Australian Tumbleweeds
Vale, Would I Lie To You Australia
The last episode of the first Australian series of Would I Lie To You aired on Monday night. As usual, it was…okay. At this point, we should probably say why we think it was just okay and not spectacularly hilarious like we hoped it would be, but we’ve already done that in our review of episode one, and as the show continued exactly the way it started eight weeks ago, there’s absolutely no need to repeat ourselves.
Apart from to note one of the reasons why.
No, we don’t mean the regular cast, although only Frank Woodley brings the big laughs.
Remember how Randling was famously all filmed months before it aired, meaning the makers had no way of re-working the show mid-series when it became clear what the problems were? Well, here we go again as Would I Lie To You was shot in December last year. And yes, it should have been obvious to TV professionals that the show was over-long and dull in the edit – it certainly was to us in episode one – but sometimes you need the external view of the mass audience before you can see that kind of thing. An external view that came at least a month after all the editing was done, presumably. Too late!
One other thing we will note about Would I Lie To You was how incredibly distracting that graphic in the bottom corner of the final episode, reminding us that The Cheap Seats is coming back, was. It’s not that we’ve dropped in from 30 years ago and never seen those kinds of graphics on TV. It’s more that having a constant onscreen reminder that the network making this okay program is capable of much better, is pretty distracting.
The Cheap Seats represents many of the things you hope for in a new comedy: it’s a fresh take, there’s interesting new talent on the show and it’s consistently funny. Would I Lie To You, on the other hand, is in a different arena altogether. It’s a 15-year-old concept that’s been done and done and done on British TV (albeit fairly successfully), then aired here, and now it’s been re-done by us except it’s been stretched and warped to fit a commercial TV hour and whoever books the guests forget to hire enough female comedians.
The result was the kind of show that hasn’t been fresh on Australian television for more than a decade. Seriously, it’s 2022, and there are now enough female comedians that you don’t need to hire female actors, musicians, and personalities to make up the female numbers. When you’re hiring Gina Liano, a woman who stretches the definition of entertainment, let alone of comedy, as a panellist, maybe it’s time to reflect a bit on your booking policy.
We’re used to Australian commercial television comedy playing it safe, but making a middling local version of a declining overseas show doesn’t feel like a way forward. It feels like the kind of show you make when you’re out of ideas or not brave enough to take a punt on something, or somebody, new.
Hey Hey Its Yet Another Bloody Clip Show
Probably the best way to look at Hey Hey It’s Saturday in 2022 is to not look at it at all. The second best way is to look at it as a shed out the back of Daryl Somers’ place full of dubious old crap he just can’t let go of. If he wants to spend his days rummaging around in there trying to find something of value under the porno mags, fine; the rest of us have television to watch.
Hey Hey It’s 100 Years is a clip show hosted by Daryl Somers. Does he walk on stage saying “thank you, thank you” to pre-recorded applause from a non-existent audience? Of course he does, and it’s all downhill from there.
Supposedly the reason why we’re getting a 100 year anniversary special of Hey Hey only a few years since the 40 year anniversary is because, as Daryl puts it “I want to be a part of this show and enjoy it with everybody else”. Let’s reflect on that a moment: Daryl thinks that in 2077 there will definitely be a Hey Hey anniversary special so he wants to get in early and join in on the fun. There are lot of things wrong with that sentence, and “fun” is only the beginning.
Despite an early montage of mostly annoyed or confused looking celebrities, this is not really a “night with the stars”. Again, this shouldn’t be a surprise: Hey Hey‘s celebrity guests were usually just wheeled out to be used as befuddled props or handed a gold record while Plucka Duck gyrated around in the background.
It’s a shame there weren’t more celebrity moments – not because these segments ever revealed anything interesting at all about the celebrities beyond their high tolerance for pain, but because they’re a great reminder of the way Daryl’s TV persona was always that of the bully: arrogant and self-serving around those he saw as inferior, blatantly grovelling and sucking up to those who had greater status. Fun times!
To be fair, a large chunk of this “special” involves Daryl being fairly generous to the cast members who provide most of the content here – Lavinia Nixon, Russell Gilbert, cartoonist Andrew Fyfe, and so on. Of course he is: without them, there would be no show. Ninety minutes of Daryl introducing acts and laughing at everyone else’s jokes was probably too much to swallow even for Channel Seven over Easter.
