Australian Tumbleweeds
Saturday Night Rove Fever
Is the best thing about Saturday Night Rove Judith Lucy’s sarcastic voiceovers over the crap bits of the show? Yes, of course, it is. Because nothing saves live comedy that’s dying on its arse like an experienced and much-loved legend of comedy letting rip with a bit of deprecating humour. Thank god she’s there, otherwise, this show would be a much harder watch.
And this is bearing in mind that last night’s episode was an improvement on week 1. It was pacier and tighter, they’d had the good sense to book a stand-up for do a few minutes – and to give Justin Hamilton something to do – and the pre-recorded stuff was a lot funnier as well. Ben Folds delivering bad news to people was a funny and clever twist on his inimitable style of music. More of that kind of thing, please.
The basic problem with Saturday Night Rove, though, is that the team hasn’t yet managed to produce quite enough good stuff to make this a decent commercial hour of comedy television. They may well get there, but not so far.
Which means they have to fill showtime by booking a widely-disliked former Prime Minister to play a few rounds of handball. Because that’ll be hilarious, right? Only if Judith Lucy steps in with a sarky voiceover it will.
And what is the deal with comedy shows thinking it will be hilarious to have actual politicians on their shows? Does no one remember how much funnier it was when Paul Keating refused to go bowling with Andrew Denton in the 90s?
Instead, Kevin Rudd puts out a tweet challenging all-comers to a game of handball, and TV and radio programs with time to fill jump at the chance. And what results? Rudd looks like a loveable, cuddly guy (which he isn’t) and everyone forgets all that stuff about the spill he lost, and the second spill and quickly-following election which he also lost, and the bullying he’s supposed to have done, and his legacy is assured. Or whatever his endgame in.
Here’s a thing all comedy shows need to remember about politicians: they are unlikeable people who desperately want to be liked, and they will use anyone and do anything to achieve that, and if that involves mildly humiliating themselves on some silly comedy show then they will. So, when a politician goes on a comedy show, the winner isn’t the comedy show for creating an amazing moment involving a politician, it’s the politician. Because these “amazing moments” are always never amazing, or funny, or anything other than a space-filler.
And in a show like Saturday Night Rove, where a fair number of the segments already feel like space-fillers, including yet another one isn’t a good idea.
The Power and the Passion
Australian comedy on the television currently has a somewhat more political focus than usual. Two political comedies on at once! That’s like… 50% of all current output being firmly aimed at our political masters. Wow, it’s like they’re actually relevant to our lives and not a colorful distraction while mining companies stripmine the outback or something.
We speak, of course, of Mad as Hell and Utopia, two shows that currently run back to back but which have somewhat different views of politics as it operates today. We’re not talking about their political leanings as such – it’s not like either ends with a stirring rendition of The Internationale more’s the pity, though with Mad as Hell you never know. It’s more that… well, let’s do this properly.
Obviously both shows take the view that politicians are fairly evil – if you want a show that blatantly sucks up to our leaders, you’ll have to wait until The Chaser get another ABC series. Both show politicians (and by extension, their handlers) as being largely interested in their own interests, which usually involve how they’re perceived by the public, weird personal issues and possibly some kind of financial reward. Nothing controversial there.
And there continues to be nothing controversial two weeks in on Utopia, a show that flatters its audience by pretending to give them the inside scoop on how things really work while largely being the same kind of office hijinks producers Working Dog have been doing (to everyone’s amusement, admittedly) since Frontline.
But when it does get down to the business of how the country’s being run, it’s almost always as a business. The names of the developments change but the game remains the same – politicians and their handlers want to announce big ticket items, business wants to make a profit, the people handling the spin are only interested in the optics of the situation and in the end nothing ever changes. The comedy comes from the futility of it all; the people trying to do good are the only ones who ever come away unhappy.
You’d have to live in a very secure bubble indeed to think politics in 2019 is all about branding. Utopia feels like the last gasp of 20th century politics, where both sides are the same and nothing important is at stake so why not be cynical about the whole thing? Even in Australia the kind of “big ticket items” our governments focus on today are more about religious laws and the right to abortion than the bland nation-building concepts Utopia slots into their standard comedy format. Look at the state of the world today: it’s insulting to the audience to pretend that politics is just a dodgy process with outcomes that are basically irrelevant.
Here’s a fun game to play: every time Utopia makes a joke about a big government project being hijacked for political purposes, imagine they’re talking about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Or anything else that actually has a serious impact on people’s lives. Because once you realise what’s at stake, Utopia‘s vaguely right-wing view that the best thing the government can do is get out of people’s way starts to look like a big “fuck you” to the people government is meant to help. Sure, Utopia doesn’t let government off the hook – but considering what’s at stake for all of us, they could definitely afford to go a bit harder.
Also, as Mad as Hell proves each week, having an actual concrete point of view makes your comedy funnier. Obviously Mad as Hell has some big advantages here; they’re directly parodying the ongoing nightmare that is current events, for one. And at a guess, Utopia started production with the expectation of a Labor federal government with policies that actually gave a shit about people; it’s a lot easier to sink the boot into politicians when they’re of the quality of someone like Peter Dutton.
What Mad as Hell does best is right there in the name. It’s a show that makes jokes that leave you in no doubt that some things get at least some of the people involved in the production angry. Which is as it should be: Australia isn’t exactly lead by saints at the moment, and many of the policies advocated by our politicians verge on the outright cruel. Plus also *waves in general direction of the world at large*… shit’s fucked.
You’d never know that from Utopia. It’s a smug dinner party chuckle of a comedy, a “you’ll never believe what happened at work today” story that everyone laughs at even though the punchline is a bunch of people were thrown out on the street. That’s not to say it’s not funny at times, or generally well made; it’s clearly a step above most of the other lightweight dramas trying to pass themselves off as comedies around here.
