Australian Tumbleweeds
Commercial Comedy Comin’ Atcha
Remember how we were wondering if we were ever going to see Seven’s long-promised sketch show Orange is the New Brown? Seems we are – and sooner than we expected:
New Seven sketch comedy Orange is the New Brown, featuring Nazem Hussain, will debut next week
(that’s 8:30pm Thursday November 8 on Seven)
Following on from Nazeem’s cult hits Salam Café and Legally Brown, Orange is the New Brown continues the comedian’s brand of race, politics and pop-culture with a twist.
From a Real Housewives-type melodrama set in a prison to racial stereotypes when playing charades, this is the show that believes the biggest laughs can be found right under your nose, shamelessly poking fun at real life and modern Australia.
Glass half empty time: is there so much Australian comedy hitting our screens at the end of the ratings year because there’s just so much of it on during the year this is the only time they can fit it in, or is it that Australian comedy is the kind of thing that seems like a good idea in theory but when the programmers finally see the finished product they’re like “shit, do we really have to put this on during ratings?”. We’ll find out in less than a week!
As for the future of Australian comedy, the only commercial network all that interested in Australian comedy – that’d be Ten – had their up fronts this week, and unlike everybody else they actually had a bunch of comedy projects to announce for 2019. Surprising no-one (especially after Ten’s new owners CBS recently bought the international rights to the format), Have You Been Paying Attention? will be back; somewhat more surprising was this:
Ten has revealed four Pilot Week programs will return to air next year: Trial by Kyle, Taboo, Kinne Tonight and Rove McManus’ Bring Back Saturday Night.
Thinking about it, if they had to go through with anything from Pilot Week (and they really didn’t), these probably make the most sense. Trial by Kyle costs bugger-all and attracts attention; Taboo is the kind of “classy” show it doesn’t hurt to have around (even if it still feels like a better fit for SBS). Kinne Tonight was easily the best all-round scripted comedy of the week, and Bring Back Saturday Night is… probably a cheap way to keep Rove on side. Did we imagine there were rumours a while back that The Project was maybe kinda possibly leaving Ten?
Otherwise… well, it’s mostly steady as she goes:
Ten’s Bachelor in Paradise, Hughesy We Have a Problem, Show Me The Movie and Pointless will all return
Gotta keep churning out that content! But technically 75% of that is technically comedy, so it looks like we’ll be busy next year.
Oh, and in old news there’s this:
Ten will also premiere a new comedy series, Mr Black, on the network.
Good to see that even though they lost The Simpsons they hung onto this guy.
Tomorrow Belongs to Me
Finally, that all-fantasy version of Q&A no-one’s been begging for. Or conversely, it’s a remake of Geoffery Robinson’s Hypotheticals made by a group of people who only heard about the original by listening into someone else’s conversation down the pub. Either way, Tomorrow Tonight and its “new reality” is here!
[insert lengthy gag about how the first episode really should have presented the panelists with the nightmare scenario of an ABC program where a bunch of mid-list chumps are forced to act out a rejected script from Black Mirror]
This week’s scenario involved a hacker stealing a secret archive of the world’s text messages and now, oh no, “trust has been destroyed”. Mostly our trust in the ABC’s ability to create entertaining programming, as after an opening that largely involved mocked up news footage on par with your average disaster movie starring The Rock we then cut back to a generic ABC panel set for yet another episode of Radio With Pictures.
The problem with this kind of programming is that there’s two things going on: there’s the useful information being given to the audiences – the importance of cyber-security and so on – and then there’s the “entertainment” being provided by the panelists. And as is almost always the case with these kind of shows, when you mix two things together you get the worst of both worlds.
There was nothing we learned from this show that we couldn’t have gotten from a five minute segment on not paying up when you get a ransomware email demanding cash or they’ll release photos of you jerking off to internet porn. Of the four panelists, a grand total of one – the cyber security guy – was interesting and informative. Otherwise, Luke McGregor did his job as “comedian” (and was the only one who seemed to be thinking through the ramifications of the scenarios Pickering was serving up, even if the result was “in person dick pics”), and then…
Let’s be blunt. Julie Bishop isn’t funny or entertaining: she’s a politician. Annabel Crabb is also not funny or entertaining: she’s a journalist. They’re not funny or entertaining because their day jobs require them to be hard-headed, self-serving, and ruthless in a way that most people find unpleasant. There’s a reason why “politician” and “journalist” are jobs at the bottom of the list when it comes to public trust, and watching these two tonight brought that reason to the fore.