There’s also salutes to recently deceased Hey Hey greats like The Amazing Johnathan – you know, the American comedian who wasn’t the one with the puppets – and that great Hey Hey icon… Shane Warne? Plus the occasional current talking head (if you could call the lead singer of Pseudo Echo “current”) pops in to wish Daryl all the best on this non-existent anniversary. Stick around until the end to hear Delta Goodrem sing a Ricky May song about how much she wants to be on Hey Hey… or maybe don’t.
Are any of the segments any good? Do you really have to ask? Hey Hey It’s Saturday was always only ever disposable entertainment, a show that skated by on live energy and little else. A greatest hits collection only makes sense as an extension of Daryl’s ego. There were never any classic moments to revisit.
Unlike far funnier shows and series – which would be pretty much all of them – Hey Hey It’s Saturday is privately owned. That means Daryl can repackage it any way he likes and sell it to networks at rock bottom prices in an attempt to maintain his relevance. There’s literally no other reason why this crap is still being shown in 2022 when much better and more interesting programs – again, pretty much all of them – are seemingly lost for good.
Despite the occasional glimpse of the always entertaining Trevor Marmalade, this special was a waste of time. If you tune into the two (for fucks’ sake – ed) Red Faces specials due later this year, you only have yourself to blame.
And They’re Off!
One week into the official election campaign and… yeah. Remember when political satire was a central part of Australian culture? You do? Have fun down at Services Australia trying to claim the old age pension.
Slightly less snarkily, these days any election campaign really drives home the shrinking opportunities for political comedy on Australian television. The Chaser may have been staggering a bit during their final few election shows, but at least they were making fun of an election campaign. Which is pretty much all 95% of most election campaigns are good for.
Worse – well, worse for people who like political comedy, and there aren’t many of us left – political comedy just isn’t fashionable. For a long, long while there, jokes about politicians were about as mainstream as you could get. Martin / Molloy, the biggest radio comedy program in the country for years, was constantly making fun of John Howard; sketch shows made sure to always have a few political impressions handy just in case.
And now sketch comedy is dead, along with comedy on radio. But you’d think impersonating a politician would be the kind of thing that still got some laughs somewhere. Maybe the rapid turnover of leaders post Kevin Rudd (remember how Rove had a Kevin Rudd sketch every single week?) killed off impressions; more likely, the current media climate is… somewhat less tolerant of disrespect.
You don’t have to be a flaming #auspol nutter to realise that the ABC has become somewhat more conservative – in more than one use of the word – in recent years. It’s no surprise that during the pointy end of the election the ABC’s “comedy” coverage will consist of The Weekly (the ABC’s “youth news explainer” that rarely fails to skew towards the status quo) and Gruen Nation (ugh why), which-
-seriously, what’s the point of Gruen talking about the election when 85% of Australian political coverage is already focused entirely on marketing? It’s all talk about how each side is getting their message out there and cut throughs and positioning the leaders to appeal to segments of the community and so fucking on and on and on like the media aren’t the ones who actually decide which messages get put out there in the first place. Gruen covering election marketing might make sense if we had a media that was was, oh, focused on ideas and policies and benefits to the community instead of themselves, but there’s fat fucking chance of that ever happening, fuck this shit-
(ten minutes pass)
Meanwhile, over the last decade or so the ABC has all but banished overtly political comedy from prime time. It’s not doing so well outside of it either. Sammy J is barely a blip, Mark Humphries turns up when he feels like it. At Home With Julia may have been controversial and somewhat ill-judged, but at least it was treating a politician with the disrespect they deserved in a timeslot where people might have seen it. It’s simply not possible to imagine a similar parody directly mocking Scott Morrison ever getting to air.
Sure, that’s probably because our current PM is… shall we say, not exactly someone with a robust sense of humour about himself? But you’d think in an even slightly healthy environment for political comedy, having a PM who is so clearly either a): “a type” or b): marketing himself as “a type” would result in a few jokes. Or are we yet again deluding ourselves?
When nobody is making jokes about politicians, there’s an unhealthy tinge to the political debate. Politics is a serious business: that’s why it’s important to be able to laugh at it. Without decent political comedy in this country, we can barely pretend to even be a country. We’re just a collection of servants and masters, and the masters don’t like being laughed at.
