually requires one of the shows to be Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell.

The whole point of clip show comedy is that it’s comedy in bulk, a rapid-fire onslaught of the most obvious jokes. See a funny clip, use the first joke that comes to mind even if it’s barely a joke and guess we’re giving Question Everything the stink eye again over that, and onto the next clip. Do that thirty times a week, you’ve got the start of a show.

There have been plenty of times in recent comedy history where clip shows have clashed. Everyone knows the ways around this kind of conflict. Cast your net wider, come up with smarter jokes – it’s all easier said than done. For one, these things cost money, and the point of a clip show is that it’s meant to be cheap.

Question Everything tries to get around these limits by getting the panel to go on extended riffs about the clips. But if they fully committed to that, then what’s the point of Wil Anderson? So he gets to do the usual gags in between and suddenly the show seems just that little bit staler.

While The Cheap Seats is clearly doing a better job with this kind of material, they’re not resting on their laurels either. They cast their net globally (and not just Across the Ditch) so their material’s more varied. The hosts occasionally pop up in sketches, which adds to the variety. They have running jokes they can pull out to use to make relevant clips funnier. And there’s actual chemistry between Tim and Mel so when the jokes falter the bungling still seems funny.

So The Cheap Seats? Actually working on being funny. Question Everything? They’re acting like they’ve got this all under control. Wil Anderson, a pretty basic collection of news clips, a couple of comedians who’ve brought in some old rope that kind of fits the topics; yeah, that’ll do.

Like we said at the start, it feels like we’re watching the same thing over and over again.

The World of Tomorrow 2.0: Snore ABC

It’s been well over a year since the incoming federal Labor government promised a new cashed up world for the ABC. Okay, so 2023 was always going to be business as usual. But surely 2024 was going to present us with the fruits of that momentous electoral decision? Mo’ money, mo’ programming and all that. Got your hopes up? Time to dive into the 2024 ABC upfronts!

We’re so used to getting less comedy out of the ABC each and every year that we’re not entirely sure how to react to a future that is basically “more of the same”. Remember when the ABC had two news satire shows a year, and then Shaun Micallef quit to open the door for new talent and the ABC replaced Mad as Hell with… nothing? Well now he’s back!

Frankly, the news that Micallef is returning to the ABC in 2024 with Shaun Micallef’s Unnamed Project could only be better if we knew what kind of show he’ll be fronting. But here’s an educated guess:

In the last decade, Shaun Micallef has only made three kinds of programs. There’s serious documentaries on topics he’s interested in. Oh look, he’s also doing one of them for SBS next year in the form of Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey:

A reflective and joyful comedy travelogue where Shaun Micallef – one of Australia’s favourite and most respected comedians – explores the cultural roots of his guests. Through the minutia of international travel, conversation, immersive experience and observational humour we will discover more than expected of our travellers. Developed and produced by Endemol Shine Australia (A Banijay Company) for SBS.

Then there’s comedy shows that mix pre-recorded sketches with live material, which we all know and love and would really like to see more of but he did already make a shitload of episodes of Mad as Hell so who knows.

And then there’s the game shows. Honestly, considering the ABC’s firm editorial commitment to delivering the worst possible result for comedy fans, we’d have our buzzers ready.

Anyway, even we can’t find a way to scowl at the news we’re getting more Fisk. Fisk is great: good job ABC, presumably this has nothing to do with it being a hit on Netflix.

After that, we’re back in the exciting yet extremely familiar world of hoping really hard the ABC has a few winners that they forgot to mention. Here’s what else is coming back:

*Spicks and Specks

*Hard Quiz

*The Weekly with Charlie Pickering

*Gruen

And supposedly a second season of Mother and Son is “in development“. Maybe they’ll develop an angle that’s actually funny this time? Even the ABC’s Chief Content Officer seems to care about a second series for the show more out of duty than anything else:

The numbers were okay, I think we would have liked a bit more, but this is one of the most iconic ABC shows of all time. I want the show to have the respect it deserves and see if we can find an audience across two series. Now, whether it will finance or whether it will creatively develop, I don’t know. But we want to at least give it the best shot, potentially for 2025, but not 2024.