But it’s out of touch, and for a political comedy that’s fatal.
Saturday Night Rove’s alright for laughing
Last week Rove McManus did a bunch of media for his new show Saturday Night Rove, arguing that there’s potential for something on TV on Saturday nights that isn’t sport. Maybe, but if Saturday Night Rove is going to be that show, it’s going to have to become a whole lot funnier really, really soon or it won’t be with us for long.
And it’s not like they weren’t trying. The cast is a good mix of established talent (McManus, Judith Lucy, Justin Hamilton, Aunty Donna, Andrew Hansen) and rising stars (Alex Lee and Alex Jae), the writer’s room is led by The Chaser’s Chris Taylor and Executive Producer Jo Long used to work on The Weekly…
Hang on, shall we wind back that last bit… the writer’s room is led by The Chaser’s Chris Taylor and Executive Producer Jo Long used to work on The Weekly. Ah. Guess that explains the shithouse pre-recorded sketches and the dull linking material.
Or should we blame Rove for that last one? This is meant to be his show, but he was by far the weakest link in it. Part of the problem: we don’t know who he is or what he’s trying to be. Is he the nice guy, blandly chuckling his way through celebrity interviews and live crosses to confused kids, or is he the slightly edgy guy who notices that hidden in the word “Saturday” painted on the set is the word “turd”.
Another problem: dotted throughout the show are panel segments featuring members of the cast and some of the guests…except nothing much happens in them. We hate to invoke Hey! Hey! It’s Saturday at this point, but at least when it did a panel segment, the segment was solid, had a point and was generally entertaining.
We know it’s early days, but the cast and crew of Saturday Night Rove haven’t defined what their show is, which isn’t a great way to start…and doesn’t bode well for the show’s future.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. Aunty Donna were their usual enjoyable selves, performing in a sketch about a dinner party which rapidly becomes ridiculous. Judith Lucy’s (seemingly) drunken voiceover work was an absolute treat, as always, and Luke McGregor’s appearances in a series of All About Eve-esque sketches was brilliantly done. We also enjoyed Alex Lee’s stand-up/jazz duet with Anthony Callea – entertaining, different and a bit weird.
Even if Saturday Night Rove is a bit of a mish-mash of whatever the team managed to pull together, there’s clearly some potential here. Problem is, without a clear direction of travel, and with the first episode getting a solidly mixed reaction from the public, the remaining five weeks of this series may not be enough time for this show to build up an audience and thus avoid the axe.
The New Utopia
It’s probably fair to say that Working Dog has mined all that it can from the infrastructure comedy seam. We certainly didn’t find the first episode of the new series of Utopia a huge cack.
Partly this was because we had in our minds the actual real problem this country has when it comes to infrastructure planning:
Joining calls from the Reserve Bank governor for the Coalition to prioritise spending on infrastructure, the head of Infrastructure Australia, Romilly Madew, says an audit undertaken by her agency has highlighted the need for significant government investment.
“On the infrastructure priority list there are already 103 initiatives sitting there that have been identified by the states and territories, and that means there is a pipeline of infrastructure that has been identified that could go,” Madew said.
But mainly it’s because this series is coming at it from completely the wrong angle.
Utopia has set itself up as a nice show about likeable people who are just trying to get things done but keep hitting pointless roadblocks. And to be fair, this is an actual problem that’s preventing bodies like Infrastructure Australia from building the infrastructure the country needs. Except that Utopia always seems to go way too soft on those who prevent the likeable characters at the fictional NBA (Nation Building Authority) from getting things done. Instead, we get jokes about how many mugs spruiking cancelled infrastructure projects are in the NBA’s storeroom.
[Yeah, we get it, it’s the comedy of escalation. It starts with some mugs, then you end up with a series of increasingly ridiculous giant props. Ha ha.]
The only part of the show that started to get to the real point was the cameo from Dr Chris Brown, who kept pointing out that the team were getting their facts wrong – and by extension were deceiving the public. It was well done but not nearly hard-hitting enough.
This show would be so much better as a piece of satire if it was more like The Games, really getting to the bottom of who stops initiatives, why public money is wasted or and how the system enables big business to make massive tax-free profits. Instead, any such commentary that Utopia does present comes across as light-touch and lightweight, wielding all the power of a bag of cotton wool. It’s a show that lacks rage.
And this was a perfectly reasonable approach to take when the show was Frontline and the topic was tabloid current affairs. Tabloid current affairs is tacky, awful and presents a warped view of society – to say the least – but at least it doesn’t really matter. It’s entertainment in much the same was as The Bachelor is. But when the topic of the show is our money, our lives and our future, you need to take less of a small-L liberal approach to your satire and more of a big-L Liberal bashing approach to your satire. Or what’s the point?
You Can’t Spell Content Without a Vague Insult
News report that was probably originally a press release time!
Amazon orders first Australian series, ‘LOL: Last One Laughing’
21 August, 2019 by Staff Writer
Endemol Shine Australia is producing the first Australian Amazon Original, LOL: Last One Laughing, which will feature ten local comedians trying to make each other laugh first.
To be hosted and executive produced by Rebel Wilson, the final comedian left standing at the end of the six-part series will win a grand prize of $100,000. The line-up of comedians will be announced in the coming weeks.
“I’m thrilled to be joining the Prime Video family of creators and talent,” said Wilson.
“I’ve already had the chance to work with Alexa – she’s great – and on Audible, so working with Prime Video seemed like an obvious choice. I can’t wait to see what these talented Australian comedians come up with and how far they’ll go to take home the prize.”
The show is based on an Amazon Original format from Japan, Documental, produced by and starring comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto, and there is also a Mexican version, hosted by Eugenio Derbez, also titled LOL: Last One Laughing. The Japanese series in its seventh season and the Mexican sixth.