So why the fuck are they both on a light entertainment panel show? When Bishop was asked “Who has more to hide – politicians or football players?” she said “Well, that’s line-ball, isn’t it?” And then there was yet another obvious edit and we never came close to finding out what she really thought. So why have her on if all she had to do was throw around a few quips and answer everything else with vague motherhood statements like privacy is good and the government should sort this out?
Crabb didn’t come off much better mind you, as like most journalists she was extremely concerned about her own privacy while not being particularly bothered about snooping on everyone else’s. That’s perfectly fine, of course – we want our journalists to dig up the good dirt – but as the bubbly friendly face of your girlish ABC, having her seem like someone who’d throw you under a bus if it got her a scoop was maybe not something the ABC PR department should have signed off on. Back to baking cakes with dog-whistling racists for you.
But the real problem was that in the end this was just an extremely average panel show focusing on an issue they just made up. The cut scenes designed to move the story forward were nothing special and nowhere near as weird or as funny (“I want to conduct some government business… IN YOUR PANTS”) as a regular news bulletin, while the non-specialist nature of the panel meant that even when they were on topic most of their answers were vague generalities or attempts to one-up each other.
And if this kind of shit topic is the weirdest subject they can find in the 21st Century they really need to sack their researchers. Next week’s episode is about the ethics of designer babies? Wow, what’s next: should footballers be allowed to do recreational drugs in the off season? Will driverless trucks cost jobs in the trucking industry? Is it okay for your son to announce she’s a girl? What if guns bad?
What we want to see is a scenario where an ABC panel show does an episode that suggests global warming and the mining industry are linked and the death of the Great Barrier Reef is only the beginning and then they get taken off air halfway through for “political bias”. Only maybe just skip straight to the “taken off air” part.
ABC Funding Gets Frayed
Press release time!
ABC and Sky (UK) Announce New Comedy Frayed
Internationally-acclaimed, award-winning Australian comedian Sarah Kendall stars in the bittersweet comedy/drama Frayed, a co-commission between ABC and Sky (UK). The 6 x 45’ comedy is the first scripted collaboration between the two broadcasters and is now filming in Newcastle (NSW), Sydney, and London.
Set in 1989, Frayed follows the journey of Sammy Cooper (Sarah Kendall), a fabulously wealthy London housewife who is forced to return to the town in Australia she grew up in. In coming home, Sammy must revisit her past and the events that led her to flee as a teenager years ago.
Painfully funny and sometimes dark, Frayed is full of complex characters, dubious decisions, and unfortunate events; and at its heart is the journey of one flawed family confronting their secrets and trying to find a way back.
Creator/Star Sarah Kendall says: “I just wanted to visit my family in Newcastle but I ended up shooting a 6 part comedy here for the ABC and Sky. I’m incredibly excited to be given this opportunity. And I also love free flights.”
Sky’s Head of Comedy Jon Mountague says: “We can all relate in some way to complex family drama, which is at the heart of this ingeniously written comedy. Sarah Kendall is an exceptional lead and I’m excited to add Frayed to Sky’s line-up of original British comedy in 2019.”
ABC Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski says: “Frayed is among the funniest, but also most moving, pieces I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on. I’d been a fan of Sarah Kendall’s standup for years and am delighted to be collaborating with Sky, Sharon Horgan and Clelia Mountford’s Merman, and Kevin Whyte’s Guesswork to bring Frayed to Australian and worldwide audiences next year.”
Create NSW Acting Director Screen Investment, Engagement and Attraction Sally Regan adds: “We’re delighted to support such a unique and comical series from Merman and Guesswork. Frayed is an engaging and topical narrative that audiences will warm to as well as generate opportunities for production in regional NSW.”
