This week on Reputation Rehab: “Reputations exist in the minds of real people”. Could have fooled us. Here’s something else that exists in the minds of real people: what exactly is this show about?
We didn’t review Reputation Rehab after last week’s episode because being built around a big “celebrity” interview left us feeling it might not be a good representation of what the show was actually going to be about. So we waited until this week, which was about how being on reality television can be bad for your reputation: that’s right, it’s 2020 and the ABC is running a show explaining how reality TV works.
It wasn’t a bad guide to reality television by any means, but the news that reality television destroys reputations hasn’t been news for a long time now. Then again, the news that Nazis are bad hasn’t exactly been news for a long time either and that doesn’t seem to have sunk in. Advantage, ABC.
So for a show that lifted the lid on something that hasn’t had a lid since the second season of Big Brother, how was it? Perfectly watchable, actually, which isn’t something we’ve been able to say with a straight face about The Weekly for years. The ABC (by which we mean their stable of producers) have a very good idea how to do these takedowns of the media, mostly because they are the media. Chalk up another point to the ABC there.
Unfortunately, they also know how to do these takedowns in such a way that nothing is actually taken down – see also: every episode of Gruen. Even though this was a show where a reality show contestant played an actual death threat she received via voicemail, the end verdict on reality TV seemed to be “wow, you can do almost anything with editing, huh?” When you get a reality show contestant to provide a DVD commentary on her big moment on reality TV, you’re not rehabilitating anyone’s reputation – you’re just hitching a ride on reality TV’s popularity.
The frustrating thing about this kind of show for us* is that it comes right up to the line as far as comedy is concerned and then pulls up sharply like it just smelt something awful. Reputation Rehab had a bunch of promising information and insights into how reality television is made, but it did nothing with them. There was no wider point to any of it, no sense that the hosts or producers had any real opinion on reality television beyond “it’s part of life”. And without a point of view, you can’t make comedy.
Not that the ABC wants to make comedy: reality television (and last week, sport) has too many fans to risk pissing any of them off by making a joke about what they love. It’s a gutless quest for popularity that’s increasingly common, where if something’s popular it’s too risky to make fun of and if it’s not popular then nobody’s going to get the joke.
Thank fuck for politics, and even then we’re probably only months away from someone in ABC management deciding that laughing at the Coalition is simply too risky in the current climate. Repeats of Rosehaven all round!
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*Others disagree: the real point here is that wishy-washy programming that’s neither solid comedy nor in-depth informative ends up satisfying no-one
Chaser Digital is proud to announce an all new sketch comedy series to premiere on The Chaser’s digital platforms this December in conjunction with Australia’s other satirical juggernaut The Shovel (yes it’s a satirical cartel, yes the ACCC have been notified).
Dubbed The War on 2020, it features an all-stars line up of the best satirical comedians in the country, directed by Jenna Owen and Victoria Zerbst (SBS The Feed), and written and performed by Mark Humphries (ABC 7:30), Nina Oyama (Utopia), Sami Shah (ABC Radio), Steph Tisdell (Deadly Funny), Nat Damena (SBS The Feed) and James Schloeffel (The Shovel). The series will also utilise the writing talents of Evan Williams and Rebecca Shaw.
It will be produced by Charles Firth (The Chaser) and DOPed by Chloe Angelo (At Home Alone Together).
Executive Producer Charles Firth said, “Everyone knows 2020 was the worst year ever, and so what better way to send it off than with a withering takedown by Australia’s top scientists and medical professionals. Unfortunately, none of them were available, so instead we’ve hired a whole lot of satirists to dress up as scientists and doctors, which is good because they’re much cheaper.”
War on 2020 is a series of 13 sketches about the year that will be distributed online. Firth said, “The demand for content that pours shit on 2020 is so immense that I’m pretty sure the NBN will collapse the moment we release the first video. We got Josh Frydenberg to help us work out our download numbers and he reckons 60 billion Australians will watch each video.”
War on 2020 started life as a live stage show, which Jenna, Vic, Mark, James and Charles have been touring nationally since 2017. “This year, we moved it online because of the coronavirus,” said Charles Firth. “And in the process, we expanded the writer/performers even though it’s been a really boring year and nothing much has happened.”