The local version will premiere on Amazon Prime Video in 2020 in 200 countries. Production will take place in Sydney in spring, and is executive produced by Marty Benson and David McDonald.
“We’re excited to bring LOL: Last One Laughing to our Prime members in Australia and around the world,” said James Farrell, head of international originals for Amazon Studios.
“Customers in Japan and Mexico have told us they love Documental and LOL: Last One Laughing. Australia was an easy choice as the next country to bring this to and Rebel Wilson was at the top of our list to host and star. We think our Prime members are going to love it.”
Endemol Shine Australia CEO Mark Fennessy said: “We’re truly thrilled to be working with Rebel and Amazon on this brilliant comedy series. LOL: Last One Laughing is a one-of-a-kind laughter survival format unlike any other. We look forward to bringing Australia’s unique brand of unpredictable comedy chaos to Amazon customers.”
Our best guess? The last one laughing will be the home viewer.
Also, with “Australia’s unique brand of unpredictable comedy chaos” they found a nice way to say “unfunny”.
Meanwhile, over at the ABC we finally get some Content:
Welcome to Lucy’s phone. Lucy is a recent uni grad who lives in Brisbane with her bff Daisy. Lucy is not content with her boring AF existence. But when a car crash makes her a worldwide meme her life changes course forever.
Turns out:
This is the world’s 1st scripted vertical video comedy set on a phone! We don’t just see what Lucy types and browses, but what she backspaces and deletes – everything she wouldn’t want to world to see.
Which was pretty effective when they did it in the first Unfriended movie so maybe this will be slightly more memorable than its title – good luck finding this show on the first page when you google it.
Not So Much Behind the Desk as Under It: The Worst Australian Panel Shows
If you were a newcomer to Australia’s shores, you might be puzzled about – well, about a lot of things really, but let’s stick with panel shows. Why don’t we have more of them? They’re cheap to make, don’t require a whole lot of effort, and didn’t we kinda sorta invent the prime time version of just having people sitting around talking with The Panel back in the late 90s? That’s the kind of innovation (and ratings success) that should have spawned a healthy local industry; instead, a few sports shows and Have You Been Paying Attention? aside, there’s nothing. What happened?
Previous installments in this series have largely charted predictable courses. Australia used to be good at sketch comedy then we lost our way and the audience lost interest; we never really made enough sitcoms to get good at them; topical comedy still sometimes works if talented people are given a free hand. But panel shows? Australian panel shows?
They’re shit. They’re pretty much always shit.
The real struggle here was to keep the total down to ten (shock twist: we failed) because it took Australian television more than a decade of constant effort to finally realise that all Australian panel shows are, as we just pointed out, shit. The reason why there are no Australian chat-based comedy panel shows on television in 2019 is not from lack of trying, it’s from there being so many massive failures that it eventually sank in to even the most dim-witted television executive that making them was a complete and total waste of everyone’s time.
(and yes, by “panel shows” we also mean any kind of quiz or competition that features comedians. Are the comedians taking home real prizes? No? Then it’s basically a panel show)
Honestly, it’s not hard to figure out why. Like most forms of television comedy, there are two roads to success: either feature a group of extremely funny people preferably already skilled at working together, or come up with a very strong concept that can reliably generate laughs. Both those roads are difficult to follow, but there’s no short cuts – sticking a bunch of near-strangers behind a desk and getting them to talk about whatever comes into their heads just doesn’t work. Here’s a few reasons why:
If Thank God You’re Here seems like an odd show to start a list of bad panel shows off with, you’re not remembering it right. Yes, it was a huge hit, ran for years, helped cement Working Dog as the top producer of comedy in this country and so on. But on a week by week basis? Not good. Not good at all. It was basically the closest anyone’s managed to get comedy to become “event television” in this country: the point was to watch each week in case something amazing happened and something amazing happened just enough (usually when Bob Franklin was involved) to keep people coming back. Like much of Working Dog’s shows at the turn of the century, their genius was in realising that people would watch ramshackle television being put together in front of them by skilled comedians. Doesn’t mean it was good television though.
And if you still think we’re being harsh on TGYH, fun fact: it inspired Monster House. If you’ve ever wondered just how stupid Australian television producers are, here’s a reminder. Monster House was a hidden camera prank show – that’s not the stupid bit – featuring a bunch of actors (including shrinking violet Rebel Wilson) who were already well-known. Let’s think about that for a moment. Which is a moment longer than the producers did. It ran two weeks before being axed.
Of course, prank TV didn’t end there on Australian television – though it clearly should have if the local version of Balls of Steel was any guide. The UK version was the last gasp of lad culture; the Australian version was hosted by Chaser member Craig Reucassel, because he clearly needed the fame that could only come from a show featuring local versions of “the annoying devil” and “bunny boiler” pestering people on various Sydney streets. We’re guessing Nazeem Hussain quietly deleted this from his resume about five minutes after season two aired.
The thing about the Spicks & Specks reboot is that Spicks & Specks had been a hit show that had run its course. So why not wait a few years then bring it back? You know, like all the other successful series that have managed that in Australia like… oh, wait. Everywhere else around the world knows that when a show’s hosts want to leave the trick to keeping the show going is to gradually introduce new hosts, have an on-air hand over, keep things as consistent as possible and do everything you can to keep the fans on board. With Spicks & Specks, the ABC did the opposite; the reboot sank in less than a year.
(not that the ABC will let it die – they’ve just announced the original crew will be back for four specials later this year and in 2020)
Does anyone (besides us) even remember Behind the Lines? It was like Spicks & Specks but with sport. And Eddie McGuire. And it was on Channel Nine.