Frayed is created and written by star Kendall and produced by Merman Television (Motherland/BBC, There She Goes/BBC, Women on the Verge/UKTV, Catastrophe C4/Amazon), the production company founded and run by award-winning duo Sharon Horgan and Clelia Mountford, in association with Australia’s Guesswork Television (ABC’s Rosehaven, Get Krack!n, Please Like Me). Joining Sarah Kendall is an exceptional Australian and British ensemble cast to be announced soon.
Frayed will air in 2019 on ABC in Australia and Sky and streaming service NOW TV in the UK.
Sky Vision will distribute Frayed internationally.
A 45 minute comedy? That’s new ground for the ABC… if this actually is a comedy, as you don’t really need to read anywhere near between the lines to see this is a project skewing more than a little towards the drama side of the fence. “Complex family drama”? “Moving”? “Generate opportunities for production in regional NSW”? Sounds hilarious.
But of course, this isn’t really an ABC comedy as we used to know it: it’s an international production with a (now) international star that just happens to be filmed here. And this is probably the best we can hope for until someone in the Federal government starts giving the ABC more money – the national broadcaster chipping in a few pennies here and there to piggyback on a project that could just as easily have turned up on a pay network or streaming site here. After all, that’s where it’s going overseas.
We really should get around to compiling that list of scripted ABC comedy from the last few years that wasn’t a co-production with a bigger, richer overseas partner. Probably won’t take very long.
Vale Back in Very Small Business
For a show that was ultimately more interested in plot than laughs, Back in Very Small Business didn’t exactly nail it when it came to plot, did it? Which made a show that was already pretty disappointing as a sitcom – and really disappointing if you remember Very Small Business – into a pretty disappointing dramedy too.
Episode 7 ended on a dramatic cliff-hanger: someone had made a complaint about the Don’s Dirty Dog Wash rooting dogs logo and things weren’t looking good for Angel Family Enterprises (formerly World Wide Business Group). So, episode 8 was about the team trying to save the company – the rooting dogs logo being a principle reason that Don’s Dirty Dog Wash was an actual successful business. Cue one of Don’s trademark rants about how small business is the backbone of the economy and people like him should be allowed to do their thing without government interference…something his staff had the presence of mind to film on their phones, and then post online, where it went viral and saved the company. Hooray!
And we know what you’re thinking: that’s actually quite a realistic plot. That kind of thing happens all the time, right? Except, it wouldn’t play out like that in real life for Angel Family Enterprises, would it? Because the other thing that happens in real life is that within minutes of something starting to get traction on social media, lots of haterz, nerds and the occasional legit journalist start picking it apart. And hot on the heels of that ACCC investigation into one of Don’s businesses selling poisonous pineapple rubbers to kids (as seen earlier in the series), how long do you think it would have taken social media to make a link between Don’s Dirty Dog Wash and the pineapple rubbers. Five minutes, maybe? Which would have killed, or at least severely dented, any attempt at a campaign to save the Dog Wash. Because, sure, everyone likes rooting dogs, but quite a lot fewer people are into kids being poisoned by novelty stationery. Or most of the other dodgy things Don Angel’s done in the world of business over the years. Don Angel’s basically a small-scale Alan Bond or Christopher Skase. In real life, he’d have a crew from A Current Affair permanently on his tail, or be in jail.
Still, at least it was funny, right? Er…no. Unless you’re laughing every time you see the rooting dogs. And that was the other big problem with Back in Very Small Business, it basically wasn’t a comedy. It had some funny bits in it, and plenty of “wacky” characters, but comedy wasn’t the main focus of the show. There’s not much hilarious in “ex-husband and wife get back together and because they’re well-off baby boomers go around looking for a winery to buy”. That’s a re-working of the plot of SeaChange, a show which was also occasionally funny but is mainly remembered for having a plot and characters that people could get invested in.