Put another way, thank fuck for Mad as Hell, and that’s finishing up next week.
Ten Steps to Nanette: A book review situation
Hannah Gadsby’s memoir Ten Steps to Nanette is the sort of autobiography you write when you suddenly shoot to international fame for one thing, in this case, the ground-breaking stand-up show Nanette. As such, Gadsby, who’s been a well-known comedian in this country for more than a decade, spends most of the book setting the scene for her new fans who weren’t aware of her early stand-up shows, her comedy art criticism, In Gordon Street Tonight or even Please Like Me.
Even for those of us who have been familiar with her work for years, and knew she was one of the best local stand-ups out there, it wasn’t necessarily a given that she’d become a worldwide sensation. Australian comedians, no matter how good, rarely make it further than Edinburgh. So, spending most of this book on the decades it took to write Nanette is essential. You don’t just win an Emmy out of nowhere.
With Nanette, many commentators suggested, Gadsby re-wrote the rules of comedy. There were large parts of the show which didn’t contain jokes, she discussed the most traumatic events she’d ever experienced with astounding frankness, she spent ten minutes “calling bullshit on the patriarchy,” and she timed it beautifully as she happened to be touring it at the height of #MeToo. She also re-wrote her own rules about what she was and wasn’t prepared to do on stage, namely, to be the butt of the joke anymore. No wonder she freaked out a lot of comedians who worked by the established rules of comedy like “keep them laughing” and “never get serious.”
In the first chapter of Ten Steps to Nanette, Gadsby takes us through the praise and criticism Nanette received and gives her reaction to both. She’s not that fond of either, it seems, or of the instant fame she garnered. “The few months that followed the release of Nanette were amongst the strangest and most unsettling of my life,” she says. “I went from relative obscurity to intense visibility in such a short period of time that I sustained spiritual whiplash.”
It’s then that the book becomes a more conventional and chronological autobiography, in which Gadsby takes us through her childhood and adolescence in rural Tasmania, followed by a move to Hobart, and then the mainland. If you’re roughly the same age as her, you may enjoy the references to schoolkids receiving a Bicentennial coin, her brief interest in stamp collecting and her recollections of the dumb drinking games popular with first-year uni students. More universal are the tales of schoolyard bullying and feeling awkward as an adolescent because you’re overweight or not wearing the right clothes.
Then Gadsby shows us the dark side. Against the backdrop of the struggle for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania in the 1980s and 1990s, Gadsby reveals her struggles with her sexuality and gender presentation. She also drops just enough hints, without forcing us to live the awful details, of the many ways in which men groomed, abused, and assaulted her. Her expertise at taking an audience from laughter to tension to tears, the hallmark of Nanette, is once again on display here.
She also writes incisively about her struggle to understand how she should be. She knew she wasn’t “normal” but neither she nor anyone else around her knew why or what to do it about. The drip-feed of hints at her later diagnoses of ADHD and ASD is written with great clarity and real insights into what it’s like to be neurodiverse.
There’s also plenty for comedy nerds, with a deep dive into how Gadsby crafts her shows, particularly all the effort that went into Nanette. The sweat, tears and breakdowns may seem a surprise if you’ve seen how skilled Gadsby is on stage, but, then again, she didn’t pull that Emmy from anywhere. She worked hard for it, and she lived it.
This is also a book that, as you’d expect from Hannah Gadsby, is witty, compelling, and expertly crafted. Ten Steps to Nanette documents a lifetime’s work, and what a life it’s been! And as Gadsby’s shown more recently with Douglas and Body of Work, there’s plenty more of it to come (just hopefully without the bad bits).
Tomorrow Tonight This Week
So for reasons inexplicable even to us, we tuned into the second installment of Tomorrow Tonight. Clearly we’ve learned nothing from decades of Australian comedy, let alone the experience of watching episode one. But did our return reveal a show that was, first episode aside, trying to be funny?
Well, not really, This week’s episode was largely about ethics, and whether people should be forced to be good. Having Tom Gleeson on board was – surprisingly – a big help here. His “complete arsehole” comedy persona gave him plenty of room to not give a shit about anyone else and turn some fairly dull scenarios into mildly amusing comedy.