There are also a couple of new comedies:

*White Fever

“Jane (Ra Chapman) is a cocky Korean-Australian adoptee with a love of hairy white guys – the hairier and whiter the better. When her friends call her out for having a white man fetish she sets out to try and reprogram her libido, reignites a connection with childhood friend, Yu Chang (Chris Pang) and stumbles into the process of finding out who she really is.”

Has there ever been a sitcom based around a character’s “quest to find themselves” that’s been funny? Oh wait, My Name is Earl. Okay, we’ll file this under “wait and see”.

*Austin

“When much-loved children’s author Julian Hartswood (Ben Miller, Bridgerton, Death in Paradise) inadvertently causes a social media storm, his career and that of his illustrator wife Ingrid (Sally Phillips, Veep, Bridget Jones’s Diary) appears to be over. That is until Austin (Michael Theo, Love on the Spectrum), the neurodivergent son that Julian never knew existed, turns up out of the blue.”

Time for some tough questions. Is this an Australian comedy? Or just another one of the kind of co-production where it’s basically a UK show that happens to be set here (see Queen of Oz, chunks of Frayed, and most of Spreadsheet)? Two out of the three leads are from the UK, and they’re the parents (well, step-parent in Ingrid’s case) of the third. Is this even set in Australia? All we have to go on is the production information:

A Northern Pictures production for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Major production investment from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in association with Screen Australia, Screen Canberra and ITV Studios which also handles international distribution

So plenty of local money at least. Hopefully they can greenscreen in a visit to Bondi beach at some point.

Australian Epic (Fail?)

Despite what television producers like to think, musicals aren’t automatically funny. The joke with Australian Epic is meant to be that hey, we’re making big musicals out of small stories. It’s not a bad joke – but going by the first episode, it’s not good enough.

When it was first announced, Australian Epic was called Stories From Oz. Presumably that’s because the concept was a straight lift from the series Stories From Norway, which aired on SBS here a few years ago. Since then, it looks like the ABC realised they didn’t need to pay royalities for the “musical documentary” concept. Hey presto, new title (and no mention of the original).

We bring it up here not (just) because we’re shitty people, but because the original version works as a comedy in ways this does not. For one, it was the product of a pre-established musical comedy team. Think Norway’s version of Flight of the Conchords, or Hamish & Andy but with guitars. Aunty Donna! Yeah, let’s go with them.

It’s not hard to see how that version would be funny. And the local version is put together by a duo of sorts – The Chaser’s Andrew Hansen and Chris Taylor. But they’re not exactly renowned for their hilarious point of view. Hansen is an extremely talented songwriter, but he turns topical issues into satirical songs rather than just making up crap for the sake of a laugh.

So instead of an established double act messing about, we get a slightly more polished ensemble who bring pretty much nothing pre-existing to the table as far as comedy goes. The joke is that they’re going all in with a big musical about a small subject. Once you get past that, what’s left is a collection of musical sketches that are impressive more for their production values and musical virtuosity than their jokes.

Another strength of the Norwegian version was that it wasn’t afraid to go a little off-book with its adaptation of events for a laugh. While it also featured interviews with people actually involved, the songs often put a weird spin on events. They’d happily go surreal or over-the-top if that’s where the laughs were.

It’s hard to say exactly why the local version doesn’t do this. The first episode is looking at the story of ice skater Steven Bradbury. You know, the guy who won Olympic gold when everyone in front of him fell over. You’d think that’d be prime material for a bit of piss-farting around, but the actual episode? Surprisingly reverential.

The only explanation that comes to hand is that having the co-operation of the the real Bradbury (and his coach, and his parents) left Hansen and Taylor feeling that cheap shots were off the table. In a traditional comedy musical, they could go big and silly with Bradbury’s character. But because this has real interviews with the real people, it’s constantly pulled back to reality.

And each song has to stand on its own. We get the real story, then a song, then it’s back to the real story. They don’t build on each other, or even have much in the way of running jokes. Which is weird, because the whole point of the Bradbury story is that it builds up to a punchline: he won gold because everyone in front of him fell over.

