Australian Tumbleweeds
Sweetly crackin’ winners through the gap
If we can take anything from the last few months worth of news, it’s that the Morrison government doesn’t give an actual damn. Climate change? Nah, don’t worry about it. Money to sports clubs in marginal electorates? Here’s a truckload! All of which should give our satirists plenty to talk about, you’d think.
Mark Humphries’ first sketch of the year for 7.30 focused on the Sports Rorts scandal. It started off as a parody of Wide World of Sports, in which two hosts analyse what happened, before throwing to an ad break, during which there are several spoof ads for products that may be of interest to rorting politicians. All fair enough as targets for satire, of course, but not especially hilarious. So, standard stuff from Humphries, there.
Sammy J, meanwhile, re-wrote late-1970s cricketing anthem C’mon Aussie C’mon! as C’mon Pollies C’mon!, an entreaty to our leaders to lift their game when it comes to bushfires, global warming, sports funding and various other current issues. He’s done better – and there’s a problem here, in that the song is too fun and upbeat to properly convey his anger and frustration at the political class – but it’s hard to argue with the intended sentiment.
Meanwhile, on Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, Micallef only needs to put a small pause between ‘Our Prime Minister’ and ‘Scott Morrison’ to get a laugh (and make a point). And he’s been doing that exact joke and making that exact point (albeit with a range of different Prime Ministers) for years.
So, why is Micallef’s pause funnier than two whole entire sketches? Well, what it comes down to is the quality and uniqueness of the observation being made.
Most of us have spent the last few months, nay years, wishing our politicians were better. And not just our politicians, most of the world’s politicians, frankly. So, several minutes of song, repeating that one thought over and over again, isn’t really going to cut it when it comes to satire.
Similarly, the fact that certain sports clubs only got funding because they were in marginal elections, isn’t news to us. Because, you know, we’ve seen the news. So, to make us laugh there’s got to be a new observation in there.
Whereas Micallef’s pause? Sure, it wasn’t a new observation either – the high turnover of Prime Ministers in the last decade or so has been much talked about – but it was funny because it didn’t labour the point. It didn’t spend two and a half minutes on this one observation, it spent less than a second on it.
And every time it gets repeated, it’s perfectly timed – and, crucially, surrounded by jokes about other things. It’s not the same point being made matter-of-factly for several minutes, which is what you get in C’mon Pollies C’mon and Mark Humphries’ work. Or, to put it another way, it doesn’t feel so much like a lecture.
Cynics reading this blog probably think this is yet another love letter to Mad As Hell from Australian Tumbleweeds, or something. But it’s not. This is a plea to our satirists to raise their game. C’mon Satirists C’mon! in other words.
Wednesday Night Fever!
Ratings have begun for 2020 and the ABC has decided to lure viewers away from the horrors of a Australian summer with a big Wednesday night of comedy. But how big is ABC comedy in 2020?
It can’t be that big, because Hard Quiz is back, and it’s still just a solidly competent time-waster for fans of mildly engaging facts. Even the days of a nasty mis-match between Tom Gleeson being smarmy and contestants looking like they were about to cry is over now that the ABC casting department got the memo about only letting on flashy-dressing nerds. Logies all around?
Yeah, nah.
The traditional defense when it comes to wondering exactly why a quiz show needs to be hosted by a smug insult comedian is “it’s just an act”. Trouble is, it’s just not a good one. There’s no levels to what Gleeson does beyond “making fun of people is funny”, which is a pretty dubious proposition even if these days the show is doing a better job of finding contestants who both deserve it and can give it back. After all, all that really means is now it’s a show where smug types insult each other. How is that an improvement?
*
Onto Mad as Hell, and hey, why not flip the script and start off the season with a musical number? Otherwise it’s business as usual – extremely usual in fact, with no new characters or segments to be seen. Maybe Shaun shaving off the beard was seen as already enough of a shock?
It’s traditional for a returning Mad as Hell to take a “steady as she goes” approach to the first episode of the year, but even so this felt like there hadn’t been any break at all since 2019. Which is… interesting? These days Mad as Hell occupies a slightly unusual position somewhere between those older satire shows that had relatively short runs and were often pretty free-wheeling as far as format went (The Gillies Report), and the more traditional model where the format remains largely the same and the change is the news that’s being mocked (The Weekly). The best of both worlds? Sure, why not.
Of course, Mad as Hell doesn’t really need to shake up the format: it’s an extremely well-polished machine for sinking the boot into the government of the day, and with the current lot it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be any shortage of material. It’s nice to see that the level of political thought on display extends beyond the usual “urggh, politicians are greedy and stupid” too: pointing out things like the Coalition currently feel no need whatsoever to actually answer questions, and that Andrew Forrest’s $70 Million bushfire donation was largely to himself for tax reasons are the kind of self-evident truths that the mainstream media seem strangely reluctant to point out.
So yeah, it’s still the best comedy on Australian television, and would be even if the bar was a lot higher.
*
Black Comedy has been the last vestige of traditional sketch comedy on the ABC for four seasons now. Reportedly this is the final season; it’s been a pretty good run, especially as the show’s flaws have remained remarkably consistent over the years.
As you’d expect from a sketch show, it’s hit and miss – a basement zombie training sketch doesn’t go anywhere, while a sinister all-white Indigenous Support Center is both funny and on point (tho to be honest, any time you have someone saying “it’s all a lie!” and a smash zoom to a skeleton wearing clothes it’s a winner here). The cast remains the show’s strongest point; there’s nobody on here that can’t get laughs in the right sketch.
But a sketch on whether it’s okay to wear an flag t-shirt if you’re not black but are hot underlines Black Comedy‘s biggest problem: there’s plenty of strong concepts here but not all of them are developed into actual sketches. It was literally just three people sitting on couches talking*; why not set it in an actual pub and have someone coming back from the bar with drinks?
(Money. The answer to those kind of questions is always money)
It’s not a matter of punchlines – the running sketch about the Indigenous Support Center didn’t have a great punchline, but it earned the extra time with a couple of okay twists – but too often the sketch is just a funny concept that’s not developed comedically beyond the initial idea. Sometimes it still works (ie: “What if the Tooth Fairy wanted to borrow some money”); too often it doesn’t.
That said, the party sketch with the mate who’s just a little too right-on had the best punchline of the night when a white guy ran in and said “You aren’t going to believe this – Chris Lilley just showed up!” followed by the Black guys saying. “Lets get out of here”.
Just end every single sketch exactly like that and it’ll be two thumbs up from us every week.
*it did feel a little like it was possibly a set-up for a running sketch about student types lounging around discussing the big issues, which wouldn’t really make much difference to our point
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