Australian Tumbleweeds
Get Krack!n Hits the… wait, what?
Get Krack!n this week tackled the hard-hitting issue of… hang on a sec, we’ll get back to Get Krack!n eventually, but did you see the promo the ABC ran just before (and after) it this week? Let’s hit the big notes:
1): The Weekly will be back March 20th
2): It’s going to have a new “correspondent”
3): They didn’t announce who, and
4): They obviously didn’t announce it in a Married At First Sight parody because that would be pretty demeaning to the mystery new host and… oh hang on a second.
Where to begin with this shit? To get the obvious out of the way first: either they don’t actually have a new correspondent yet or (more likely) whoever they do have is someone we probably haven’t heard of, because otherwise they would be shouting it from the high heavens.
This almost certainly means that our hopes and dreams regarding The Weekly have once again been dashed – instead of hiring someone who could shake up the place, or even just work as a counterbalance to the imperial smugness of Pickering and Gleeson, there’ll be some occasional guest appearances from someone who’s clearly a distant third in the scheme of things. Which was always going to be the case, but we like to keep our hopes alive for recreational purposes.
After all, if you needed any more of a reminder of how much of a boy’s club The Weekly is, just rewatch that promo.
https://www.facebook.com/theweeklytv/videos/818446385187501/
Married At First Sight might be the hottest thing on television right now, but is this really the way the two male hosts of a semi-serious news program want to announce the hiring of their new workmate? No wonder Briggs was nowhere to be seen.
(if it turns out that the new correspondent is a dude, then this promo suddenly becomes a lot better… though The Weekly itself would become much worse)
It’s been a long running sign of just how kak-handed The Weekly is in general that they’ve never really managed to figure out a way to promote it accurately. This promo would work fine for a show that specialised in pop culture parodies and sketch comedy, or even to peddle some kind of doofus panel show where wacky hijinks are the norm. But if you’ve ever watched The Weekly you know that around 70% of it is pretty much straight news with its tie slightly loosened – and yet every single promo for it is trying to flog it as the funniest thing since Fast Forward. Come for the comedy, stay for the seven minute lecture on plastic in the environment.
But the juicy filling in this particular shit sandwich is that air date. Here’s all you need to know:
The 2019 Australian federal election will elect members of the 46th Parliament of Australia. The election will be called following the dissolution or expiry of the 45th Parliament as elected at the 2016 double dissolution federal election.
The next election must be held by 18 May 2019 blah blah blah
It seems the ABC, in their boundless wisdom, has decided that the satirical news program they want to cover the 2019 Federal Election is the toothless sack of used nappies that is, and has consistently been for the last few years, The Weekly. When the nation turns to the ABC for comedy to cut through the waffle flowing freely from this election campaign, they’re going to find Hard Chat working its hardest to make our pollies seem like funny buggers in on the gag and Pickering trying his best to pretend he’s not going to be voting whatever way Daddy’s accountant advises him to.
(our current best guess for the new correspondent? Julie Bishop)
Baseless personal attacks aside, over the last few months there’s been a lot of discussion about the way the ABC board and management have been pandering to the current government. Is giving the prime election comedy slot to their most provably pissweak “satire” program yet another example of this? That’s not for us to say.
What we can say is that if you were an organisation desperately, palms-sweatingly, pants-wetingly afraid of doing anything to annoy your current or future political masters, and you had two satirical news programs to choose from when it came to election coverage, choosing The Weekly would make you look pretty gutless whatever your publicly stated reasons (if any) for doing so.
Having people paying attention to The Weekly for once isn’t exactly good news for anybody either.
The Weekly is coming back, like it or not
The appointment of a new senior member of staff to an existing TV program can tell you a lot about where that program might be heading. This week, the ABC released information about a new appointment to the soon-to-return The Weekly with Charlie Pickering:
Jules Holmes has started as Senior Producer of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering after working as Head of Field of Tomorrow Tonight (ABC). She previously worked on The Project as Field Producer for five-and-a-half years and had also been Creative Director for a number of brand integration campaigns on Network 10.
So, not exactly a comedy appointment, then.
Or is it? From what we can figure out, a field producer typically works on longer pieces, like interviewing someone about a tragedy or a location report covering the aftermath of a disaster, which isn’t exactly comedy material. And Holmes is very highly regarded in that area.
