Australian Tumbleweeds
Vale The Weekly 2021
This year all the blame fell on Charlie Pickering’s shoulders. Who else was left? Even the regular guests only turned up for a handful of episodes across the season; otherwise it was, as the title had always said from the start, the Charlie Pickering show. And what a show it was.
Wait, we mean what, that was the show? Pickering spent at least half of every episode recapping the previous week by basically reading out the actual news reports – only you could tell it was comedy because he was smirking while he did it. “You give us thirty minutes, we’ll give you the shits”.
Then he moved into “the lounge” to slip into an earnest expression while he spent a good chunk of the show explaining that things were, you know, complicated and you couldn’t believe everything you read on the internet… unless you read the same things he did, in which case you already knew everything he had to say. Let’s make a joke about how the Tour de France is so boring it put Pickering to sleep… then spend five more minutes talking about it! You can’t fail with that.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the basic idea of a satirical news recap. You could even argue that Pickering’s material was slightly – slightly – stronger now that the focus was firmly on “here’s what only just happened”. But Pickering isn’t the person to host it. Pickering isn’t even the person to watch it.
Considering Pickering pretty much picked up the ABC Satirical Torch from The Chaser, it’s more than possible that the higher-ups at the ABC see “smug well-off private schoolboy” as a useful worldview for satire. We beg to differ, mostly because having failed to get into the housing market we need all the begging practice we can get. Remember when The Weekly used to make jokes about house prices? Hilarious stuff.
Speaking of total fucking embarrassments, we didn’t think it was possible to sink lower than Corona Cops but of course The Weekly‘s comedy bathyscaphe was all fueled up and ready to plumb new depths. “Ha ha, let’s get a snooty film reviewer to cover trash television” is the kind of thing a chump might say once and expect to get away with it, but The Weekly kept bringing Margaret (“stop picking on my son’s movie“) Pomeranz back to do a joke that wasn’t all that funny when she teamed up with sparring partner David Stratton to review “2020” for The Shovel last year.
But hey, clearly the team at The Weekly thought it was good enough to rip off again and again, right? Unless they’d been sitting on it for a while but didn’t want to step on the toes of now-departed ABC Comedy Chief Rick Kalowski – after all, he’d used Pomeranz (well, impersonations of her) to make basically the same joke on both Double Take and Wednesday Night Fever. At least he didn’t come up with the “all new” idea of getting some smooth dude to deliver bad news.
This kind of news recap needs a spark Pickering’s never shown. In the battle between smug and couldn’t give a fuck, Pickering’s face waved the white flag years ago. Now more than ever, the news is little more than a string of things to get angry and outraged about (as the entire internet has known since 2011) and yet the ABC’s big satirical gun just sits back with an eyebrow raised and says “it’s a funny old world” after yet another story about outrageous levels of entrenched corruption at the highest levels of government.
Sure, the people benefiting from the shitty way things are deserve a chance to tell their side of the story. That’s what News Corp, Nine / Fairfax, Channel Seven and literally every other media organisation in the country do all day every day. It’s too late for the ABC to join the big boy club; the big boys want them shut down. So what if they – and it’s a crazy thought but hear us out – put on a news recap that actually challenged the status quo instead of begged to join it?
But then you’d have to sack Pickering, and who’d front the ABC’s ads for their new “totally secure” login requirements for iView then?
It’s a Fraud, I Tell You!
Why would you make a movie in Australia? Sure, there’s generous tax breaks, plenty of skilled tech crew, stunning locations, loads of moderately skilled actors, even- okay, let’s start again. Why would you make an Australian movie in Australia?
We got to wondering this while watching Fraud Festival on C31 last Sunday night (you can also catch it here). It’s a perfectly amusing mockumentary loosely (extremely loosely) satirising the Fyre Festival debacle of a few years back, only this time the crap festival is being held to save the suburb of Coburt from being demolished for a massive highway. Do they do the comedy bit where a scale model of the sleepy suburb has a giant flat chunk of road smashed down on it? Yes they do – and it’s Tony Martin holding the board.