Which brings us the ultimate problem with Back In Very Small Business: the plot was a bit rubbish and the characters weren’t very well developed. Sure, we knew who Don was, and to a lesser extent who Ray and Leslie and Sam were, but the rest of them were sort of cardboard cut-outs – the lazy young woman one, the ditzy receptionist one, the earnest/horny Asian one, the ex-military one, the Indian one, and the woman who ran the toilet paper business who didn’t even have an ethnicity or quirk one…
Good sitcoms can get laughs from their characters that aren’t “this person is an idiot due to their quirk/ethnicity”. And good sitcoms have plots that make sense, which occur or are enhanced by the characters. Back in Very Small Business was disappointing because it had neither of these. It felt like something that was made quickly without the makers thinking it through properly first. Like we said a few weeks back: go watch the original, it was heaps better.
Something About Blood and Sucking
Press release time!
Fresh Blood’s newest talent comes to ABC COMEDY + iview
The ABC is pleased to announce four exciting new pilots produced as part of series two of Fresh Blood will go to air on ABC COMEDY from November 20.
In addition,all four pilots will be available on ABC iview and ABC COMEDY YouTube from Tuesday 20 November.
Fresh Blood is a ground-breaking ABC and Screen Australia initiative that seeks to uncover the next generation of Australian comedy talent. First launched in 2013, there were hundreds of entries of from all over the country that culminated in the Wham Bam Thankyou Ma’am and Fancy Boy sketch series (both co-produced with NBCU’s Seeso streaming platform (U.S.). Once again in 2017, 20 up-and-coming comedy teams were given $15,000 each to produce a 3×5 minute comedy project. This year, four of those were chosen to produce a half hour comedy pilot, with one or possibly two projects to be commissioned to make a 6-part series. Those pilots are:
KOALA MAN – ABC COMEDY Tues November 20 at 9.30pm (on iview the same day) ABC’s first adult animated comedy pilot. By day, Kevin is a divorced dad, stuck in a dull IT job at the local council. By night, clad in a koala mask, he’s a superhero clearing the streets of petty crime. He won’t stop until he’s rid the town of every last loiterer, litterer, and local kid who looks dodgy at the park. Voice Cast/ Creator/ Writer/ Director – Michael Cusack, Producer Mike Cowap. Executive Producers: Paul Walton, Emma Fitzsimons (Princess Pictures);
WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS – ABC COMEDY Tues November 27 at 9.30pm (iview from Nov 20) Best friends Penny and Mia are navigating their 20s in Melbourne. Guided by their own, often deeply misguided modern day moral code they confront complex social issues in an outrage-driven world, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Creators Naomi Higgins, Humyara Mahbub, Mark Samual Bonanno, Producer Sarah Freeman, Directors Jessie Oldfield & Adam Murfet.
THE ANGUS PROJECT – ABC COMEDY Tues December 4 at 9.30pm (on iview from Nov 20) Angus, an aspiring sports journalist with cerebral palsy, employs his hopeless best friend Nina, a failing university student, to be his carer. Together they go on wild adventures and get up to no good in the regional NSW town of Bathurst. Director/Producer/Writer/Cast Nina Oyama, Cast ‘Angus’ Angus Thompson, Producer Bronte Rose Jovevski. Guest cast includes Rob Sitch (Utopia) and Veronica Milsom (Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell), and Sammy J.
BE YOUR OWN BOSS – ABC COMEDY Tues December 11 at 9.30pm (on iview from Nov 20) When the Pearl Regional Council established the “Be Your Own Boss” initiative, they offered small business owners mentorship and free rent within the Pearl Arcade. The various recipients are: husband and wife gym instructor duo Chelle and Jase; mother and son ‘uncaged’ pet shop owners Paula and Angelo; and theatre entrepreneurs Ashleigh and Ashley. Creator/Writers/Performers Cameron James and Becky Lucas, Producer Nikita Agzarian, Director Henry Stone. Guest cast includes Mel Buttle, Greta Lee Jackson.
ABC Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski said “These four outstanding pilots – as different in style as could be imagined – point to the incredible depth of new comedy talent in Australia. All four creative teams will surely enjoy great comedy careers, and ABC is thrilled to be there at their start”.