So, The Weekly have hired themselves a very good Senior Producer with experience of producing high-quality, serious, longform pieces. Which is a good thing, as The Weekly‘s previous serious longform pieces have been pretty snooze-worthy. But what is the show going to do to improve its comedy? Are there any plans to hire someone good to work on those? And now that Christopher Pyne’s resigned, they can’t do any more of that Pyne Watch segment (which is a shame, as it was often the funniest thing in the show).
And how’s the hiring a replacement for Kitty Flanagan coming along? Or are we just going to be stuck with these two this series?
Get Krack!n Up the Duff
Week four of Get Krack!n and the hosts have news: they may (or may not) be pregnant! As you’d expect, they have very different ways of dealing with this and the harsh media spotlight that it brings. Kate McCartney – the one who doesn’t really give a shit – announces it, says she’ll never mention it again and moves on; Kate McLennan – the one who’s way too invested in all this “being on TV stuff” – has absolutely nothing to announce. How’s this going to pan out?
One of the slightly strange things about Get Krack!n is that after a season and a half the characters of the Kates haven’t really developed beyond what was served up in episode one. In fact, at times it’s gone backwards: they’re not good at their job (apart from when they are), they’re not at home on television (unless they’re so comfortable they’re happy to make smart-arse comments live on air), they’re socially concerned and aware (except when they’re not), and they’re women and mothers struggling under the burdens of both roles (at least some of the time).
This isn’t automatically a negative. The Kates’ interests clearly lie more in making fun of the media and society in general, and keeping their characters somewhat loosely-defined definitely helps there. But it does mean that when they do a slightly more character-focused episode like this one, it takes a little while for the audience to get their bearings. So this week McCartney is the one who’s going along with what the show requires and McLennan is fighting against it? Gotcha.
(obviously the flip side is that it’s almost always funnier for McLennan to be the one freaking out, and whatever set-up is the one that gets her freaking out is the best set-up)
Strangely, this slightly ill-defined character situation wasn’t a problem at all with The Katering Show. Thanks to its shorter length and more plausible scenario, the Kates were able to make the same basic characters seem a lot more rounded and realistic.
But with Get Krack!n they don’t seem to have been able to come up with (or aren’t interested in exploring – McCartney’s love of creepy wildlife is a promising vein largely untapped) any consistent character traits to fill the space in half hour episodes, and while both Kates are definitely strong performers who never really feel “out of character”, there’s just not enough consistent character there to develop that particular kind of comedy.
(the kind of character comedy that leads to rants against the patriarchy, on the other hand, is fully supported)
But hey, this episode also featured a totally gratuitous but hilarious Wake in Fright tribute and a reminder that those “oh Mr Hart, what a mess!” commercials really did happen, so once again our nit-picking remains just that. It’s a show that’s all over the place, but so long as one of those places features haunted dolls, we’re still on board.
The problems with Rosehaven
Rosehaven. It rates well, it’ll probably come back from a fourth series, and it’s made in a part of Australia we haven’t had any sitcoms about ever and where not much TV is made. What’s not to like?
Well, as comedy fans – you’ve heard of us, we think sitcoms should focus first and foremost on being consistently funny throughout – we have a few issues with this show…
First thing: it’s not consistently funny throughout. There are numerous decent lines and comic back-and-forths, particularly between Emma (Celia Pacquola) and Daniel (Luke McGregor), but most of the time it’s about the plot. And what charming plots they are…
- Emma and Daniel have to hold a memorial service for the deceased former resident of a rental property, to give mourning neighbours the closure they need to stop them from bothering the current occupant of the house.
- Daniel finally discovers the location of offensive graffiti about himself that was written by the school bully 20 years ago – and tries to go about removing it.
- Emma and Daniel get stranded on a backroad and seek help from a guy living alone on a small property, but immediately become paranoid that he’ll kill them when they see him wielding an axe.
- Daniel’s girlfriend Grace presents the result of her medical study on the long-term residents of Rosehaven, which the long-term residents think should be an awards ceremony for who’s most healthy. So Grace turns it into an awards ceremony with categories including Highest Potassium Level.
…in the hands other comedians, these would probably be a lot funnier. But in the post-Please Like Me world, that seems to be an unfashionable approach. Laughs are few and far between, and often confined to the banter between Emma and Daniel, rather than coming from the plot or secondary characters.