Fraud Festival has a lot of obvious things going for it, by which we mean there are a lot of cameos and brief appearances from comedians you’ll recognise. It also has a fairly decent plot, in that things keep on happening, and there’s even a bunch of quality jokes in there even though it’s clear just about every scene was largely improvised. So it’s a decent movie? Oh hell no.
The movie format is currently the absolute worst format you can get when it comes to comedy. We all remember fondly all manner of classic comedy movies; we might even remember seeing some of them at the cinema. But at the moment, right now, comedy movies do not make it to cinemas… or much of anywhere else.
There are plenty of reasons why, but the (current) big one is that there are no big comedy stars who can get people to go to a movie. Comedies have nothing to offer marketing-wise aside from big stars – just check out the trailer for any comedy and no matter how funny the actual film, you’ll be watching at least 30 seconds of dead air – and movies don’t get to cinemas (or anywhere else) without marketing.
If you want to make visual comedy that people will watch and think “hey, that funny person deserves more work”, then it’s off to YouTube (or even TikTok) with you. Those kind of places are ideal for sketch comedy, which is why they’re the only places sketch comedy now exists. And if you want to do longer pieces – time to break your dream project into episodes.
Australian movies are made as calling cards. They’re calling cards for the cast and crew to try and get work in the US, they’re calling cards for the locations (many if not most Australian films get funding from tourism bodies and the like), they’re calling cards for the funding bodies to show off their taste and refinement when it comes to funding “quality Australian productions”. Comedy is next to useless in any of those roles, which is why even Australian “comedy” movies are really just dramas with a couple of jokes sprinkled in (yes, we’ve seen the trailers for June Again).
Plus now “feature film” tends to mean things like “good lighting” and “fancy locations” and “high production values”, which we’d argue aren’t essential to making a classic film (The Castle looks a bit cheap even by the standards of the time) but these days are essential if you’re going to get your foot in the door. Put it this way: these days a shithouse movie that looks good is always going to do better than a funny movie that looks shit.
So while for us the fact that Fraud Festival had some good laughs – it’s safe to say Emily Taheny’s “Fat Asian Baby” song was funnier than all of Aftertaste – is a big plus, in the outside world a comedy movie is just kind of a curio at best. Which is a bit grim, because 10-15 years ago comedies were going gangbusters at the box office worldwide.
And now they’re dead. We never should have let them make You and Your Stupid Mate.
Slush puppies
Slushy, Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney’s new audio comedy series for Audible, is set on an Antarctic research station, but, really, it could be set in any workplace. For Slushy isn’t about how hilarious it is to research penguins; it’s about people. From those who are anxious, depressed and inadequate, to those who are arrogant, pretentious and idiotic, all the characters in the Slushy universe are just trying to survive.
Central to the story is Maya (Pallavi Sharda), a drama school drop-out and retail worker who lied her way into a job as a research assistant on the station’s penguin program. Constantly on edge and with no discernible talent or aptitude for the world of scientific research, Maya bumbles her way around the base and its out-stations, forced to endure all manner of hardships.
These hardships are mostly in the form of her colleagues, such as Kyle (Greg Larsen), a particularly well-drawn example of the sort of ambitious, brazen grifter who habitually tells his colleagues he’s more senior than he actually is. Also at the station is Embeth (Kate McCartney), a pretentious, sex-obsessed weirdo, who’s there as the artist in residence, Kehan (Dilruk Jayasinha), an anxious, pedantic researcher, Claire (Zoe Coombs Marr), a depressive who’s worried about the climate crisis, Murray (Shaun Micallef), a grumpy older man who just wants to be left alone to do his work, Nat (Kate McLennan), a sort of Jill-of-All-Trades, who ends up doing everything from running the station’s bar to being the resident hairdresser, and Mary (Rebecca Massey), the unflappable Head of Station.