He did also occasionally reveal a softer side too. Like the time the first review of one of his shows was massively negative and he briefly worried that hey, maybe he did suck. But then everyone else gave him five stars and the show was a huge sell-out and it turned out he was a comedy genius after all. More points to Gleeson: he made a joke out of how his success restored his faith in himself.
Otherwise the highlight was Pickering’s somewhat unhinged demand that society should, if not actively punish people who don’t help others (ie by giving blood), then most definitely reward those who do. Yes, the big problem there is that once you start down that path society may very well adjust itself so that the “reward” for doing good becomes the baseline and those who don’t chip in are punished by default, but this is a light entertainment panel show and Pickering’s nutty statement – which he seemed to believe in quite strongly – was more interesting than our boring rebuttal.
And that’s the real problem with this show. Addressing these issues seriously is boring. Maybe if each week’s topic was some insane cutting edge cultural development that could spin off in any direction, then having random comedians discuss it could generate some useful info. But these topics are already well-trod ground. We’re not learning anything new here.
When Gleeson took the piss, Tomorrow Tonight suddenly had a reason to exist. A very brief reason, and not one you could do every week – which is also the problem with Gleeson’s act in general, but he’s making a buck from it so good on him. It’s a show that can only be funny when people are trying to tear it down; going along with the format just seems to produce a lot of bland television.
So yeah, mission accomplished once again ABC.
Tomorrow Tonight Again
Tomorrow Tonight is back! Wait, what’s Tomorrow Tonight again? Let’s let host Annabel Crabb explain:
“On Tomorrow Tonight, we’ll travel forward in time-“
(to a point after this series is over?)
“Offering well-known Aussies the chance to answer questions they’ve never before had to face”
(“why do you keep getting work despite your obvious lack of talent?”)
“Like, what if you could wipe clean traumatic memories?”
(like watching this show?) (we’ll stop now)
Tomorrow Tonight – last seen on our screens in 2018, so clearly people have been clamouring for its return – is a panel show. It’s basically ye olde Geoffery Robertson’s Hypotheticals: people are asked to discuss contemporary issues through the lens of “what if this happened?” But because it’s no longer the 1980s, instead of experts in their field displaying their knowledge and insight we get light entertainment personalities doing what they do best*.
The big question this week turned out to be “What if God was very, very real”. Seriously? We have two thousand years of thought from some of the smartest, most insightful minds in human history addressing this exact topic and the brains trust at the ABC thought “naaah, fuck those guys off, lets get Charlie Pickering to tell us what he thinks”.
In case you were wondering exactly why the ABC is held in such low regard by so many Australians: this is why. Tomorrow Tonight is merely the latest in an endless procession of utterly pointless ABC panel shows where the same safe pairs of hands (in that nothing actually interesting will be said) return time and time again to blather on.
Put another way, this is a show that asks “what if God were real?” and nobody says “we’re all fucked”.
Considering this is a comedy blog, we should have jumped ship somewhere around the time Crabb said “tonight we’re going to explore if belief is still essential to human existence”. But in our defense, the episode did at least start off trying to keep things light with a segment titled “The Moral Vacuum”. “Oh no, I cooked my vegetarian friends a meal using chicken stock! I somehow killed a goldfish I was looking after!”
Geoffrey Robertson used hypotheticals to tackle questions about what our government would do in times of crisis. Now it’s what would Waleed Aly do when confronted with a dead goldfish.
There are a grand total of two reasons for a show like this to exist, because you’re sure not making it to be entertaining. Either you’re there to educate the audience about issues relevant to their lives, or to educate the audience about the characters of the panelists. Absolutely no prizes for guessing which direction this takes. Though it’s good to know Charlie Pickering is now technically a Jewish comedian**.
When asked “how do you know you’ve chosen the right god?” Aly replies “You’re going to answer that in a light entertainment format?” and really the show should have just ended there, halfway through episode one. Nobody is going to learn anything substantial from this show; people looking for actual entertainment have so many other options it’s laughable this even exists.
If we’re going to get seriously critical here for a moment, if you’re going to do a debate on religion you really need to present some differing views on religion itself, not just a range of people with firm commitments to different religions. Aly’s belief is clearly utterly rock-solid: everything else in his life is built on his belief, and that belief exists independently of the need for facts or proof.