Rosehaven is more interested in being quirky and kitsch than it is in making people laugh. Those mourning neighbours? They were largely played by ex-Home & Away actors of a certain era. And while Norman Coborn (AKA Donald ‘Flathead’ Fisher) and Debra Lawrence (AKA the second Pippa) are fine choices for elderly neighbours, it’s also very on-brand for Rosehaven to engineer an 80s/90s Home & Away reunion for no reason.
SIDEBAR: At least the Prisoner reunion on Neighbours sort of makes sense in that both shows are made by the same production company and at the same studios.
ANOTHER SIDEBAR: If you’re going to cast some 80s/90s soap actors as neighbours, why not get some 80s/90s actors from Neighbours? At least that’s a pun.
Speaking of soap operas, it’s increasingly clear that Rosehaven is basically a soap opera in comedy’s clothing. A sort of SeaChange about people in their 30s, complete with on-trend tropes such as the comedy of awkwardness and anxiety. It’s a pleasant enough and easy watch, but it’s almost never funny. Which for a show written by stand-up comedians, who are all good at being consistently funny, is pretty odd.
Get Krack!n Sends a Sign
So, of course, after we spent last week going on about how the Kates often seem to be slightly loosely-defined as comedy characters on Get Krack!n, this week’s episode once again proved us wrong by having them firmly positioned on the wrong side of the comedy topic from start to finish. Who knows about comedy? Not us.
And that topic? “International Day of People Living With a Disability Day”, which provided them with plenty of opportunity to be condescending and awkward while the people they invited on the show to exploit stared at them wondering exactly what the hell they were going on about.
The line “you’re disabled, but you’re not inspiring?” pretty much summed up the comedy, largely based around the sadly still surprising idea that disabled people are people first and inspirational slogans pretty much never. Get Krack!n tends to roam far and wide with its comedy targets, but this week’s episode returned to the idea of sending up breakfast television – and the Australian mainstream media it embodies – and got in a bunch of good punches to the dismissive and disposable attitude said media has towards anything not firmly mainstream.
All of which meant the Kates were the butt of the jokes this week (aside from the Auslan interpreters, whose growing dislike of each other and – we assume – occasionally inaccurate translations of what was going on eventually boiled over), which is probably the best angle of attack for the show in general. Put another way, “Everyone on twitter is saying disabled people should be hosting the disability show” might have been 100% correct, but the whole point of Get Krack!n at its best is that pretty much anyone else should be hosting the show – it’s the segments where the Kates are the voices of reason that sometimes fall flat.
A big part of having comedy on television from people who aren’t white men fresh out of an inner Sydney private school is to expose people to, and then get laughs from, a whole new range of subjects. So while Adam Hills isn’t quite as funny as Adam Hills sometimes seems to think he is, having him deliver pretty much a straight lecture about the NDIS being under funded and therefore replaced by a “US meets Hunger Games style ‘fend for yourself’ model” was both welcome and not exactly something you’d see pop up on The Weekly. Mostly because while The Weekly works hard to be worthy and important, it also works hard to make sure it doesn’t give serious airtime to anyone who isn’t Charlie Pickering and Tom Gleeson, which undermines its authority when it comes to discussing just about anything not firmly mainstream.
So while this episode had serious issues on its mind, for the most part it struck the right balance between treating the issues seriously and making fun of the Kates’ disinterest and misunderstanding of those issues. The guest stars all got to make valid points (even if they were just “this show is shit”), the Kates got to steal the show by being comically ignorant before reminding us that this was basically a “very special episode” and they’d never be dealing with any of these issues ever again, and the crawl made a joke about the pointlessness of jazz. The season’s still uneven, but the hits are outnumbering the misses.
How to stay with a pinch of salt
TV Blackbox ran this exclusive the other day:
TV Blackbox can exclusively reveal the Peter Helliar and Lisa McCune fronted comedy How To Stay Married will be back for a second season. Although 10 have made no official announcement as yet, close colleagues and friends say Helliar is back in pre-production and has begun writing new episodes to screen later this year.
Sources confirm the writing process has begun but shooting is a long way off.
And in related news, from the same article:
How to Stay Married is an off shoot of the 2013/ 014 ABC comedy It’s a Date, written and directed by Helliar. Although there are currently no plans to return the show into production, there are hints this might happen in the future as TV Blackbox can exclusively reveal Network Ten has acquired the rights to all 16 episodes of the original ABC series.
It’s a Date is set to screen on the channels of Network Ten later this year.