Lee Naimo, Online Investment Manager at Screen Australia said: “It’s exciting to see these teams take the next step and deliver four very strong pilot episodes that showcase the breadth of comedic talent in Australia. These projects display diversity, creativity and ambition and I hope this exposure acts as a launching pad to future opportunities in the industry for these talented teams.”
Executive Producer Nick Hayden said “The ABC has a storied history of producing risky, boundary pushing entertainment and comedy content that supports new talent. These four incredible Fresh Blood pilots continue that excellent tradition. Added bonus, they’re damn funny too!”
So, do these four pilots “point to the incredible depth of new comedy talent in Australia”? Well, yes – in that they point to the fact that the only thing incredible about the depth of comedy talent in Australia is that no-one’s broken their neck diving into it.
But don’t take our word for it… oh wait, you have to take our word for it, as nobody else watched the original pilots. So here’s our verdict on each:
Koala Man: “It’s easy to see this working as a 30-minute sitcom, so we’re okay with it getting $75,000 to make one”. Thumbs up from us there.
The Angus Project: “This isn’t bad either… it could work”. Sounds pretty positive coming from us.
Why Are You Like This: “None of this is funny”. Oh dear.
Be Your Own Boss: Okay, we don’t seem to have reviewed this one… because it wasn’t actually an entrant in last year’s Fresh Blood program. Hmmm.
We did review True Murder, which was from the same guys and which did screen in the 2017 Fresh Blood program – we said “stick with it, it’s a pretty funny show” – but does it seem a little odd to anyone else that one team seems to have made it through to the next level with a completely different show to the one that previously aired?
Maybe Be Your Own Boss is a brilliantly funny idea – we haven’t seen it, so we don’t know – but we’re pretty sure a lot of the Fresh Blood losing contestants would have said they had another even more brilliantly funny idea they’d like to try if they were given a second chance. Which they weren’t.
And it does undercut the idea of having a pilot season if you can get through with a (hilarious) one-off idea and then say “we think we’d like to make this other show instead”. If it’s just a plain old talent quest – which it clearly is, considering it’s a “Screen Australia initiative that seeks to uncover the next generation of Australian comedy talent” – why bother with all the talk of pilots?
Put plainly, isn’t the point of having a pilot season that people are making pilots of shows that can go to series? If you had a brilliantly funny idea that could only work once, that’s not a pilot – that’s a special.
And special isn’t really a word anyone’s used to describe Fresh Blood.
How To Stay Married (and whatever happened to those Pilot Week shows)
Remember how Pilot Week was going to bring us Ten’s next hit comedy? How it was kind of exciting to work out which of the pilots would get a series? How we’ve been waiting for ages to hear which shows are going to series, and have heard nothing?
Well, it turns out, that Ten’s next new comedy isn’t one of the Pilot Week shows, but one they announced last November, and which is based on the first episode of the ABC’s 2013 show It’s a Date.
Cue the media release…
A First Look At How To Stay Married.
Starring Peter Helliar And Lisa McCune.
Coming Soon To The WIN Network.Harry and Meghan. Tim and Anna. Biebs and Baldwin. It’s all champagne and roses in the beginning. But how do you keep the home fires burning 14 years down the track, when bikinis have made way for a one-piece and there’s a small child sleeping in your bed every night?
Starring Pete Helliar and Lisa McCune, How To Stay Married goes behind the closed doors of a two-point four family who are stuck in a rut. Greg (Helliar) and Em (McCune) have been married for 14 years, but their relationship is lacking any spark. Life gets complicated when Em goes back to work for the first time since the kids were born, just as Greg is made redundant.
A funny, honest, warts-and-all take on parenting, careers and partnerships in 2018, How To Stay Married tackles the big issues modern day marriages face, from managing screentime, to date night expectations and what actually constitutes hard-rubbish. The series also stars Phil Lloyd playing Greg’s man-child brother Brad, and unconventional neighbours Terry (Darren Gilshenan) and Marlo (Nikki Britton).