The Shovel’s James Schloeffel said there were two big stories for 2020: “In 2020 we lived through two of the most traumatic events in living memory: the shocking bushfires in Australia and the release of Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina-scented candle. Thank God the year is almost over”.
“The low point of the year was the launch of COVIDSafe – definitely the least effective dating app of 2020,” said co-director Victoria Zerbst
“War on 2020 will be a great way for people to relive the year they’d rather forget,” said co-director Jenna Owen.
“It’s a great way to remember all the things about 2020 that you’d only just managed to repress,” said Mark Humphries.
War on 2020 has received principal production funding from Screen Australia and will be released online through social media and on the Chaser and Shovel sites throughout December. There will also be two ticketed live Zoom performances of the show on 11th & 12th December.
We were wondering when someone would get around to reviving the kind of newspaper editorial cartoon-style political satire the ABC specialised in until they decided to give up on the “undergraduate” audience. Wonder no more!
The decision by Seven – well, 7Mate to be exact – to show Housos vs Virus and Regular Old Bogan back to back has provided us with an exciting opportunity to examine how storytelling works in the Australian sitcom. Because they sure as shit didn’t give us anything to examine as far as comedy goes.
Both of these series have been on the shelf for a while, largely thanks to Seven suddenly having more footy to screen in 2020 than they knew what to do with. The delay hurts Housos a little, as it’s possible it might have originally aired at a time when jokes about toilet paper shortages were still funny. Even for a Paul Fenech production it feels shoddy and rushed – which again, might not have been a drawback if it had aired in April when the extended slow-motion shot of a woman flashing her chest might have served to raise national spirits or something.
Bogan, on the other hand, suffers from an extremely basic animation style that’s not so much ugly as just half-arsed. Knowing absolutely nothing about animation, there’s presumably a good reason why they didn’t put in a bit of effort / money to come up with some decent character designs, especially as they don’t move much so having to come up with a wide range of easily drawn poses and expressions is not an issue. There was not a single joke in the first episode that the animation made funnier, which feels like a major drawback for an animated show.
That said, being animated means Bogan can do things unimaginable by Australian sitcom standards – you know, like car chases and using multiple locations. We’re not talking Rick & Morty here: this is an animated sitcom where things largely stay within the boundaries of live-action comedy but with a severed dick or two thrown in (and about). On that level, it works.
There’s an well structured A and B plot, the episode’s events are over the top but flow relatively logically, and the whole thing wraps up with a callback that makes sense and provides a decent character moment. It’s the kind of show that you can imagine an impressed teen telling his mates about and having those mates say “yeah, that sounds pretty good”.
Unfortunately, for a sitcom to really work, it needs jokes. Bogan occasionally gestures in the vague direction of them – the pre-teen daughter wants her clit pierced! the dad is a fuckwit! check out this severed dick! – but that’s about it. Saying “Spoof Creek” over and over again doesn’t make it funny; having the dad refer to his son by name at least once every sentence is just plain bad writing.
But while Bogan has the structure in place but nothing to fill it – it’s really just a wacky drama – Housos doesn’t even have that. After establishing the new status quo – after the previous Housos series half the regulars are in prison or old folks homes, and the remainder plus a few new “next generation” characters are all in coronavirus lockdown in a single house – everyone yells about how they don’t have enough toilet paper, booze, food and sex toys, so Frankie (Fenech) repeatedly sneaks out to steal them, flash his arse, and hit people with his thong. That’s it.
Fenech’s recent Fat Pizza reboot worked because Fat Pizza is a halfway decent idea for a show. Housos has never been anything but a bunch of screechy-voiced characters yelling over the top of each other (fan favourite phrase “fucked in the face” is back, everyone!), which doesn’t exactly make it the ideal comedy for people stressed out about the local impacts of a global pandemic. Even for Fenech, Housos vs Virus is a new low; here’s hoping the virus wins.
Cameras roll in Melbourne on Kitty Flanagan comedy series Fisk
The ABC and Screen Australia are delighted to announce filming has commenced in Melbourne on the new six-part comedy series Fisk (previous working title, Entitled) by one of Australia’s most popular comedians, Kitty Flanagan.