And does anyone (besides us) even remember The Trophy Room? It was like Behind the Lines but with sport. And Peter Helliar. And it was on the ABC.
And does anyone (besides us) even remember The Bounce? It was a variety show but with AFL football. And Peter Helliar. And it was on Channel Seven (but not for long)
(if you really want to get worked up about the state of Australian television comedy, just look at the career of Peter Helliar. Someone give the man a Gold Logie)
Hey, quick question – did Peter Helliar appear on completely forgettable, vaguely historical, still being repeated last year ABC comedy quiz show Tractor Monkeys?
Oh you know he did – along with just about every other regular face working the panel circuit at the start of this decade. At the time we were convinced that the cast iron anchor dragging every single Australian show down was the lack of panel show talent in this country, and you know what? We were right: Australia simply doesn’t have the level of panel show talent required to make this kind of rambling, formless, clip-based hunk of junk work. But put that same talent into a format where all they’re allowed to do is be funny for one sentence or less and suddenly they become worthwhile ways to spend roughly an hour on a Monday night and yes we’re talking about Have You Been Paying Attention? – the success of which directly resulted in the ABC finally giving up trying to make shit ideas like this work.
The Unbelievable Truth was based on a UK radio show that involved people giving lectures that contained five truthful statements in a swamp of lies, and the panel had to buzz in when they thought they’d spotted a truth. It sat on the shelf at Seven for close to a year while the network tried to figure out if it was funny. How could it not be? It was hosted by The Chaser‘s Craig Ruecassel oh right.
The White Room provided audiences with the unmissable opportunity to watch C-list celebrities play charades in a white cavern left over from an 80s music video shoot. It was axed after just two weeks. It may surprise you to learn that it was only when Channel Seven stopped trying to make local comedy panel shows happen – we haven’t even mentioned Glenn Robbins’ actually not bad show Out of the Question – that they became the top-rating network in the country.
We’re still waiting for someone – anyone – to explain to us what the thinking was behind the ABC’s seemingly endless (15 episodes!) How Not to Behave. Was it meant to be a sarcastic comedy show featuring sketches that were ironically showing us “how to behave”? Or was it meant to be a straight lifestyle show that just happened to have the wrong title? As it would have required us to watch more than one episode to find out, guess we’ll never know.
And then there’s Cram!
What more can we say?
Going Around in Circles 2: The Donut Factory
One car-based “comedy” ends, another car-based “drama” begins: what exactly does the ABC have against public transport?
Yep, another hilarious zinger from us, but seriously: who is running things over at the ABC that on the same night Squinters finally ends the show that starts up after it is yet another series about a collection of offbeat types cruising around Sydney? Sure, Diary of an Uber Driver isn’t meant to be an out-and-out comedy – and lead Ben (Sam Cotton) actually does seem to be driving around Sydney, not just waving his hands about in front of a green screen – but when a network can barely make a handful of local shows a year, why make two that are pretty much the same thing? Especially when that thing is boring?
Squinters, yeah, fuck that; it ran out of ideas at the end of episode one and while doing an entire two seasons of it was a nice showcase for a reasonably talented cast, there was absolutely no reason for anyone to keep watching a show that was nothing but a bunch of nothing characters saying nothing interesting while going nowhere. It was a hollowed out shell of an idea, a show that might have worked if the ABC was in the business of actually giving funny people a go as far as scripted comedy is concerned; they’re not and it didn’t.
Diary of an Uber Driver is the same thing, but retooled as “lightweight drama” as our bland hero drives around interacting with various forgettable types because if he doesn’t then we don’t have a show. Remind us again: why do we have a show? The idea of having an actual story or ongoing characters that might hook viewers in and get them coming back isn’t so much foreign to the ABC as it seems like something they’re actually allergic to.
Yes, there’s an angle here: Ben wants to make his relationship work, and so he’s become a student of human nature to… ah, fuck it: this isn’t a story, it isn’t even the start of one. It’s a premise to collect some cash from a funding body, a fun way to employ a bunch of decent actors, an attempt by the one who isn’t Josh Thomas to expand his writing credits beyond Please Like Me. What it most definitely isn’t, is a television show anyone actually asked to see.
And yet we doubt anyone involved in the production of this show will see this review – okay, it’s a rant, and almost certainly an ill-informed one at that – as a negative. We’re talking at cross-purposes to the Australian television industry, asking why the latest fighter jet doesn’t fly while everyone is admiring how lethal it looks. The performances are fine, the tone is varied, it looks good and it runs for the required length. There’s a “hilarious” sequence involving a whole bunch of “shocking” dirty talk. What more do you want?
If Australia was full to the brim with genius television writers in the much the same way as it’s packed with decent actors and television crews, then sure, why not try something high concept to stand out from the pack? But Australia has no good television writers; it barely has any good sketch comedy writers and if something happened at Mad as Hell HQ we’d be fucked. Considering the rock bottom standard of pretty much everything written locally that appears on our television screens, why are we making not one but two shows based around a tricky, superficially boring concept that requires Larry David in his prime to make work even for a single solitary episode?
Then again, what do we know about comedy? Fuck all obviously, because it seems this show is, rather than a mildly diverting way for a bunch of skilled technicians to pay their rent, on par with one of the greatest sitcoms of all time:
Many of the greatest comedy writers of history have realised the importance of setting, and how a good one can open up a kaleidoscope of potential comic scenarios. John Cleese was aware how rich a hotel would be for comic scenarios, given that just about anybody can stay in a hotel. The same principle has worked on Cheers and Brooklyn 99 and any number of medical and legal comedies: set your show somewhere that facilitates the introduction of a steady stream of eccentrics, and you’ll never be short of a funny story.
Now comes Diary of an Uber Driver, a show which takes advantage of the near-infinite possibilities presented by the 21st century’s gig economy.