Constantly resetting back to reality limits where the show can go, even if the individual songs are pretty good. Everyone involved is treated with respect, which is what you want in a documentary but a bit of a laugh-killer in a comedy. And the choice of what to turn into a song doesn’t really provide much in the way of insight.

Of course there’s a song on the decision to hang back in the big race. But why is there a full musical number about him needing to get a second medical opinion about a career-ending injury? The whole point of musical numbers is to get at things that lie underneath the surface of the story. Here the songs mostly just illustrate things the documentary side has already explained.

We’re told that Bradbury realised he couldn’t out skate the pack. He knew all too well that people fall over a lot in ice skating, so his best path to victory was to hang back. So his win wasn’t an accident after all! And then there’s a lengthy song that tells us again what we just heard, only in musical form. Good thing it was hilarious oh wait.

But going over old ground is built into this concept. Creating a musical around the joke that anyone would make a musical about recent Australian history isn’t new (see: Keating!). And quasi-comedy docutakes on recent events is… *waves hand in general direction of The Betoota Advocate Presents*.

What Australian Epic ends up being is a show for a): people who really like musical theatre, b): people who really like Australian Story, and c): people who tuned in really hoping to get some comedy.

Prats in the ranks: Darradong Local Council

There’s a scene in Darradong Local Council, Paul Fenech’s latest series for 7Mate, where a barista is obliged to laugh at a feeble joke told to her by Fenech’s character Fox. The woman playing the barista does her best, but it’s clear that she doesn’t think the joke is funny. Wait until she sees the rest of the series…

Yes! Fenech and his repertory company (Angry Anderson, Kevin Taumata, Garry Who, Vince Sorrenti and others) are back with a show which is technically an all-new series but, let’s face it, you could probably slap the titles for Housos on the front of this and some people wouldn’t notice the difference. Because while Darradong Local Council may set itself up to be a satire on why local government is broken, it’s actually just a loose frame on which to hang a series of scenes where moronic characters get into fights, indulge in soft porn and be out-and-proud anti-woke.

The cast of Darradong Local Council giving the thumbs up

There are attempts at satire here – the Mayor (George Kapiniaris), Deputy Mayor (Jon-Bernard Kairouz) and Councillors vote to close down all the local libraries to enable a dodgy Chinese property developer to erect new apartments – but it seems unlikely to go beyond “Hey, this happens in local government sometimes”. As usual with a Paul Fenech show, there are way more important things to do than satire, like fill up a few minutes of airtime with a sex scene or a fight sequence.

The show gets a few decent laughs from the Greens Councillor character, who also votes to close down the libraries because the books aren’t made of hemp. But having him turn up and mention tofu or lentils or whatever it is he’ll get to do each week – in case you haven’t picked this up yet, this is not clever or original satire – will quickly wear thin.

What will be kind of interesting is how the Fox character, who proclaims himself to be a Sovereign Citizen, will develop. Fenech probably intends this character to be an idiot, sucked into dumb Cooker conspiracy theories about vaccines and so forth, but he’ll also likely have his cake and eat it too. Yes, the characters in Darradong Local Council are corrupt, lazy, dumb morons – and sexist, racist and homophobic to boot – but they’re also unlikely heroes, who get away with stuff like theft and up-skirting. And there’ll be no Donald Trump-esque series of court cases at which they’ll get a sort of comeuppance.

Maybe the subplot about the state premier wanting to shut down Darradong’s Chinese-backed property development, so he can build an even worse development, will be funny and interesting? But wait, this is Paul Fenech, so all the potential satire will be drowned in a melee of titillation, shouting and punch-ups.

Of course, after several decades of near-identical Paul Fenech series, no one watching his shows doesn’t love his trademark formula*. Or, at least, that’s the theory. There presumably will come a point where doing the same material in a slightly different setting will wear thin, even amongst Fenech’s rusted-on fanbase. Could this half-arsed local government satire be the series that kills his career?

Ah, who are we kidding? Paul Fenech will never die. See you next year for our review of Darradong Local Council series two.


* Unless they have to review it. Hello!