Produced by Vincent Sheehan (Operation Buffalo, The Kettering Incident) written and co-directed by Kitty Flanagan, Fisk also stars television favourite Julia Zemiro (Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery, RocKwiz) and celebrated comedians Marty Sheargold, Aaron Chen and Glenn Butcher as well as award winning actor John Gaden.
Starring Flanagan as Helen Tudor-Fisk, a contract lawyer who is forced to take a job at a shabby suburban law firm specialising in wills and probate, Fisk is a fast-paced workplace sitcom that taps into the everyday world of inheritances and squabbling relatives.
Kitty Flanagan says “This is the dream. My own show with all my favourite people both in front of the camera and behind it too. I’m thrilled to be making this in Melbourne for the ABC. We have such amazing, creative people in Australia, the more local content we can turn out, the better.”
Todd Abbott, ABC Head of Comedy says “Kitty Flanagan is, quite simply, one of the funniest humans alive, and a show created by and starring her is long overdue. Every page of these scripts is laugh-out-loud funny, and the cast and crew that she’s pulled together guarantee this series is going to be a ripper. What a treat for all of us.”
Fisk will air on ABC TV and iview in 2021.
Now this is more like it: finally a forthcoming series from the ABC aimed at people who like to laugh, only not laugh at tired parodies of smug millennials or at shows that clearly really want to be dramas but the ABC doesn’t have the budget to make them any more unless they’re high stakes thrillers set in the outback.
Seriously, even the press release doesn’t have any obvious clangers we can make fun of! 2021 is looking better already.
Not a press release because we didn’t get one but close enough!
It takes a lot for a talking dishwashing machine to exist as the least absurd element of a sketch comedy series. But if any comedy group can manage that feat, it’s Australian trio Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly, and Zachary Ruane, better known within the comedy circuit as Aunty Donna. Since forming in 2011, the group has built a following that began in the comedy festival circuit and parlayed their popularity into an album, a podcast, and multiple web series. Now, they’re packing everything they own and moving into a Big Ol’ House Of Fun. Fortunately for them, Netflix is footing the bill.
Aunty Donna will star in a new sketch comedy show for the streaming giant. In the six-part series Mark, Broden, and Zachary are roommates who are perfectly willing to share their living space with the viewing audience, for better or worse. According to Netflix’s official synopsis, Aunty Donna will “take viewers along for an absurdist adventure through their everyday lives. Come on inside if you’re prepared to handle satire, parody, clever wordplay, breakout musical numbers, and much more.” In this case, “much more” can include just about anything from a hunt for buried treasure to “Weird Al” Yankovic.
On the one hand, hurrah! We’ve been fans of Aunty Donna for years, and the trio getting their own series is long overdue. This’ll be one of the Australian comedy highlights of the year, sign up to Netflix if you haven’t already, finally a reason to go on with our lives, and so on.
On the other hand, Netflix? What exactly does it say about the state of Australian comedy that Aunty Donna – easily the most consistently impressive Australian comedy team of the last few years and probably even before that – has to go overseas to get a show? Not that they shouldn’t strut the world stage, or that they’re not clearly world-class, but Australian networks should have been queuing up to throw cash / timeslots at them long before it ever came to this.
Faux shock aside, we know exactly – well, we can at least make a good guess – why and how it’s come to this. For one thing, Aunty Donna are funny, which rules out a surprisingly large amount of Australian comedy options. For another, they’re not ABC funny, which is to say they’re kind of weird but the ABC hasn’t been in that market since Sam Simmons. Throw in the fact that nobody has any money for local comedy and the funniest people currently working on TV all have careers that date back to the previous century and…
Hey, let’s focus on the upside here: a new Aunty Donna TV series! It’s about damn time.
Somewhat delayed because we seriously did a double take at this one press release time!
Sensational new ABC series
Reputation Rehab to air next month
Premieres Wednesday 28 October 9.05pm
on ABC and iview.
We’re officially living in an outrage culture. It seems that barely a week goes by without someone getting publicly crucified in a torrent of angry tweets and media headlines, for real or imagined mistakes. Launching on October 28th at 9.05pm, ABC’s new series, Reputation Rehab will tackle public shaming head-on and break through the outrage cycle with comedy and empathy.