Who knew that the reason why Fawlty Towers was so funny was not because it featured a tight knit group of well-defined comedy characters in a confined setting where the introduction of one variable could rapidly tip things into chaos, but because… well, literally the exact opposite of that? Fawlty Towers was a show where each episode took months to write; has anything on Australian television this century felt like the producers stumped up the cash for a second draft?
That could be the revelation at the heart of Diary of an Uber Driver: the opening up of the potential of human connections. Ward has struck on a premise that allows him to bring anyone at all into his world, but just as it was in his last show, it’s the magic of what happens when strangers collide that brings the funny as well as the feels.
Wasn’t “it’s the magic of what happens when strangers collide that brings the funny as well as the feels” the tagline for Bumfights?
Tonight is not the night – The worst Australian topical comedies and tonight shows
When Tonightly with Tom Ballard was axed last year, Australia not only lost a show which was delivering a solid half-hour of interesting, passionate and funny topical comedy four nights a week but it a lost a show which had been allowed to be itself.
So often, TV executives take a bunch of people who’ve never worked together, tell them what kind of show to make, and then interfere constantly while they try to produce something decent within the constraints they’ve been given. And Tonightly… so obviously wasn’t that.
It was a show which came from people who shared similar ideals and were given free rein to come up with whatever they wanted as long as it was nominally of interest to young-ish viewers – and topical. What resulted was sometimes a mess, sometimes needed a bit more work, but usually had a spark of originality, difference or just sheer anger at the state of things, that made it must-watch viewing. For people of all ages.
Rarely do we see that sort of flawed but charming and occasionally hard-hitting comedy program on TV these days. So often we’re served up bland rip-offs of US tonight shows, or topical programs that are about as challenging to our political and corporate overlords as a fawning News Limited editorial about how great the Liberal party are.
And with Rove McManus returning to television with Saturday Night Rove in a couple of weeks, that glorious Australian tradition looks set to continue. Although being Rove, he’ll at least produce something that’s watchable. Something you can’t accuse these shows of being…
Let’s get this out of the way first…for all its faults, Hey! Hey! It’s Saturday was once a ground-breaking and much-loved show. Seriously, what a great idea to turn a free-wheeling Saturday morning kids’ show into something the whole family could watch on a Saturday evening. Celebrity guests! Bands! Novelty acts! Whacky sound effects! They even adapted the puppet characters’ dialogue to give the adults something to laugh at.
The problem was, the show had at its centre an ego-driven host/producer, barely able to disguise his contempt for most of humanity. And as the years marched by and social attitudes changed, that host/producer – and the show itself – resolutely stuck to its guns by continuing to hold the attitude that men were men, women got the piss ripped out of them, and the LGBT+ community and ethnics were pretty funny too.
This just about worked throughout the 80s and 90s, but by the time Hey! Hey!… came back for some specials in 2009, this really became a problem. Especially when the show doubled down by booking a blackface act.
Acceptable in 2009, apparently
Global outrage and disgust duly followed. Something that Channel 9 sort of repeated two years later with Ben Elton’s Live From Planet Earth, a show so notoriously terrible that its name has become a punchline far funnier than anything the show ever aired.
And who would have guessed it? Ben Elton had successfully toured Australia many times with his stand-up show and had written many much-loved shows, including The Young Ones and Blackadder. Surely, this couldn’t fail?
So what was it that caused Live From Planet Earth to lose half a million viewers through its first episode? Was it Elton’s patronising ratings announcement at the start of the show? Was his re-hashing of some of his so-so old stand-up material? Was it the schoolgirl characters, talking about their lives on the internet in a way which only a middle-aged man would think they talked, followed by the middle-aged male writer of that sketch, Ben Elton, saying “hopefully we’ll be hearing more of their philosophy of life as the series progresses”?
Maybe it was Elton’s routine about using natural yoghurt to cure thrush? Or maybe – and this definitely killed it for us – it was the female bodybuilder character played by an overweight man. Seriously, you do not go to an ad break on something as bad and misguided as that.
Oh my God, what is this?
But we’re being kind. Twitter, as we recall, was rather less forgiving. Ditto the critics. And in its second week, the show started with less than half a million viewers and lost about a third of them by the end. (And the schoolgirls were back!)
As for week three… Well, the show went out later than scheduled because of extended news bulletins reporting on the Christchurch earthquake and opened with Elton’s solemn message that he hoped no one thought it would be inappropriate to do the show as planned following the terrible tragedy. Oddly enough, Australia wasn’t in the mood for his terrible program and less than 200,000 viewers tuned in. Live From Planet Earth was axed the next day.
Live comedy shows, it seems, is something Australian television isn’t very good at. 2005’s Let Loose Live, less notorious than Live From Planet Earth, but even more short-lived – it lasted just two episodes – was supposed to be a local answer to Saturday Night Live, complete with cold open, weekly guest host, studio sketches and a big cast.
And in one sense, it was an authentically a local version of Saturday Night Live: a lot of the material was cliched and crap. An early sketch in the show was about young ethnic drivers hooning around in a muscle car. Later, guest host William McInnes did his ventriloquist act, except he couldn’t conceal his mouth movements. Then there was something about an IT guy in an office (played by Sammy J) and the IT guy was, wait for it, a bit nerdy… the first episode’s on YouTube if you can be bothered.
What might have saved the show (or at least made it a bit interesting) was some topical material, something SNL does often and pretty well. So, where in Let Loose Live were the potshots at the government? Where was the satire? Guys, John Howard had been in office for almost a decade at this point, and he’d recently sent our troops off to an ill-advised and unpopular war. IT’S NOT LIKE THERE WASN’T MATERIAL!!! Good grief, even Ben Elton managed a few cracks at Julia Gillard.