That’s interesting as far as we’re interested in him as a personality. It’s a dead end as far as any kind of debate goes. For him, the debate is already over. His firm religious belief – like that of everyone else on the panel – only tells us something about him, not something about religion in general. Which yet again, seems to be the point. Seriously tackling his (or anyone else’s) religion was most definitely not on the cards.
Which is kind of insulting to religion when you think about it.
.
*if you know what that is, please let us know
**well, technically he’s a comedian; officially he’s now Jewish
No accounting for taste
It’s press release time!
Screen Australia, BINGE and Screen NSW have announced production has begun in Sydney on a new Australian-made original series Colin from Accounts, commissioned for BINGE.
The eight-episode romantic comedy is created and written by, and stars, Patrick Brammall (No Activity, A Moody Christmas) and Harriet Dyer (Wakefield, The Invisible Man).
Centred on Ashley (Dyer) and Gordon (Brammall), two single(ish), complex humans who are brought together by a car accident and an injured dog, Colin from Accounts is about flawed, funny people choosing each other and being brave enough to show their true self, scars and all, as they navigate life together.
The series is produced by Easy Tiger Productions and CBS Studios, with Rob Gibson and Ian Collie producing for Easy Tiger (Jack Irish, Rake, Doctor Doctor, Saving Mr Banks). Directors are Trent O’Donnell (No Activity, The Letdown), Matt Moore (The Great, Diary of an Uber Driver) and Madeleine Dyer. Executive Producers are Patrick Brammall, Harriet Dyer, O’Donnell, Alison Hurbert-Burns and Brian Walsh.
Screen Australia’s CEO Graeme Mason said, “We’re thrilled to support creators Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall whose careers have been exploding overseas, as they join forces on this relatable and charming home-grown comedy. Teaming up with the talented producers at Easy Tiger, Colin from Accounts will undoubtedly delight and resonate with viewers on BINGE.”
BINGE Executive Director, Alison Hurbert-Burns said, “We are thrilled to announce that we’re going into production on this Australian original series, following the successful debut of our first original romantic drama, Love Me. Colin from Accounts, is a comedy packed script and a unique romantic story that is grounded by very relatable characters that we hope Australians will love”.
Easy Tiger’s Rob Gibson and Ian Collie said, “Dyer, Brammall, rom-com, cute dog: what’s not to love? It’s a delight to be working on this hilarious and big-hearted show with Harriet, Patrick, Trent, Matt and Maddy, which is a ridiculous amount of talent all in the one place. We’re very grateful to our partners at BINGE and CBS Studios, who immediately saw the appeal of Colin from Accounts for their audiences in Australia and around the world, and also of course to Screen Australia and Screen NSW for their wonderful support.”
Head of Screen NSW Grainne Brunsdon said, “Screen NSW is joining forces with the FOXTEL Group and Screen Australia to secure another original series for NSW’s highly skilled screen industry. Colin from Accounts is a BINGE original series that aligns the production know-how of Easy Tiger with the creative team of Patrick Brammall, Harriet Dyer and Trent O’Donnell for an exciting rom com series set in Sydney.
“I know this 100% NSW-made production will deliver laughs for audiences at home and abroad,” Brunsdon said.
The series is distributed outside Australia and New Zealand by ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group.
The series commissioned for the Foxtel Group will be produced by Easy Tiger Productions and CBS Studios. It has major production funding from Screen Australia with support from Screen NSW.
So… “relatable and charming home-grown comedy”, “rom-com, cute dog”, “big-hearted”, “will deliver laughs for audiences at home and abroad” …yeah, we get the vibe. We’re predicting mildly eccentric characters, low-stakes peril, and minimal belly-laughs.
This isn’t the kind of show that’s designed to be funny. It’s the kind of show that’s designed to be sold to international streaming services looking for inoffensive dramedies in mildly exotic locales.
Trip to the Brain
(slightly late) Press release time!
Lune Media has announced a series commission from Network Ten for a brand-new quiz show – Shaun Micallef’s Brain Eisteddfod.
The one-hour, weekly quiz program is hosted by actor, writer, television presenter and one of Australia’s favourite comedians Shaun Micallef.