Hosted by The Checkout’s Kirsten Drysdale and Zoe Norton Lodge, Reputation Rehab will find tarnished reputations and lovingly bring back their shine. Each week, the episode will begin with a deep-dive into an outrage story, or a person who has endured a public shaming.
The first episode will focus on the “Bad Boy” of tennis: Nick Kyrgios, with Nick agreeing to a rare in-depth interview with Zoe and Kirsten for the show. Other episodes will delve deep into the stories of Reality TV “villain” Abbie Chatfield, headline grabber Todd Carney, tabloid target Osher Günsberg as well as Covid shaming, Boomer trashing and the reputational crisis facing anyone named Karen.
Kirsten and Zoe will consult a group of real people to find out how closely the heightened coverage aligns with their views. Through interviews, media analysis and stunts, Kirsten and Zoe will seek to rehabilitate the guest’s damaged reputation and provide a unique opportunity for transformation.
Reputation Rehab is a show that believes people don’t deserve to be consigned to the cultural scrapheap, most people are more than a punchline, and everyone deserves a second chance.
Where to begin with this? It’s nice that a couple of the hosts from The Checkout have new TV work, but didn’t anyone stop to think that it might be a bad look to directly link the axed Checkout – you know, a show that sided with the little people against the rich and famous – with a show that seems to be based around the idea that the rich and famous need protecting from the little people?
Oh wait, they’re going to consult with “real people”. Crisis averted.
Sure, there have been a number of Australians in recent years who have been publicly shamed on social media. You’ll notice none of the ones you’re thinking of rate a mention here, because many of them brought defamation cases against the media outlets that reported on the public shaming and, thanks to Australia’s extremely tough libel laws, they won.
That should make them the perfect material for this show, as their situation – shamed on social media, only to have their side of things vindicated by the courts – is exactly the kind of thing this show seems to be about, And yet, we’re not going to hold our breath waiting for anyone like Geoffrey Rush to be rescued from the “cultural scrapheap”. Guess they doesn’t deserve a “second chance”?
The reason why Australia never had a decent #metoo movement is because Australian libel law protects against comments designed to harm someone’s reputation. This isn’t America: public shaming isn’t protected by law. If you’ve heard of someone who is being “publicly shamed” on social media, there’s a very good chance they’re famous enough to have a reputation they can go to court to protect. So what’s left for this show to cover? People you’ve never heard of who had their lives trashed but are willing to go on television to have the trashing re-enacted?
The other big problem with the basic premise of this show – and it’s a doozy – is the idea that being publicly shamed by “outrage culture” is something that only happens to people who haven’t done anything. They’re just minding their own business on social media when suddenly out of nowhere a frenzied mob attacks them, destroying their good name and livelihood. This, you’ll know if you’ve spent any time at all on social media over the last few years, is rarely the case.
Even twitter mobs are jaded and cynical now: they require actual demonstrated shitty behaviour (AKA “receipts”) to get stirred up these days. And while the popular media’s image of public shaming is lefties getting riled up over pronouns*, it’s more likely to be right wing hate mobs targeting women and minorities, which is less about someone’s reputation being damaged and more about them being in legitimate fear for their life.
Which raises the question: who’s really stirring up that level of shit? You don’t have to be a big Media Watch fan to know that the real threat to someone’s reputation in Australia isn’t from twitter, it’s from the Murdoch press putting you in their sights. Strangely, from this press release Reputation Rehab doesn’t look like it’s going after Andrew Bolt and company for their relentless pursuit of just about anyone with a public profile and vaguely left-wing views.
(here’s a thought: maybe this won’t be about social media at all? After all, when you’re a “tabloid target” by definition you’re being written about in the tabloids. The “bad boy” of tennis got his reputation because of things he did that were reported on by the mainstream news, not conjured up out of nowhere by a twitter mob.)
We haven’t seen any of this show; for all we know it could be brilliant. But everything that’s been said about it so far makes it look like the “public shaming” angle is just an excuse for yet another snarky series about the media a la Gruen. God knows it’s about time the ABC stood up for Boomers and white women named Karen; fingers crossed this isn’t just six weeks of high profile types complaining that social media is being mean to them.