And if any of that’s true (and the key phrase may well turn out to be “10 have made no official announcement as yet”) that’s 10 really investing in Peter Helliar…for some reason. And investing in a sitcom which didn’t go as well as they’d hoped. From the same article again:
Ratings across the series started strong but subsequent episodes levelled out below 300 000 viewers.
Wow. That’s almost Sando-level ratings.
Still, hard to argue that the public wasn’t right to desert the show. How To Stay Married wasn’t exactly hilarious. It had the potential to be, in that it contained a wide variety of weird and interesting supporting characters who ended up in potentially amusing situations, but it never seemed to click.
Giving most of the screen time to two of the most boring characters in the history of Australian sitcom – Peter Helliar and Lisa McCune as ordinary suburban husband and wife Greg and Em – probably had something to do with it. Sure, taking inspiration from everyday life is a good tip for any writer, but we’re struggling to think of a successful sitcom that hasn’t embellished an everyday character with at least the ability to utter a funny line occasionally.
As for buying up episodes of It’s a Date to screen later in the year, well, in the world of multichannel you need a constant churn of content and buying something that contains a network star and inspired a network sitcom isn’t the worst idea ever. Although cutting bits of it out to fit ads in – something 10 has had to do to sitcoms every time it’s bought them from non-commercial networks – is something we don’t approve of (even if it’s Sando, we want to see the full thing or nothing. Mainly nothing).
We get that this is part of a strategic push by 10 to get into comedy in a serious way – something they’re doing by greenlighting a bunch of shows from last year’s Pilot Week – but as ABC Comedy found, getting into comedy in a serious way either requires you to spend a lot of money on making comedy or to try and get away with filling up most of the schedule with repeats of old shows. And if the latter’s your plan, you run a serious risk of the public concluding that you aren’t serious about getting into comedy at all.
Get Krack!n Back on Set
This week’s Get Krack!n saw the dynamic duo back in the studio and tackling a whole new world of pain: a live audience. How will they cope under the harsh judgement of a bunch of bored folk with nothing better to do with their lives than watch breakfast television be made? Not well. Not well at all.
Get Krack!n is a hard show to pin down in part because it’s rarely the same show each week. Sometimes the comedy is aimed outwards – like last week’s episode taking a hefty swipe at crap rural tourism – and the Kates’ job there is largely to work as mouthpieces pointing out the flaws and foibles of their chosen target.
Other times, like this week, the laughs come more at their expense. They’re usually the stronger episodes, in part because a lot of the humour that they get from attacking stuff is fairly basic. What’s that you say? Australia is sexist and racist and ignorant as hell, happily sleepwalking towards an environmental nightmare while the rich steal everything that isn’t nailed down? Damn straight – but sometimes these particular jokes don’t really go much beyond pointing that out.
If you follow any of Australia’s “up and coming” comedy writers on Twitter, you know the kind of material we mean (and as a lot of them have contributed to Get Krack!n, this is no surprise). But where this kind of joke works to some extent with Twitter’s limited word count, when it comes to being an actual joke on a television show simply pointing out “this country’s fucked” or words to that effect is just stating the obvious without nuance or humour beyond “ha ha, look what we just said”.
(obviously there’s value to be found in countering the narratives of Australia’s increasingly insipid mainstream media. We’d just like people to make jokes if they’re going to do it in a comedy show)
When the focus is on character comedy though, the results are often a lot funnier. And so it proved this week, as the Kates slowly crumbled under the onslaught of an audience not willing to play their shitty games and a bunch of shitty games that the Kates couldn’t play.
Yes, there was a fair chunk of material here that seems pretty much identical to what we’ve just been complaining about – having the Kates flat-out berating their audience does seem kinda close to their show flat-out berating White Australia / capitalism / men / etc. The big difference is that here the berating isn’t just flatly presented as a blunt statement – it’s coming from a comedy character in a situation where they’re crumbling under the stress of an awful job and are lashing out blindly in frustration. The joke isn’t so much what they’re saying, it’s that they’ve been pushed to a place where they feel they have to say those things.
(and look, clearly that’s meant to be the joke with the show in general – Australia is currently so shithouse that an anguished howl of despair on national television is a sane response to whatever insane shit is happening this week. But Get Krack!n never establishes where these comments are coming from, so there’s no real joke beyond the blunt nature of what’s being said. We need an idea of who’s saying it and why – too often Get Krack!n just throws lines or scenes out there to make a point)
Get Krack!n occasionally cops flak for being a bit abrasive, but that’s not the real issue. Being abrasive can be funny, and there’s definitely a lot going on that deserves the abrasive treatment. It’s when the show forgets to give us a sense of where this abrasiveness is coming from that it can feel a little harsh. It might seem obvious, but Get Krack!n‘s biggest strength is the two Kates, and when it’s them front and center of the story that’s when the show is at its best.