There’s also this preview video:
It looks…OK? The episode of It’s a Date that it’s based on had a decent premise (a couple with young kids are using date night and role play to keep their waning marriage interesting). And, to be fair, there is currently a hole in the Australian comedy market for a mass-appeal sitcom where mildly wacky things happen to relatable people. We haven’t had a show like that since Squinters, as this year’s other sitcoms have tended to focus on outlier characters and situations (Street Smart, Back in Very Small Business, Sando). And even though Squinters wasn’t particularly funny, in theory, a show in that style could work on a commercial network. We shall see.
And in the meantime, we won’t be holding our breath that any of the Pilot Week shows are getting the green light. Especially the Dave O’Neil-penned sitcom Dave, which while one of the more promising Pilot Week efforts, is somewhat similar to How To Stay Married (in that it’s also about a middle-aged couple with kids who live in the suburbs and get into mildly wacky scrapes). Ah well.
The More Things Change…
… the more we get new episodes of SeaChange. Wait, what?
The return of ABC drama SeaChange, Lego Masters, Bad Mothers, and a new Hamish and Andy series were among the content highlights at Nine’s 2019 upfronts on Wednesday evening.
Nine announced actors Sigrid Thornton and John Howard will be returning as Laura Gibson and Bob Jelly for the new series of SeaChange, more than two decades after the show first aired.
What was the last time Nine announced they were reviving a much-loved ABC comedy series – that reboot of The Games they let quietly die? And that was a show people actually wanted back because there wasn’t anything else like it on our screens.
But SeaChange never really left: there isn’t a lightweight commercial drama on Australian television this century that doesn’t rip it off on one level or another. “A big city white collar professional moves to a quirky country town”? Shit, they’re going to have their work cut out persuading viewers it’s not a spin-off of Doctor Doctor.
Aside from that news – which, let’s be real here, relies entirely on every single person interested in seeing more SeaChange forgetting just how hard and fast that series went from “must-see TV” to “embarrassing train wreck” – the other big shock announcement was the return of Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation for 2019. Didn’t that fizzle out in the ratings? Presumably keeping Micallef around will make having him revive his own SeaChange character that much easier.
Otherwise, as Nine isn’t exactly known as the home of comedy these days the news out of the upfronts was of limited interest here. No new True Story with Hamish & Andy for 2019 is kind of disappointing – what, they’ve exhausted Australia’s supply of bullshit artists already? – and Hamish is off pulling host duties on the gimmicky Lego Masters (sponsored content in which people build hopefully cool stuff with Lego), but the duo will be back with this:
Hamish and Andy’s ‘Perfect’ Holiday
Next year Hamish and Andy return to what they love best, travelling. Audiences fell in love with their gap year seasons and their caravan specials. 3 Now the boys will embark on another action packed adventure, but this time with a slight twist, in Hamish and Andy’s “Perfect” Holiday. Hamish and Andy’s “Perfect” Holiday is produced by Radio Karate for Nine.
Which sounds… somewhat less interesting, but 100% on brand for a 2019 line-up that seems even more focused than usual on reviving and maintaining creatively bankrupt franchises. And Nine’s the network that’s doing reasonably well these days: if you can’t take a few risks when the books are looking good, when can you?
Guess we’ll have to wait for Ten to announce their 2019 line-up to find out,
The all new Black Comedy
The third series of Black Comedy feels different to previous series. Gone is the popular recurring sketch Tiddas and its catchphrase “What’s this then, slut?”, along with writer/performer Steven Oliver, and filling the gap are some new cast members, a bunch of new recurring sketches and a slightly different feel to the show.
Basically, Black Comedy feels like less of a traditional, big and bold sketch show, with over-the-top characters and stereotypes – although there are still some of those – and more of a serious, politically-minded show with an emphasis on realism. So, while an episode still might open with a boom-tish gag like… “I said a car robbery, not a corroboree!” …later in the show, there’ll be a sketch with rather more bite.
When an indigenous girl brings her white boyfriend home for dinner to meet her parents, he, seemingly, does the right thing by bringing them a gift. “I hope it’s not smallpox” quips the Dad. Actually, it’s worse than that, it’s a Monopoly set. And as the evening progresses, whitey manages to bleed the family dry of all their assets, citing laws of ownership they’re unfamiliar with, and plunging them into debt and poverty. In another similar sketch, a white couple plays Scrabble with an indigenous man, and refuse to accept his indigenous words as he “can’t prove they’re real”. These aren’t exactly hilarious sketches – more horrifying and tragic – but the message is clear.