But if you think the lesson learnt from Let Loose Live and Live From Planet Earth is that Australia shouldn’t attempt live topical comedy shows and that pre-recorded, satire-focused shows might have a better success rate, then may we remind you of Wednesday Night Fever, a show so out-of-the-blocks crap that we’re just going to share this from our review of the first episode:
Where the wheels totally came off this blunt nothing of a show was in the writing, which never failed to sniff out an opportunity to make cheap, obvious shots at cheap, obvious targets. Making a joke that Ruby Rose looks like a boy? In 2013? What the fuck was that all about? [Regular character] Justice has a “mother” who’s a man? Wow, those crazy feminists, right guys? And why was Julie Bishop stumbling around blindly in the utterly baffling and seemingly endless “Downton Abbott”? Oh right, she’s entirely defined by the “fact” she has a bung eye. The promos for this show said nothing was sacred. Seems that meant having Julia Gillard sing “I was asked if Tim was gay – have you ever seen Thérèse?” Jesus wept.
Wow, Ben Elton’s female bodybuilder sketch seemed like a good idea compared to that.
Downton Abbott
But Wednesday Night Fever (which lasted for just seven episodes) didn’t just take obvious potshots, it did gutter humour too. Swearwords as punchlines? Yep, it had plenty of those. Crude and idiotic humour? Present and correct, madam. So, instead of pointing out that Clive Palmer was an awful businessman involved in various dodgy dealings, we were treated to jokes about his weight. Yes, nothing was sacred on this show!
The only bright spot in the whole Wednesday Night Fever affair was when Crikey gained access to the show’s writer’s Google group (which they’d failed to password protect) and reported that the sketches that had been rejected from the show were even less funny and even more lowbrow, sexist and racist than the ones that did make it to air. Crikey also claimed at one stage (they later took this down from their site) that one writer had proposed a “Prince Philip in blackface” sketch.
There are no words.
Except, it seems, someone liked this short-lived show, as it later went on to win an AWGIE in the Comedy – Sketch or Light Entertainment category, beating This Is Littleton, How Green Was My Cactus and Legally Brown.
And what does this tell us? It tells us that people in the industry are not nearly critical enough when it comes to judging shows, for one. How else to explain the fact that The Roast managed to rack up hundreds of episodes, under several different names, on at least four different online and broadcast channels, over a five-year period? Or that star of the show Mark Humphries has managed to get work since then?
Still in work, it seems
At the time, we were baffled. And we still are. This was a news satire show that never managed to satirise the news. Or even parody it. Where were the wacky news reporter characters? Where were the odd interviewees? Where were the sketches where they poked fun at those in power? To be fair, The Roast wasn’t quite as bad as Wednesday Night Fever, with its crude humour and its ‘Clive Palmer = fat’ jokes, but it wasn’t exactly a satirical powerhouse either. Get laughs out of something awful a public figure said, like the time Myer boss Bernie Brooks said a levy to fund disability care would mean less people spent money shopping? Nah. Instead, The Roast sent one of their reporters around stealing money from people on behalf of the retail giant. Hilarious!
It was the kind of comedy that a bunch of privileged white guys who don’t really have any worries in the world do, rather than the sort of comedy that people who find 90% of what politicians say outrageous and awful do. And it came from the mind of Charles Firth, who’d done exactly the same thing a decade ago as part of The Chaser, a group we should mention in this article as the people who started a particular type of rot in Australia satire: satire that doesn’t really care about the issues.
The Chaser’s War on Everything, lest we forget, wasn’t really a satire show. It was a pranks show involving public figures. What exactly was the satirical point behind the APEC sketch, for example? ‘Ha ha the security’s a bit flawed?’ Turns it out it wasn’t, as the team got caught. Oh well. At least they satirised the hell out of cancer with that Make a Realistic Wish sketch.
But seriously, The Chaser’s War on Everything and various subsequent shows the team did ended-up being the kinds of comedies that politicians sort of embraced – and even voluntarily participated in. And that’s never a good look for a satire show. Satirical comedy should avoid interaction with actual politicians so it’s always free to give it to them when they deserve it. And that’s something The Chaser team have never understood. For them, it’s great because the politicians are on the show, joining in their silly japes. And it doesn’t matter to them that by having politicians on their shows, they’re making those politicians look like good sports, rather than doing their jobs as political comedians and calling politicians out when they deserve it.
It’s one of the many problems with The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, a show that’s become so feeble in its approach that it’s barely bothering to even be topical anymore. Pickering still occasionally fronts a piece about something bad happening in the world, but it’s something we mostly know about already because better outlets have already covered it better.
The Weekly is basically a magazine show that’s on late enough at night to include swearing. In topical satire terms, it just sort of hums along like a mild case of tinnitus. But, hey, at least you got that tinnitus by listening to good music and interesting podcasts. The Weekly as we pointed out recently, doesn’t even seem to get talked about anymore. It’s just there. Presumably because after Australian comedy’s experience making some of the above, it’s the best option there is. Hey, at least people are prepared to tune in for it. Who cares if it’s a bit crap?
Humming along like a mild case of tinnitus
And while this article has mainly looked at shows which were obviously, short-livedly awful, it’s the shows that plod on forever that are kind of the real problem. The shows that are safe, inoffensive and unoriginal, the shows that people are prepared to tune in for, but mainly so they can kill some time. Shows like The Weekly, that no one would miss if they didn’t exist, and that no one need ever have invented.
The Drama Builds
For years we’ve been complaining that Australian comedies keep trying to get more dramatic. But what about the flipside? No, not that crap “romantic comedy” starring Eddie Izzard that was nominated for a Tumblie last year: what about the Australian dramas trying to muscle in on comedy’s turf?