Well, not best best, because ripping off that granny after she totally won on the wheel was not on.
Time for Mark Humphries on 7:30
Looks like Mark Humphries is going to have more time to devote to his fortnightly satirical segment on 7:30…
From Mumbrella:
CBS’ Network Ten has reportedly cancelled its daily gameshow Pointless…
Media commentator Peter Ford told a Hobart radio station that people involved with the show were told the program is finishing.
According to TV Black Box Ford said: “Yesterday people involved with the show were told that it’s finishing.”
Guess the sort of people who like shows like Pointless aren’t watching Ten. Or vice versa. Who knew?
[Or, in a shock twist since we published this blog, maybe Pointless isn’t being axed. Here’s Humphries’ tweet saying it’s still being made.]
Anyway, like we said, this is a great opportunity for Humphries’ 7:30 segments, co-written with Evan Williams, to get the kind of traction that their previous work on SBS’s The Feed managed to. Those Feed sketches used to be all over social media, almost difficult to avoid on social media. As did sketches from one-time 7:30 slot-holder, Clarke & Dawe. Clarke & Dawe even had their own YouTube channel, run by Clarke himself, where their weekly sketch notched up thousands of views.
Humphries and Williams’ 7:30 sketches, meanwhile, are harder to be aware of – and the fortnightly releases don’t really help. Neither does what actually gets released. Here’s their latest:
The latest independent candidate running in a blue-ribbon Liberal seat.pic.twitter.com/7SJDS4sg86
— Mark Humphries (@markhumphries) February 7, 2019
Did you spot all three ideas in that? They’re decent enough satirical points (we particularly liked the idea of a sitting Liberal MP literally being a negatively-geared lump of coal) but imagine a stand-up doing that same material. About how the Liberals might field an urn containing the ashes of Robert Menzies as their candidate, or how never having been a member of the Liberal party is a vote winner. It would take a stand-up maybe a minute or less to succinctly make those points – and pause for audience laughter. Humphries, meanwhile, spun those ideas for more than two minutes, spending a bunch of ABC time and money on Photoshopping a lump of coal into a seat in the House of Representatives in the process. Was it worth it?
Sammy J has a similar problem in his sketches, such as his latest where he does basically the same joke over and over again for more than three minutes.
Sure, Clarke & Dawe used to riff on a theme, but at least they teased it apart in ways you might not expect, and regularly landed some good satirical punches. With Humphries and Williams and Sammy J, though, it’s pretty surface level stuff. Sometimes, they barely progress beyond the level of noting that Peter Dutton looks a bit like a potato.
Get Krack!n all at sea (well, on a river)
Get Krack!n, a series of variable quality at the best of times, started its second series with an episode that could best be described as…well…variable. The show opened with Kate and Kate presenting the last of a series of “’round Australia” episodes live from a paddle steamer on the Murray River at Echuca Moama. And according to them, things hadn’t been going well.
It was hot. Really hot. They were sick to death of new towns, bored with meeting zany local characters and couldn’t hack another plate of regional produce. Basically, they were on edge. Cue some zany local characters, a plate of soft cheese and a glass of local plonk. Oh, and some comedy vomiting. Quite a bit of that.
So, business as usual for Kate and Kate, really. They have to do things they hate, they’re annoyed, and their guests are truly awful people.
Speaking of which, Helen Bidou (Anne Edmonds) was back too. This time with her boyfriend (parole officer), who was helping her with her segment (trying to prevent her from canoeing across the river to New South Wales to find her ex-boyfriend who’s taken out a restraining order on her). It’s a type of comedy that can go either way, and opinion as to whether it was funny or just plain awful has divided opinion here at Tumbleweeds Towers. But then, this is a divisive show.
Get Krack!n regularly treads of the line of asking the audience to believe that this is a real program whilst getting its characters to do things that would have them sacked within seconds if this was actual morning television. It’s also the comedy of women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. We get why it doesn’t appeal to some.