These and a number of other characters (played by Eddie Perfect, Dave Lawson, Anne Edmonds and others), form the core of the series, popping-up to help and hinder Maya as she arrives on station, completes basic training, and then finally has to do some work. If you call trying to count thousands of penguins who are constantly moving, at the behest of your tough-as-nails, terrifying boss, Catherine (Kris McQuade), work
But, like we said above, the work of the station isn’t really the point here. Slushy is a show about having to get on with others, and occasionally trying to get it on with others (top marks to the cameo from Paul F. Tompkins as sleezy American pilot Rick, by the way, a classic McLennan/McCartney parody of an alpha male).
If you’re a fan of McLennan and McCartney’s previous work like Get Krack!n (has it really been two years since Get Krack!n?), then be prepared because Slushy is a little different in tone. It’s less hard-edged and less-political, even if it’s still got plenty to say about traditional gender roles and the climate crisis. In fact, Slushy might be a show to recommend to someone who didn’t like Get Krack!n, and prefers their satire a bit softer and their laughs a bit lighter.
Slushy is the trad sitcom we’re slightly surprised McLennan and McCartney wrote. Having said that, the final couple of episodes of Get Krack!n were a sort of an acknowledgement that they couldn’t stay on that particular comic path forever, so maybe this change of direction shouldn’t come as a surprise? The important point, though, is that Slushy is funny. And laughs are always good.
Wogs (not) Out Of Work
Press release time!
New Superwog hits ABC iview on June 13
Off the back of their smash hit #1 trending first season, ABC is delighted to announce that the second season of the irreverent comedy series – Superwog – drops Sunday 13 June with all episodes available to binge from 6pm on ABC iview. Created by and starring brothers Theodore and Nathan Saidden, the new series dives into Superwog and his Dad’s misadventures as they chase their passions, test their friendships, fight with relatives and butt heads with authorities. The new season is guaranteed to make you squirm and laugh!
Produced by Superwog and Princess Pictures, the six-part series follows a highly dysfunctional family tackling life in Australian suburbia, often head on. Superwog (Theodore Saidden) and Johnny (Nathan Saidden) are best friends and newly minted adults who still fight with their parents and watch too much TV. But now they’re also taking their driving tests, romancing cheerleaders and trying to stay one step ahead of the law.
Production credits: A Superwog and Princess Pictures production for the ABC with major production funding from the ABC in association with Screen Australia, and financed with support from Film Victoria and Screen NSW. Created, written, co-produced by and starring Theodore Saidden and Nathan Saidden. Produced by Mike Cowap and Antje Kulpe. Directed by Theodore Saidden. Executive Producers Emma Fitzsimons, Elia Eliades and Katherine Dale. ABC Executive Producers Andrew Gregory and Lauren Merolli. ABC Head of Comedy Todd Abbott.
Season Two of Superwog will premiere on ABC iview on Sunday 13 June at 6pm AEST with all episodes available to binge. The series will be broadcast on ABC TV from Wednesday 16 June at 9.30pm. Season One of Superwog is available on ABC iview now.
There’s a particularly tricky hurdle for comedians when they base their act on being wacky young dudes (it’s almost always dudes) – they wake up one morning and suddenly they’re too old for their material and everything gets awkward and creepy. Will this be that hurdle for Superwog? Let’s find out!
Thank God You’re Back
Have You Been Paying Attention? is the gift that keeps on giving to Australian comedy (on television at least). It’s funny, it’s regular, it’s popular; what more could you ask for?
If you were a real crank it might be possible to suggest that the show’s in a bit of a rut, but being in a rut is exactly what this kind of show strives for. The whole point is that a): you know what you’re getting and b): what you’re getting is going to be good. So long as you’re getting b) right, a) doesn’t really matter. Anyway, it’s a topical news quiz: the questions and subjects (and occasionally, the guests) are what provides the variety here.
The real question here is: where’s the spin-offs? If anything – and in stark contrast to pretty much every other Australian panel show in living memory – this feels a little overpowered at times. Working Dog have always had a decent eye for talent and they’re currently stocking HYBPA? with winners young and old each week; why isn’t Channel Ten trying to do something with them? Is the blackmail material Peter Helliar has on the management at Ten just that good?