Leonie Lowe, Managing Director at Lune Media said: “I’m thrilled to be working with Shaun again on this exciting new series. It is the third time we have collaborated, and our partnership has always been both respectful and successful. I really admire his passion and commitment to his work and the team.
Viewers will see Shaun’s natural ability to engage and encourage the young contestants with his unique mix of quick-fire humour and razor-sharp wit.”
Over ten weeks Shaun Micallef’s Brain Eisteddfod brings together eighteen schools from around Australia and will pit their best and brightest Year 11 students against each other to determine Australia’s biggest brains.
Teams of three will combine for testing of their knowledge on a range of subjects from English, Mathematics, History, Foreign Languages to Biology and Economics, and much more for a fiercely contested and fun-filled one hour of entertainment.
Shaun Micallef said: “I’ve always believed there was intelligent life on this planet, and I am delighted and proud to be part of Channel TEN’s efforts to discover it right here in Australia. Also, I was once a Year 11 student myself and will be using my old notes to double-check the answers.”
Shaun Micallef’s Brain Eisteddfod is a Lune Media production in association with Giant Baby for Network Ten Australia. The series is based on an original concept from Giant Baby and Lune Media. Executive Producers are David Galloway, Shaun Micallef and Leonie Lowe.
It’s the It’s Academic reboot we’ve been waiting for! Finally a new generation will understand that Late Show sketch where Santo says “Tonga”!
Otherwise, everything here makes total sense without once sounding like something we’d be excited to watch. If it wasn’t official before that the only way comedians can get on Australian commercial television is on a quiz show, it sure is now. Bob Franklin for the next host of Family Feud!
In fact, we might even be a bit disappointed at this news: while it’s certainly possible for Micallef to fit this in between two seasons of Mad as Hell in 2022, this does make that seem a bit less likely… though realistically, this year’s return of Question Everything and The One That’s Just Hypotheticals But With Annabel Crabb had already sealed the death of ABC comedy.
But on the up side, at least “Brain Eisteddfod” is moderately amusing to say.
You’ll (Front) Bar Up
The Front Bar has been one of Seven’s big successes of the last few years. Originally little more than an online advertorial for booze with some footy chat mixed in – or an advertorial for footy with booze mixed in – having Sam Pang and Mick Molloy crap on while clearly getting pissed was a formula that soon became a winter mainstay. At least for those in the AFL states who give a shit about sport.
These days Seven tries to drag this ratings winner out as long as possible. There’s various non-AFL specials constantly turning up whenever there’s a sporting event on that almost kinda sorta justifies it. You can’t exactly blame them: comedians taking the piss out of sport is about as sure-fire as you get with Australian comedy, and Pang, Molloy and straight man Andy Maher are as good at it as anybody else this century.
As comedy goes, The Front Bar is a solid product. It gets more mileage than you might expect from Sam and Mick riling each other up, and Seven’s massive archive of AFL footage going back to the dawn of time gets a pretty solid workout as well. The guests are often good value too. Presumably a career waffling on at pie nights means they’ve got a bunch of anecdotes good to go.
And yet those stories, like everything else on The Front Bar, are always about sport. Sports jokes are extremely low hanging fruit if you’re a fan, and pretty much incomprehensible if you’re not. You’ll probably work out the laughs from the context – it’s not a subtle show – but “work” and “laughs” rarely go hand in hand.
Don’t expect any concessions to the non-sport comedy fan either. While plenty of people like sport and and the same time like things that are not sport, sport is such a massive market in Australia that sport doesn’t need to appeal to anyone who doesn’t like sport. So sports shows are entirely about sport, and shows that aren’t about sport don’t bother mentioning sport because sports shows already have that market covered.
Just look at HYBPA? It’s a news comedy show that covers the week in news pretty extensively, yet there’s only ever a handful of sports mentions and more often than not they’re from overseas. Meanwhile, half the country follows AFL and the other half NRL. National shows can’t cover both because fans of one hate fans of the other. The solution? Avoid the whole thing entirely, which suits people who don’t like sport just fine.
The upside of this divide is, The Front Bar has a fair amount of decent material each week all to themselves. Like those AFL “comedy” series before it – that one with Straunchie, that other one with Sam Newman – there’s also a fair bit of actual sports coverage going on. No surprise there: commercial TV has massive sports departments so why not get various experts and commentators and ex-players on? They’re already hanging around the place.