The muscling in comes pretty close to literal in the ABC’s Les Norton, starring Alexander Bertrand as a walking Chesty Bond advertisement prowling around the one side of half of one street the producers could afford to recreate of 80s-era Kings Cross. He’s a bouncer-slash-enforcer for the local crime boss (David Wenham), though the crimes are more along the lines of wacky capers than brutal murders – and with Rebel Wilson heavily promoted as one of the leads, it seems highly unlikely that her “demise” at the end of last week’s episode is going to stick.
Crime is pretty much the only genre Australia makes enough of to be able to take a variety of approaches to, which means even this is part of a long, if not all that healthy, tradition (anyone remember Marcus Graham’s Good Guys, Bad Guys? The ABC’s crooked cop joke-free sitcom Bad Cop Bad Cop?). What comedy there is here is meant to come from the characters and plot twists rather than one-liners, which is a refreshing change from the norm in Australian sitcoms, and because there’s an actual story going on (the series is based on the novels by Robert G Barrett) things keep moving along even when the laughs aren’t there.
So this is worth a look then? Eh, kind of. While it’s a step up from Underbelly, this kind of romp really needs a lot more energy to be worthwhile, and a few good performances can’t make up for the fact that a lot of the other performances are a bit average. Not being familiar with the novels it’s hard to know, but it seems like a lot of the rough edges have been sanded off here too; aside from Les himself, nothing here really feels all that distinctive or memorable, and there’s no sense at all of “the Cross” being more than a few shop fronts and a back alley.
Then again, there’s bound to be a lot more Rebel Wilson in this moving forward. You’ve been warned.
*
With Andrew (“I worked with Steve Vizard on Full Frontal among many other things”) Knight being partly responsible for the original SeaChange, the series had decent comedy credentials from the start. Not only did it get in first with a local version of the then-and-now popular genre of “city type moves to the wacky country” a la Northern Exposure, it did a decent job of being both dramatic enough to lure in regular viewers (mostly thanks to the will-they-or-won’t-they sexual tension with Diver Dan) and funny enough thanks to the wacky locals to be a real hit.
And now it’s back! Only now it’s twenty years later and on Channel Nine with around half the original cast and filmed in a different state. It’s a bit harder to judge with this one after a first episode, but it definitely felt like a lot of gears were being stripped trying to get the engine started here. Which is a problem with a series who’s big selling point was (and is) the idea of escaping the hustle and bustle for a simpler life.
Also, where’s the laughs? SeaChange was never a gag machine but the comedy was always there, while so far here all that remains is the faint outline. There are characters (mostly returning ones) that are clearly meant to be seen as funny, but… yeah, nah. The spark isn’t here yet, and it’s not exactly sure that this version of SeaChange even wants to bring it back.
Despite what some would have you believe, good comedy isn’t about being gentle. There has to be some edge in there, a surprising insight or cutting take somewhere to get a laugh out of an audience. This doesn’t seem to want to be much more than a soothing bath of nostalgia, and while that’s hardly surprising in a reboot – even Sigrid Thornton occupies a very different space in the national psyche than she did twenty years ago – it’s pretty much the enemy of good comedy.
It’s always possible this will find a way to poke fun at the past and find comedy in present-day Pearl Bay, but unlike Les Norton – which if nothing else has fully integrated the comedy side of proceedings into the drama from day one – this hasn’t even set out a case for being considered funny yet. It’s perfectly possible that, unlike the original series, this will be happy drifting along on a cloud of twee nostalgia and bland no-stakes drama.
And we’ve already got Rosehaven for that.
Situation Unfunny: The Worst Australian Sitcoms
Let’s be honest: last week we took it easy on sketch comedy. After all, Australia used to be good at it: for decades our skill at sketch comedy was regularly held up by the experts (TV critics who hated comedy) as world class. And they weren’t entirely wrong either – Shaun Micallef’s sketch shows were legitimately brilliant, and a chunk of the 80s and 90s sketch shows still hold up today.
But we’re not talking about sketch comedy now.
There’s been no point in living memory where you could seriously claim Australia makes decent sitcoms. Partly that’s because they’re hard to make and we just don’t make very many of them; mostly that’s because the ones we do make are shit. There’s plenty of excuses why, and back in the 20th century they may have even made sense. When our shoddy local product was being compared to US sitcoms, the problem was that we didn’t make enough episodes to work out the kinks and didn’t have enough writers to create a polished product; when we were being compared to the UK it was that our sitcoms didn’t start out on radio where the (smaller team of) writers could, again, work out the problems holding the comedy back.
Remind us: how many years did Hey, Dad..! run for?
The correct answer is “too many”
So by the time the 21st century rolled around, everyone had their excuses ready. And they were going to need them. Oh sure, when Kath & Kim was firing on all barrels sitcom was king – so kingly in fact that hardly anyone else bothered making them – but after that, well… let’s just say that we were able to come up with a list of rock-solid 21st century shockers without having to resort to Mr Black, Here Come the Habibs, The Wizards of Aus or (shudder) Bogan Pride.
Let’s start out with an easy one: Sando. The hilarious tale of a crap furniture outlet maven trying to win back her only slightly less crap family’s love, this was designed as a showcase for Genevieve Morris, who then had to withdraw from the show for health reasons. Good to see those reasons (she’s currently in remission according to wikipedia) haven’t prevented her from continuing to appear in a range of recent comedy series, including the most recent run of Squinters… which we’ll get to in a moment. Sacha Horler stepped up for the lead role and promptly spent six weeks struggling to bring to life a character parodying something that had died out in the real world a decade earlier on a show seemingly designed to connect with the members of “mainstream Australia” by sneering at them. It shed almost half its audience during those six weeks; we’re surprised anyone stuck around at all.