With Utopia seemingly consigned to the dustbin of history, Working Dog’s schedule is (presumably) free to work on new projects – and unlike the ABC, Ten has a few dollars they found down the back of the couch. Ten’s only other stab at light entertainment of late has been the, uh, somewhat unimpressive Hughesy We Have a Problem, and if that never returned there wouldn’t be too many tears shed.
We have no idea how television is run so for all we know there’s a non-aggression pact between Ten’s major comedy producers preventing any one of them from having two big shows airing in the same year. It could happen! We don’t know! What we do know is that it seems a bit odd that the producers of easily Ten’s best light entertainment show of the past decade aren’t expanding their empire just a little.
We’re not calling for the return of A River Somewhere or anything, but if All Aussie Adventures can make a comeback, they’ve got to have a few classics (bring back Audrey’s Kitchen) – or better, some new ideas – with a bit of fuel in the tank.
Going Back to Prep
Press release time!
Be prepared! Nakkiah Lui gears up for the apocalypse as cameras roll on Preppers
Chum Ehelepola, Ursula Yovich, Aaron McGrath, Nakkiah Lui, Meyne Wyatt, Eryn Jean Norvill in Preppers.
Photo by Noel McLaughlin.
ABC and Screen Australia are thrilled to announce that filming is underway in Sydney on the highly anticipated comedy, Preppers. Starring the multi-talented Nakkiah Lui, the six-part series will air on ABC and ABC iview later this year.
Written by Lui and Gabriel Dowrick, the all-star cast includes Ursula Yovich (Mystery Road), Chum Ehelepola (The Newsreader), Meyne Wyatt (Mystery Road), Aaron McGrath (Glitch), Eryn Jean Norvill (STC’s The Picture of Dorian Gray), Jack Charles (Cleverman), Grant Denyer (Family Feud), Christine Anu (Black Comedy), Miranda Tapsell (Top End Wedding), Brooke Satchwell (Mr Inbetween), Luke Carroll (Total Control) and singer Kate Miller-Heidke.
Directed by Steven McGregor (Black Comedy), Preppers follows Charlie (Nakkiah Lui), a young Aboriginal woman whose world crumbles around her after experiencing a personal, cataclysmic event. Escaping the fallout, Charlie finds herself at the centre of a hilariously mismatched community of doomsday preppers.
With climate change, economic catastrophe, terrorism, pandemics, meteor strikes, hostile AI, nuclear proliferation, alien invasion it looks almost certain that the end is nigh. So, when the end comes—no matter how it happens— maybe the craziest thing is to NOT be prepared?
Nakkiah Lui and Gabe Dowrick said, “It’s very exciting for us to see the comedic world we’ve created come to life with such a great cast and crew, and we are also particularly pleased that Preppers is being made (and will hopefully be seen) before the eventual apocalyptic event(s) that wipe out humanity…”
Sally Riley, ABC Head of Drama, Entertainment and Indigenous said, “It has been a real joy watching Nakkiah go from strength to strength, from her first writing and performing roles in Black Comedy, to short form in Kiki & Kitty and now her first half hour series, with Preppers.”
Penny Smallacombe, Head of First Nations Department at Screen Australia said, “Nakkiah Lui has a track record of creating boundary-pushing comedy and we’re proud to support her and the rest of the talented creative team in bringing this hilarious and clever series to life. Who doesn’t need a few lessons in Prepping!”
Producers Liz Watts and Sylvia Warmer said: “We’re thrilled to be partnering again with Nakkiah Lui, as well as Gabe Dowrick, on Preppers, along with a brilliant cast and crew. We can’t imagine a more blackly comic and pertinent series for our time. Preppers will be smart, relatable and very, very funny. It also might make you shed a tear.”
Preppers will be filmed and post produced in Sydney.
Damn, we were hoping for a minute there that the next season of Rosehaven was about to take an exciting new direction.
At least the ABC PR department wheeled out that classic comedy line “highly anticipated” to once again describe a show pretty much nobody had heard of until this exact press release. Must have been those Grant Denyer stans bombarding the ABC switchboard yet again.