But is it funny? Despite both Pang and Molloy having extensive comedy careers outside the world of sport, you still need to be pretty committed fans of either – or just like sport – to follow them here. It’s a sports show with a comedy slant rather than a comedy show about sport, and it doesn’t really pretend otherwise.
And there’s a lot of sport: as is seemingly traditional with these shows, this constantly runs over time. If you’re keen on 75+ minutes (with sports-related ads) of sport, much of which seems to be thanks and shout-outs to former players who are now car salesmen or running some shonky pub, more power to you.
Still, there’s usually a couple of comedy nuggets in here if you’re willing to put in the effort. There’s plenty of funny banter going on, Pang and Molloy are two of the more charismatic characters in Australian comedy, and the show’s just ramshackle enough to give them room to mess around.
If only they weren’t constantly crapping on about sport.
Wake up: Time to Buy
Time to Buy is a half-hour comedy special currently being serialised on SBS’s yoof news program The Feed (you can also watch the whole thing on SBS On Demand). It’s a musical about a young couple who decide it’s time to dive into the housing market. Yes, that’s the joke.
Let’s say some positive things first because honestly? At a basic level this is a perfectly okay way to spend just over half an hour (or five or so seven minute segments). Let’s start with the two leads: they’re charming and likable! We’d happily watch their further adventures in some kind of lightweight drama. Their deadshit roommate Calvin; clearly a deadshit, but not a totally generic one – best comedy character in the show.
In fact, almost all the character stuff was well observed and relatively nuanced. There was even a non-evil real estate agent, which was a brave move for something ostensibly a comedy. There was a firm sense here that they wanted to avoid the obvious cliches, and when they couldn’t – enter the rich boomers* looking to buy the same property as our heroes – we at least got a musical number from their side of things and a semi-decent joke about not understanding WhatsApp.
But was it funny? Let’s look at it this way: no.
Taking a boring, mundane subject and making a musical out of it was funny once and may very well be funny again, but if Time to Buy is any guide it is currently not funny at all. The musical numbers themselves weren’t bad**; the scenes around them were also not bad. But the juxtaposition of the two did not, in any real way, create comedy.
Still, points for trying. No points for the actual story, which [SPOILER] goes like this: sick of their crap house, crap roomate and rising rents, our two young people decide to buy a house. A mortgage broker arranges a loan – easy! They love the first house they see – easy! But some evil boomers also want it – then there’s an auction! The results will shock you, the end.
With only a half hour to work with and a bunch of musical numbers to fit in, the plot clearly couldn’t afford to be too complex. But who thinks the big stress point in house hunting for first home buyers is the auction and not, say, trying to save a deposit? Or finding a house they like? Or finding a house they like that they can afford? Or finding a house they can still afford two weeks later when prices have gone up fifty grand?
There’s a lot of moving parts when it comes to buying a house. This could have mined those issues for comedy instead of rushing to a big dramatic ending that didn’t really pay off. Though from what broad comedy there was on display – notably the jogger who horned his way into the framing sequence and proceeded to be annoying in a way that was clearly intended to be funny but was really just annoying – maybe getting laughs was never going to be this special’s big strength.
Remember last year’s run of millennial comedies that were just low-key dramas with occasional bitchy comments? Pretty much any non-murder story about anyone under thirty is going to be filed under “comedy” no matter what. So a half hour drama about house hunting? Not going to happen.
A mildly exasperated, FML tone might be accurate for millennials’ lives, but it doesn’t automatically make a story into a comedy. But hey, if you don’t have a load of decent jokes about house hunting maybe pick a different subject, just add a bunch of songs and hope the contrast between the form (a musical) and the content (buying a house) generates laughs.
Usually when it comes to Australian comedy it’s all too easy to see the reasons why it’s not funny. Not here: a one-off half hour musical comedy special has no excuse for not being hilarious from start to finish. What’s holding it back? Not the subject matter, not the talent involved, not some requirement to be a “dramedy” for overseas sales. This should have been a full half hour of solid laughs.
Instead we got a well-meaning real estate agent and a jogger we wanted to slap.
*okay, we did laugh at the Leunig reference
**just in musical terms,”weren’t bad” is underselling the songs. If we were a musical review blog instead of a comedy review blog we would have rated this a lot higher