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*for example, US actor Chris Pratt is currently being dragged on twitter for being a public member of a notoriously anti-LGBTQIA+ church. There’s definitely a story here (“why is this happening to him?”), but his “reputation” doesn’t need “rehab” – he’s simply done something that some people are opposed to and they’re expressing their displeasure. Oh wait, we mean it’s “outrage culture” “publicly crucifying” him.
The annual Wharf Revue is one of many live events which has had to move online in 2020. Now in its 20th year, The Wharf Revue is a Sydney institution in which Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott satirise local and international politicians. Originally planned as the final ever Wharf Revue, and titled ‘Good Night and Good Luck’, the online version aired on Sunday night on the Sydney Opera House’s YouTube channel as ‘A Zoom with a View’.
Puns and references to ageing popular culture, in case you haven’t guessed, are a key part of The Wharf Revue. And so, who better to start the show than a politician who ceased to be relevant years ago, former Prime Minister Paul Keating (Biggins), before moving onto a song performed by another former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (Scott), based on a song composed in 1935?
And yet despite the opening of The Wharf Revue feeling like something from another era (or more accurately, several other eras), this was one of the best parts of the show. Not so much Kevin Rudd singing ‘Please Leave the Super in the Fund, Mr Morrison’ (to the tune of ‘Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington’ by Noel Coward) – we can take or leave that one – more the Keating opener. Biggins as Keating is quite something; he gets the voice right, he gets the gait right, and the speech he gives (largely about Rupert Murdoch) is pretty funny as well. If you watch nothing else of The Wharf Revue, let it be this bit.
Another decent sketch, and oddly the other only other one about a local politician, is Drew Forsythe’s turn as Pauline Hanson. Again, he gets the voice right and the gait right, right down to the way Hanson’s head shakes and her voice quivers, as she inadvertently delivers a series of embarrassing malapropisms (i.e. “dead as a dildo”). But as a sketch, it’s not quite up there with Keating.
And then, with Hanson and Australia out of the way, the show shifts to overseas, with Biggins as Donald Trump hosting a sort of cabaret variety show live from the “Hydroxychloroquine Wing” of the White House. Trump’s opener? A version of ‘New York, New York’ beginning “Start spreading fake news…”, with Steve Bannon on the piano (Scott).
Joining Trump in this show within a show are Mandy Bishop as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Phillip Scott as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Bishop (again) as Melania Trump and Drew Forsythe as Russian President Vladimir Putin. This feels like a more run-of-the-mill section of the show, where each politician gets a number based on a song from a classic Broadway musical and there’s not much original to be said about each character.
Merkel is serious and German, Boris is a shambolic but literate-sounding buffoon, Melania is depressed and unenthusiastic, and Putin is the one who’s really in charge of things. It’s solid enough but it also feels like satire we’ve seen before, and the high spots (if you can call them that) are Trump and Putin’s ‘A Fine Romance’ duet, and the finale, based on Irving Berlin’s ‘Let’s Face The Music and Dance’, in which Trump and Putin tell us: ‘We play the music, you dance’.
Overall, ‘A Zoom with a View’ feels like a show which had almost enough decent ideas to make a very good show but failed slightly because it hadn’t really managed to develop most of those ideas. It also feels very strange that no currently serving Australian politicians were satirised in the show. There are, no doubt, lots of COVID-related reasons for this, but it’s still disappointing that one of Australia’s best-known satirical troupes didn’t end their career putting on the best and most topical show that they possibly could have.
“Necessary advertising”. Even Wil Anderson says it’s an oxymoron. And yet here were are in 2020 and Gruen is leading with a story about just how important ads – or as they used to be called but if they used the correct term then there’d be a distinction between important information and the blatant lies the panel makes obscene amounts from pushing onto the public they despise, PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS – are in the age of coronavirus. Oh for fucks sake.
But hey, it’s always fun to check in with the Gruen team and make sure that Todd Sampson didn’t die filming Body Hack, right? Sure. he’s saying “there’s a lot to like about that ad” in reference to a gambling ad so he’s clearly dead inside, but you can always just stare at his hair and wonder exactly how much boot polish it took to get that universal shade of brown. Come on, wasn’t he grey on his most recent series of “oh no the rioting mob is about to kill me” on Ten?