How To Stay Awake
The continuing presence of How To Stay Married on Australian television screens is one of those mysteries that isn’t really a mystery in the 21st century. We’re all increasingly aware that while the organisations and institutions around us claim to have our best interests in heart, in reality their agendas almost never involve things like “giving the people what they want”. Because who in their right mind wants more of How To Stay Married?
As a thrilling vision of the sitcom as combination homewear store and greeting card rack, How To Stay Married pretty much delivers all the bland, forgettable, generic laughs you expect to get from a “humour” column in a high-end weekend newspaper supplement. There didn’t need to be a third season of this. There didn’t need to be a third episode of this.
Previous seasons of Married struggled with the whole “sitcom” side of things thanks to being based on a situation that was last topical in the late 1950s: wouldn’t it be hilarious if we made a show about a regular family… only the dad stayed at home while the mum went back to work?!? And then repeatedly had the mum stay at home as well because Lisa McCune is easily the best thing about this show and if Peter Helliar wasn’t the creator / writer / director / showrunner / entire reason this keeps getting made his character would have been bumped to an occasional guest role by week two.
Oh yeah, the reason why this keeps getting made because rating less than half a million viewers every week in prime time isn’t it: Channel Ten wants to stay in the Peter Helliar business. This is a sitcom as vanity project, a show nobody really gives much of a shit about but it strokes the ego of the star so whoops, here it is again. Remember Ten’s other recent sitcom, Mr Black? That actually got an overseas development deal (because America didn’t realise it was a rip off of Kingswood Country, which was itself a rip off of All In the Family), yet a second season remains nowhere to be seen because nobody who appeared on it is a regular co-host on The Project.
(Here’s a fun question: has Peter Helliar ever fronted – not appeared in, but headlined – anything that was successful? Answers on the back of a question card from his gameshow Cram!)
Unfortunately for people who like to laugh, Peter Helliar is the Scott Morrison of comedy, a daggy dad suit worn by a cold-eyed marketing man who does his best work seething with rage. Even How to Stay Married can’t deny it, with this season’s big twist being that while his sitcom wife wrote a book about him being a shit dad, he’s the one making bank off it thanks to his relentless marketing of his spin-off podcast.
Hang on a sec. So a woman writes a book about how her husband is shit, which is presented as a bad thing because it’s a betrayal of her husband even though he actually is shit. Then we’re told the book itself is (ha ha) a flop and she’s washed up, but it all worked out because the shit husband is now a successful semi-celebrity thanks to her hard work. But don’t worry: next week she gets her face rubbed in her failure yet again.
Either this show is making a remarkably subtle point about the way white guys always come out on top despite putting in the least effort, or it’s punishing the female lead for speaking up about being unhappy with a husband who is basically shit. One is smart and insightful, the other leaves a bad taste in your mouth: guess which one is the most likely?
The cruelty of the plot aside, usually sitcoms based around this kind of dynamic – one’s lazy, the other’s highly strung – work by getting us to side with the highly strung character. We can all sympathise with being frustrated by someone else, especially if they don’t seem to care yet everything works out for them. It’s certainly possible to make a sitcom where the moral is “haha, caring about things is for chumps” – it worked out great for Animal House – but that’s basically an antagonistic relationship. It’s fine for workplace sitcoms where people are stuck with each other, but in a relationship comedy there’s got to be some reason why there isn’t a murder by week five.
How To Stay Married gets around this by being completely half-arsed. It’s The Peter Helliar Show so obviously he’s the one we’re meant to sympathise with even though he’s playing an annoying lazy screw-up. Why does his wife stay with him even though she literally wrote a book about how he’s shit? Why is Scott Morrison PM?
The idea of the hot wife and the slobby husband is a sitcom cliche so tired it’s been mocked for decades (“it’s a grim life for the thin wife”, as one article put it). And yet here we are, serving it up yet again in Australia in 2021. Beyond that – and some decent comedy performers utterly wasted in supporting roles – there’s nothing here.