Another problem with this specific episode was that quite a lot of the comedy came from the Kates making a sarcastic comment about a woke issue, rather than from the interactions between the characters. Sometimes this kind of thing works well but mostly it felt like the audience were being hit with a comedy woke bludgeon (even if you agree with them on the woke issue).
More successful were the zany local characters, who this week included Denise Scott as a woman who’d memorised all the bridges along the Murray, and a cameo appearance from Justine Clarke who had some vague link to some historic costumes which were on display in a local heritage centre. This was classic Get Krack!n stuff.
Next week, when Get Krack!n goes back to the studio, it will be interesting to see what happens. McLennon and McCartney are generally better when they’re bouncing off each other (something more likely to happen in a “normal” episode of this show), so it should be a good one.
Super Summer Comedy Round-up
Hey, we’re back for 2019! And given that comedy never sleeps these days, here’s our round-up of all the comedy you may have missed or deliberately avoided so far this year.
A Rational Fear
Dan Ilic’s A Rational Fear has been an off-again/on-again satirical radio show and/or podcast for the past seven years, being revived, shelved or re-worked as Ilic’s comedy career has ebbed and flowed. Most recently, it was revived for five weeks on ABC radio before and after Christmas, with ABC stars and fellow ex-Tonightly colleagues joining the panel. Jazz Tremolow, Chris Taylor, Veronica Milsom and Lewis Hobba were amongst those involved. If you’ve been missing Tonightly‘s woke, left-leaning comedy, it was a decent substitute – and Ilic’s Alan Jones impression is fun too. Problem is, A Rational Fear is only ever going to appear on actual radio in a late-night timeslot in the middle of Summer because radio comedy of this type isn’t something any broadcaster, even the ABC, is ever going to revive. Any show that isn’t one person talking, maybe to callers, before cutting to some Adult Contemporary, costs too much. And also, if topical satire’s your bag, you probably got it from scrolling through a comedian’s Twitter accounts earlier that day.
Hughsey, We Have A Problem
Is it just us, or is Dave Hughes turning into a shabbier Mick Jagger only without any of the stage presence? It’s the hair mostly – the instant Hughes opens his mouth to begin speaking in his trademark “shouting robot” cadence any resemblance between Hughsey and someone entertaining vanishes, but it was fun while it lasted. Which sadly can’t really be said for this show, which definitely has its moments each week as the panel yells at each other about various “totally real” problems suffered by average losers, but generally overstays its welcome by around 15 minutes an episode. Unless Kate Langbroek is on (like she was last week), in which case just axe the whole thing after the first ad break.
Mark Humphries on 7:30
Mark Humphries was back on 7:30 earlier than we might have expected and so far it’s been business as usual – one mildly funny observation stretched out for two or three minutes. And if you thought you recognised the phrase “one mildly funny observation stretched out for two or three minutes”, that’s because we used it in the 2018 Australian Tumbleweeds Awards to describe Mark Humphries’ 7:30 sketches. We would have written something different, but given he never does, why bother?
Rosehaven season 3
Everyone’s favourite quirky duo living in a quirky small town in Australia’s quirkiest state are back! How much you love this low key, “unhurried” (actual quote from a Fairfax review) series depends in large part on how much time you’ve spent in an actual small town, as this fantasy version is total bullshit. Which wouldn’t matter in the slightest if it was funny, but as this is aiming to be Seachange without the sexual tension, all we’re left with is a handful of “jokes” about adopting a pig and some halfway decent banter that suggests that stars Luke McGregor and Ceclia Pacquola would actually be pretty good in a completely different series. Which would be Utopia, back sometime in the next year or so.
The Family Law season 3
This one’s already been and gone, and being burnt off during non-ratings as three lots of double episodes suggests that SBS might not have been quite as confident in this as they were back when they said “sure, do another season”. Considering just how many overseas shows there are out there about awkward teens and teens figuring out their sexuality and so on, you’d have thought this might have finally tapped into the zeitgeist. But for some reason that would require more thought to identify than we’re willing to give it, The Family Law never quite clicked. Partly the problem was that Law’s comedy mum kept grabbing the spotlight: more than just about any other genre, teen shows have to be about teens if they’re going to work. Parents are great as minor supporting characters, but unless you’re making a family sitcom (which is a very different vibe) that’s it. The whole point (and fun) of teen shows is that teens live lives where parents hardly get a look-in: The Family Law was like going over to a friend’s place to hang out, only to have their mum constantly sticking her head around the door asking if you wanted a biscuit.