At the other extreme – time wise at least – remember Flat Chat? This particular shocker (from the dark ages of 2001) is memorably largely for Jean Kitson wheeling out another performance so big it was visible from space as a snob forced to live in her own stables when her husband dies and her mansion is bought by a cashed-up bogan. The long and proud tradition of our commercial networks when it comes to producing sitcoms too broad to appeal to comedy snobs yet too shit to appeal to people who like to laugh is too often ignored… much like Flat Chat itself.
Just to drag this list off down a third direction, The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote was a series of five minute mockumentary episodes in which Sam Simmons stood around repeating words and doing what was then known as “animal whimsy” – pointing out weird shit about animals and so on. This kind of short yet still somehow drawn out format is another mainstay of bad Australian sitcoms, giving performers just enough time to be irritating without providing enough scope for their painfulness to end up somewhere amusing. Basically, if there’s a sitcom format, Australia has been rubbish at it; let’s move on.
Oh wait, we spoke too soon. Squinters is yet another sitcom that’s barely a sitcom – rather, as we’ve pointed out seemingly every single time we’ve mentioned it, it’s a sketch show where all the sketches are the same. And unfortunately, by “same” we mean “variations on those awful restaurant sketches Fast Forward used to do” where two people sit down, talk to each other for a while, and then it ends without a joke – or a point – having been established. It’s a sitcom where the situation is “driving to and from work”, which might possibly work if it was “two funny people are driving to and from work”. It’s Australia; we don’t have two funny people left.
Which is as good a segue as any into The Letdown, which is only here because the ABC continues to insist that it’s a sitcom and not what it looks like to anyone with eyes to see: a half hour drama based around the kind of observations that’re mistaken for comedy by people who don’t really like to laugh. There are plenty of jokes to be made around the idea that being a new mum is tough, but they require a cast and crew looking to make jokes, not the kind of show that has new parents gasping “finally someone’s telling our side of the story” like nobody’s ever pointed out that crying babies are crap before.
Drinking a cup of green putty through a straw? Hilarious!
Of course, we wouldn’t have shows like The Letdown without Please Like Me, the trailblazing series that put Australia on the map labelled “DRAMA-INFUSED COMEDY”. You’d think a sitcom that ended every single series with the death (or near death) of yet another semi-core character might have taken a lump or two in the reviews but no – everyone was too busy calling a show about twenty-somethings where nobody seemed to have a real job or money worries “realistic” to stop and consider that maybe all the death, emotional pain, and Josh Thomas picking up hot guys despite whatever the hell was going on with his hair was more about presenting an emo fantasy of youth than anything designed to entertain an audience. Not that it had one in this country but hey, overseas funding is the only thing keeping Australian sitcoms going so who cares if they’re funding shows nobody here wants to watch.
How to Stay Married was and very possibly still is Peter Helliar’s latest salvo in his forever war to convince the Australian public that he’s putting the rom back into com. Unfortunately, the aimless I Love You Too and the merely forgettable It’s a Date pretty much seem to have exhausted everything Helliar has to say on the subject of love and relationships – they’re tough, right guys? – and so this show revolves around a wife reluctantly back at work and a husband reluctantly staying at home in a hilarious inversion of The Way Things Should Be. Also hilariously inverted here: the idea that sitcoms should be funny.
You may recall we mentioned last week that The Wedge is one of the worst sketch comedies of this century. Mark Loves Sharon was a spin-off from that damp cough of a series, featuring Jason Gann’s “breakout character” Mark Wary, disgraced sports star and… that’s about it. So yeah, why not give six episodes over to a mockumentary about Wary and his dirtbag mates hanging out at his tacky mansion? Please don’t give us actual reasons why not, we’ve seen the show and we already have plenty.
The first episode of The Other Guy revolved around series creator and lead actor Matt Okine’s character trying to deal with a piss-stained mattress that was possibly some kind of metaphor for how his romantic life had fallen apart. Unfortunately, like so many of the series on this list, absolutely nothing funny was done with this idea. If there’s any advice we could give Australian sitcom writers, it’d be this: it’s not enough just to have a funny idea – you have to do something funny with it. So many of these shows have halfway decent premises but then seem to think their job is done. It’s not: a funny premise is funny for about thirty seconds and then you need to start doing funny things with it if you want to keep the audience laughing. Well, unless you’re writing The Other Guy, because that had a whole lot of other problems on top of the bad writing. Second series starts later this year!
Ha ha ha men are so gross
And then there’s Laid. What more can we say about the first ever comedy to combine sex and death that we didn’t say across the tens of thousands of words we wasted here trying to express just how bad this show was as it first aired? Here’s something: creator, writer, and star of numerous Green Guide feature articles Marieke Hardy is now in her second highly celebrated year running the internationally acclaimed Melbourne Writers Festival despite writing a sitcom that spent an entire episode making jokes about the female lead’s attempts to rape a man she’d drugged into unconsciousness. We’d say those gags about creating a splint for his limp dick with paddle pop sticks haven’t aged well, but they weren’t exactly funny at the time.
The real problem with Australian sitcoms has always been two fold: we don’t make enough of them to come up with a great one through sheer weight of numbers, and our system of television production doesn’t give talented people enough opportunities to get good at a complicated job like telling a funny story that goes for half an hour. The same goes for actors too: we have plenty of decent stand-up comics with funny personas, but the number of funny actors in this country are… well, once you go past the cast of Mad as Hell the rest are probably on a plane to Hollywood as you read this.
Sitcoms come from television cultures that value a wide range of specific types of being funny – funny writers, funny performers, funny creators. Australia requires anyone wanting to be funny to be funny at pretty much everything at once because it’s a lot cheaper to get a show produced when the writers and actors share a paycheck. Very, very few people can pull that off at a decent level: if you can, you can make a whole lot more money somewhere where they actually make comedy.