Each week this serves up plots so lightweight they barely take place at all. Will the older daughter get a job at a cinema? Is a bully stealing the younger daughter’s lunch? If a relative tried to tell you this stuff you’d be yawning halfway through the second line of their text message: how many millions of dollars did Ten pay for this crap?
Getting three seasons of a sitcom on Australian commercial television is an amazing achievement in the 21st century. Getting three seasons of a sitcom that seems to have made no impression whatsoever on anyone is even more impressive.
Eight Days a Weekly
The Weekly‘s been at least half a dozen shows over the years, each less successful than the last. So it shouldn’t really be a surprise the spinning contest wheel finally stopped on “year-in-review-but-it’s-a-week”. Not because it’s a good idea: a year-in-review works because 75% of the show is powered by “oh yeah, I remember that”, which isn’t really an option when you’re talking about the previous week no matter how many online articles you read about the ever increasing pace of everything oh God remember that Tik Tok video where the guy did the thing?
But wait, doesn’t The Weekly also feature “The Study”, that thrilling segment where they explain important things in a sarcastic voice thus creating news comedy? Sure, if the idea that making markets freer usually means the rich guys buy up everything else is news to you then you’re in luck pretty much every week, but it’s hard to shake the feeling it’s a segment produced by a crack team of researchers an algorithm trawling the shoutier sections of twitter.
Ha! Had you fooled: they’re all shouty sections on twitter. For this kind of thing to work it really needs to come up with behind-the-scenes news that’s actually news, not just something already discussed online. Today’s world is so fast paced we’ve already forgotten what happened last week complicated there are interesting and surprising news stories out there about just about everything: making a show that’s social media, only television is a waste of pretty much everything.
In the past The Weekly dodged this by featuring people who weren’t Charlie Pickering, thus giving us something to stare at besides his hairline. Sure, the interviews were boring and Tom Gleeson really feels like part of that whole cultural moment that led to Donald Trump when you think about it, but at least they forced the rest of the show to pick up the pace. Now? The constant rhythm of news story / cheap shot / next story / cheap shot / another story / Pickering just makes a slobbering sound / news story results in a show that feels like it could be going for an actual week.
It’s not that The Weekly feels inessential; that’s been baked in since week one. It’s that now it feels cheap. The original format – well, the one they settled on after the early stretch where Pickering did location reports and so on – was uninspiring but solid: monologue, first cast segment, sketch, news segment, interview, second cast segment, we’re done. It felt like a television show.
Now The Weekly feels like it might as well just be a cross to ABC News 24 only the snarky office dickhead’s hosting while the professionals are taking a smoko. It’s just a news recap; the big news stories have already been chosen by the actual news, so there’s no real editorial decisions being made about what to cover. They do their best to be funny about those stories, but if they don’t have any decent jokes the stories get covered anyway.
Whatever the previous format’s flaws and Jesus Christ there were a lot of them, The Weekly – judged on its own terms – had a reason to exist. Now? Get Pickering to host the regular news and that’s 90% of the show sorted. Ha ha, Pickering rolled his eyes after the opposition leader said the nine words he’s allocated for “balance”; satire isn’t dead after all.
Vale Fisk
Fisk, the best Australian sitcom for years, has been and gone. We will miss its deft plotting, consistent laughs, background humour (the ‘Gruber Ass.’ caps!) and perfect costumes (the brown suit!). And while in many ways Fisk was a traditional, going-for-laughs, half-hour sitcom, it still feels like writer, director and star Kitty Flanagan has brought something unique to the table.
It’s certainly not easy to think of another recent Australian sitcom which has been this good at getting laughs from the dynamics between characters. Every character in Fisk, from those with just one line, to those who were in almost every scene, was instantly funny and recognisable. From the noise-sensitive café workers who banned Helen (Flanagan) in the first episode, to Helen’s boss Ray (Marty Sheargold), a man whose off-handed blokey-ness captures the essence of 95% of white Australian men over 50, they were all perfect.