On a lighter note, there’s this parody of a TV morning show called “Wake Up To Yourself” (the sort of parody TV show title you’d expect of Get Krack!n), where a panel earnestly discuss whether white people are cunts or not. Conclusion: they are.
And fair enough, too.*
Then there’s the more standard sketch show fare, like a parody of The Exorcist with the big reveal that it’s not a possession, just a slovenly cousin who won’t piss off. Or the traditional dance troupe performing for tourists who perform dances about such contemporary rituals as waiting for the dole cheque. Or the uber-PC gay, indigenous housemates, stressing about their cleaner.
There’s some good stuff in this show, from a mix of established and up-and-coming writer/performers. The only problem and we say this about a lot of sketch shows (because it’s true), is that it feels like there’s no shared vision for this show beyond “it’s an all-indigenous cast”. We get that the very fact of an all-indigenous sketch show is pretty visionary (not to mention long overdue), but for this to be a really great show it’s got to be more than that.
* Would it be cunty to point out that this is quite similar to Not The Nine O’Clock News’ Soccer Hooligan sketch, i.e. “Cut off their goolies”, where the basic gag is that the solution to a complex problem is a reductionist, sweary generalisation? Probably.
Vale Australian Stories (Street Smart and True Story)
Australian sitcoms are rarely story-driven. Sure, they have stories, but the laughs usually come from the characters and the dialogue. Kath & Kim was a classic, but what sticks in the mind: the plots, or Kel’s butt-wiggling walk? Whether it’s due to financial limitations or simply playing to their strengths, even the most ambitious Australian sitcoms rarely get much past a group of people in a handful of settings bantering with each other.
So it was something of a surprise to have two comedies based on telling funny stories airing at the same time: Street Smart and True Story with Hamish & Andy. Okay, True Story wasn’t really a surprise – it had been on last year, after all, and this year was basically more of the same only with a slightly less star-studded cast. But whereas last year it seemed like a quirky one-off from the much-loved comedy duo (who’d probably been watching an episode or two of US series Drunk History), having it appear alongside (well, kind of) Street Smart put a new spin on things.
Not that much of anyone saw Street Smart, which was dumped from an early evening Sunday night slot after its first episode. But if you kept the television on after Have You Been Paying Attention? ended each week you would have seen it still plugging away well past its intended audiences of twelve year-olds’ bedtimes doing what it did best… which wasn’t really all that much, because it wasn’t great.
At the other end of the scale, True Story with Hamish & Andy was a class act all the way, even when the episode was about guys dressed as jockeys making a dick of themselves at the Melbourne Cup. Thanks to the hosts skill and charm when it came to teasing the stories out of their civilian guests, plus a halfway decent budget for cast and filming (guess not having official writers pays off… for everyone but the writers), the end result was a comedy highlight.
What they both had in common was the idea of comedy as someone telling you a silly story where things keep on getting out of control. On Street Smart – oh yeah, it was a sitcom about a gang of suburban numbnuts who each week tried (and failed) at a pathetic get-rich-quick crime like stealing money out of shopping trolleys – the stories weren’t “true” (and the characters were cliches, and the dialogue was childish, and you get the idea), but that didn’t stop them being funny: that shopping trolley episode featured a sword fight (involving a toilet brush) between two guys atop a chain of trolleys rolling downhill, which is the kind of comedy visual “quality” most Australian comedy can only dream of.
This idea – that a funny sitcom might want to start with a funny story and go from there – seems obvious until you actually watch Australian comedy. We’re definitely enjoying Back in Very Small Business but it’s a show where the plot is largely there to give the characters a chance to be funny, not something that’s funny in itself. And with most Australian comedy traditionally built around characters or situations, it’s an approach that makes sense.
But occasionally it’s nice to see a comedy that tries something a little different. After all, when someone tells you a funny story there’s usually a decent chance it’ll be funny: when someone is introduced to you as “a bit of a character”, that’s the internationally recognised signal to run.