Yep.
In theory, a conversation about the most effective way to communicate important health information to people during a pandemic should be both interesting and important. And that’s what we got on Gruen: unfortunately the interesting parts were when the panelists talked about how they’d “lost their humanity” when dealing with real people in ads, because once again pretty much the entire episode was just the panel talking about how vital and essential and crucial and worthwhile advertising is.
It’s not that the panel talking about how “great advertising minds” were vital in the fight against the disease wasn’t a useful insight into advertising. It’s just that it was mostly a useful insight into how self-absorbed and blinkered the people who run advertising are. After all, if the last few years have made anything even remotely clear. it’s that advertising – and social media companies are basically advertising companies, as their business is to get your attention then sell it to advertisers – intentionally does more harm than good.
That means that every episode of Gruen that isn’t the panel apologising for everything from Trump to QAnon to our current federal government (led by the “brains” behind one of Australia’s least successful tourism campaigns) constantly announcing the same initiatives over and over without ever actually delivering on any of them is an episode that’s dodging the truth. Oh wait, that’s what advertising is all about, right? Forget we said anything.
On the up side, the lack of a studio audience meant the editors couldn’t constantly cut away to their braying laughter, which meant the episode actually had a bit of flow to it rather than just feeling like an edited highlights package. The lack of laughter also reflected just how clunky almost all of Wil Anderson’s gags are. He only got laughs a few times, but at least those laughs actually felt deserved.
Told you
But as been the case for the last five years or so, Gruen is a show without a point. Television advertising, like free-to-air television itself, is in decline; the conversation about how to best communicate with consumers is moving online and moving away from short films that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. If Gruen was an accurate reflection of the way advertising actually impacts the audience in 2020, they’d be talking about online in a serious way, not running a “what is Tik Tok” segment at the arse end of the show – a segment largely focused on Tik Tok’s television commercials.
The angle Gruen was built on was that it was going to provide an entertaining look behind the advertising curtain. The “entertaining” part is up for debate: some people still find smug millionaires fun to watch. But when you’re talking for ten minutes about the way large companies are trying to monetise clips on Tik Tok, you’ve revealed there is no curtain.
Social media encourages people to upload massive amounts of content to advertise their personal brand: when something on social media becomes popular larger companies latch onto it to promote themselves. In this environment, the real advertising expert on Gruen is Wil Anderson: he’s the one with the skills to create content that could go viral.
Having Todd Sampson go on about how his children never watch television should have been the point where he – and everyone else – got up from the desk and walked away. Gruen has become the panel show version of federal politicians getting arts degrees for free then passing laws making those degrees insanely expensive for everyone else: the cushy, well-paid career path that brought them here has vanished, and their life experience and expertise are increasingly beside the point in the grim nightmare world that is to come.
Then again, that grim nightmare world clearly isn’t going to feature Gruen so it’s not all bad news.
Earlier this year we wrote a little about how Mad as Hell, as basically the last ABC comedy program still in existence, was having a bit of fun using all the old laff-getting tricks that other shows used to mess around with. Back then we were generally approving: little did we realise they were about to make use of the “trick” we’ve enjoyed the least in all our years of watching satirical comedy – getting actual politicians to appear.
In theory it’s certainly not the worst thing ever – that would be… oh, let’s say Peter Helliar this week. But as anyone who remembers those long, long years when “the Chaser boys” ruled ABC satire, having politicians on is often a short cut to a dull, stilted scene where the only joke is the idea that the politicians themselves thought this appearance would make them more relatable.
At least the surprise appearance of Mathias Cormann on this year’s final episode involved a politician who’s heading out the door, so there wasn’t the whiff of someone’s PR department trying to get them on a popular show to prove they’re “just like us” (especially as part of the joke is that he somewhat resembles a killer robot from the future). And it was a nice send off for one of Mad as Hell’s longest-running and most consistently entertaining characters – though it’s not hard to imagine them finding a way to bring him back if they really, really wanted to.