But where Fisk really struck gold was in characters who were pushy, po-faced and overbearing, like Helen’s omnipresent line manager Roz (Julia Zemiro) and Helen’s exacting stepfather Victor (Glenn Butcher). Both had a lot to say about how Helen could be a better human being, but neither seemed aware of their own ridiculousness, which was often hilariously shown-up by Helen when she tried to follow their advice. Helen’s re-working of her brown suit with a Bedazzler, an over-literal interpretation of Roz’s suggestion that she be a bit more polished, was a prime example.
Episode six ended with a moment of high drama, as Helen’s Dad Anthony (John Gaden) collapsed, and with a moment of triumph, as Helen’s attention-to-detail secured her a local business award. We also discovered that Helen had retained her job at Gruber & Associates, leaving the way open for a second series.
Naturally, we hope Fisk will return, but with no announcement from the ABC so far, we cannot be certain. That said, the show was generally well-liked by critics, industry and fans, and seems to have developed a strong following.
According to TV Tonight’s ratings, Fisk rated higher than its lead-in, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, for four weeks of its six-week run. Even better, the timeshifted ratings show Fisk beat The Weekly… five weeks out of six.
And while beating a show which regularly pads itself out with clips of right-wing commentators drinking whiskey is something any competent program should be able to do, the risk-adverse ABC seem to need a fair amount of convincing these days that we want sitcoms that are funny and not half-arsed dramas. Let’s hope better ratings than The Weekly… is enough to do that for Fisk.
Spicks and Specks – the 12″ Mega Mix
Spicks and Specks is back! Again. And it’s like it never went away. Again. There was nothing particularly broke about the format when it was first retired – the original cast needed a break, the new cast were unloved – and there’s already been a couple of revivals with the old (now current) crew, so it’s no surprise it’s returned pretty much unchanged aside from the social distancing between panelists. Here’s hoping the audience aren’t social distancing from the show! Ha.
Like an old boot, it was pretty comfy to slip back into even if it is starting to smell a bit. Spicks and Specks‘ big strength has always been the subject matter: people generally know enough about music to have a chance of getting the questions right and be interested in the answers when they get them wrong. It’s more a sign of shallowness of the talent pool here (plus ABC management bungling) than anything else that the “all new” reboot tanked; with a format this strong, any even slightly competent hand-over to a new team should have been a no-brainer.
So with it all being business as usual for Australia’s favourite musical quiz, and presumably will continue to be for the next nine episodes to come, the question is: what’s the point? Obviously ratings, but by bringing everyone back to do the exact same thing one more time the series has been firmly shunted into the “nostalgia” section. The songs may be different – listen, isn’t that Billie Eilish? – but the tune remains the same.
It’s generally (if quietly) acknowledged these days that broadcast television is dying and nostalgia is one of the few things that can lure an audience back. If that’s the case – and that when the current audience dies out they’ll take television as we once knew it with them – then this kind of thing makes perfect sense. Why bother trying to make new television when there’s nobody new around to watch it?
But there’s another scenario. It’s perfectly possible that broadcast television will go the way of literally every other mass medium out there and find a lower, but still viable, level to operate on. Much like cinema used to be all things to everyone but is now aimed entirely at teenage boys and the over-55s, and novels used to cover all facets of the human experience but are now just romance and crime, and radio is… whatever it is now, broadcast television might go from being the one thing that united our society to, uh, the home of sports and live variety? Who knows.
The thing is, if that second scenario is the case, then the ABC really should – once again – be thinking about succession plans. Nostalgia will only go so far if they still have to run a TV network in a few years, and Spicks and Specks – solid format, strong nostalgia hook but a format that by its very (musical) nature has to move with the times – is exactly the kind of show they should be looking to upgrade.
No offense to the team captains, but the show needs at least one person in those chairs who seems like they grew up listening to music this century and if you’re looking for a comedian-slash-actor-slash-music buff they most definitely aren’t short on the ground.
Of course, the ABC could even come up with some new formats, hire some new talent, take a few risks with panel shows as they’re about as cheap as television gets and just generally give off the vibe that they wouldn’t mind pulling in a few new viewers every now and again. But that might involve comedy, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?
After all, if ABC viewers really wanted to laugh they wouldn’t be watching Spicks and Specks.