Otherwise, Mad as Hell continues to be the best comedy program on the ABC by a margin that’d be even more impressive if it wasn’t the only comedy program on the ABC. It’s an unalloyed pleasure to be able to watch a comedy that’s so sure-footed, so nimble and completely in control of what it’s trying to say. There may be the occasional bum note or wobbly joke, but that’s almost always down to a matter of personal taste: this is the rare (recent) Australian comedy where all those involved both know what they’re doing and have the ability to actually do it in a fashion that’s both clear and funny.
There was a long stretch there where each season finale of Mad as Hell was filled with trepidation: would it be coming back? Erratic scheduling, a strong sense that The Weekly was being pushed as a replacement and the self-evident fact that Shaun Micallef has other employment options combined to make Mad as Hell‘s ongoing survival seem a bit iffier than it should have been. Thankfully it seems those days are past: everybody knows they’re onto a winner here. Long may what has clearly become an ABC institution reign.
The ABC has appointed innovative creative and content maker Nick Hayden as Head of Entertainment, driving its popular slate of programs such as Gruen, Hard Quiz, Mad As Hell, The Weekly, You Can’t Ask That and the upcoming Reputation Rehab.
Since joining the ABC in 2016, Nick has created the COVID-19 friendly comedy At Home Alone Together, Whovians, Tonightly and the Australia Talks live show, which revealed the attitudes, behaviours and experiences of the nation. He also developed and produced the Spicks and Specks Reunion Specials, The House with Annabel Crabb and Why Are You Like This – part of the ABC’s Fresh Blood initiative to support emerging comedic talent. He has been ABC Entertainment Manager since 2019.
Sally Riley, ABC Head of Drama, Entertainment & Indigenous content, welcomed Nick’s appointment. “Nick has shown great instinct and drive for developing and producing entertainment shows. He has passion and enthusiasm for new ideas and talent, along with a genuine interest in fostering and protecting the ABC’s current slate of shows,” she said. “I look forward to collaborating with him on our award-winning Entertainment slate and strategy in the years to come.”
Nick said: “The ABC has always been the home of creative risk taking – where else would you be allowed to make a new show in six weeks in the middle of a pandemic? The screen industry needs that kind of support now more than ever, so it’s a genuine honour to take on the role of Head of Entertainment within an organisation I love.”
The ABC’s award-winning Entertainment slate also includes Tomorrow Tonight, Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery, Sammy J, The Yearly, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the ABC’s New Year’s Eve Fireworks show, Dream Gardens, live music show The Set and documentary Recovery: The Music & The Mayhem.
The ever-genial Nick previously created and was founding executive producer of The Feed for SBS and a member of Hungry Beast, under Andrew Denton and Anita Jacoby. He’s also spent a large amount of time in the advertising world but doesn’t tell his ABC colleagues this. Nick has no problem boasting about himself in the third person.
So yeah, while the ABC has an actual Head of Comedy, it’s the Head of Entertainment – this guy – who oversees much of what we currently think of as “ABC comedy”. Well, maybe not The House with Annabel Crabb.
As usual, what’s important here isn’t the press release guff about the ABC being “the home of creative risk-taking” – a line which may very well be the ABC’s greatest contribution to comedy this year – but what Hayden did before scoring the top job. A former advertising guy is now the boss at Gruen? It’s possible he could use his inside knowledge to encourage them to go after the industry’s weak spots… but probably not.
Otherwise what his resume – or the parts available on IMDB – suggests is an ABC company man who’s slowly worked his way up the ranks helping produce a fair amount of largely forgettable programming to get where he is today. Which makes sense, as Entertainment seems much more an area where the ABC looks to develop concepts in house or to exploit already established personalities rather than searches for new ideas from outside. Put another way, when the second item listed on a press release praising your achievements is a television show where people sit around talking about another television show, your “enthusiasm for new ideas” may not have been what got you over the line.
That said, it’s probably good timing that the ABC now has someone officially in the seat in charge of the upcoming Reputation Rehab, because we’ve got the press release for that one lying around here somewhere and… whew. Maybe that one snuck through while nobody was paying attention – but that’s for another post.
The moral of the story is, the producer of Whovians is now technically in charge of Mad as Hell. The system works!
