Australian Tumbleweeds
Pilot Week Day 7 and Wrap Up – Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
Pilot Week’s final installment Bring Back… Saturday Night was in many ways the least surprising: Rove doing a live tonight show. Now there’s a fresh new format.
The show itself was… fine? Rove is Rove, which is to say he’s the best light entertainment host in the country so long as you don’t expect him to be funny. The show itself moved along at a decent pace, which we actually liked – it seems for some people out there “live TV” means “endless fucking waffle why not just bring back Daryl Somers while you’re at it”, but shouty and frenetic is no bad thing when you’re being filmed in a tiny shed – and while the various segments were a bit hit and miss, for a 70-minute show it generally held together well. Our advice would be more Judith Lucy, less Merrick Watts, no Tom Gleeson, but that’s a good motto in general.
The problem with live variety these days is… who’s it actually for? Especially when “variety” basically just means a talk show with a musical number thrown in. Variety television worked when television was most people’s only home entertainment option and so a show that lumped a bunch of things together could expect to pull a wide audience: these days people only watch shows that feature things they actually want to watch, and “variety” in and of itself is rarely one of those things.
That said, this is one of the few Pilot Week shows we could see actually working. Saturday night is a television dead zone, so if they could make it cheaply enough – and with Rove’s company already making The Project for Ten, there may be a way to spread the costs – the pressure would be off as far as dumping it for something more profitable (well, until Ten got some sporting rights back at least). And this kind of show has a bunch of side benefits for a network: it’s handy for cross-promotion, it gives overseas guests somewhere to appear (which advertisers always appreciate), and it gives the network a friendly face or two that helps for branding purposes. Plus it’s Rove: you give him a show like this and he’s not going to mess it up.
On the flip side, no-one cares about variety and no-one gives a fuck about Saturday nights. Tough call.
*
So what about Pilot Week as a whole? Well, as a publicity stunt from a cash-strapped network who got to throw on a bunch of shows that cost them basically nothing and let them pretend the audience was going to have a say in which ones went to series, it was fine. But if you were expecting anything more than that, you were shit out of luck.
Sure, maybe Network Ten really will pay attention to ratings and social media reactions when it comes time to deciding which one of these pilot to take to series*. But if you watched any of Pilot Week as it happened, you probably noticed a commercial or two promoting Ten’s upcoming Footballers Wives-esque drama series Playing For Keeps. Funny how that didn’t have to go through Pilot Week before getting picked up. Funny how it was only a collection of below-par garbage shows that Ten threw out there to fight for your love.
But if we were given the power to choose, which ones would go to series? Trial by Kyle was a prank played on the viewers; no. Skit Happens was the same sketch show we’ve been making in this country for a decade without success: no. Dave was Dave O’Neil’s vanity project, and while it showed promise Dave O’Neil is not currently a leading man; no. Disgrace was well titled: no.
After that things get marginally more interesting. Taboo was a decent show… for the ABC or SBS. On Ten? Bit iffy. Likewise, Drunk History would probably work well on Foxtel or Stan, but on Ten it felt a little slight – especially as it wouldn’t have the star power of the similar True Story with Hamish & Andy. If Ten picked up either it’d be a bit of a break from being the network that commissioned Cram!, that’s for sure.
We’ve made our case for Bring Back… Saturday Night above: that just leaves Kinne Tonight. We couldn’t say this was the best show of Pilot Week with a straight face, but it was probably the best all-round product: it was a better sketch show than Skit Happens, Kinne is a decent host and the “live” side of things was strong, and it wouldn’t take much to incorporate a “true story” segment into the show if they didn’t want to go all in on Drunk History. if it had just been funnier it would have been the clear winner: then again, if it had been funnier it wouldn’t have been part of Pilot Week.
Really though, none of these shows in their current form deserve another shot. Comedy on the commercial networks is still a tricky business to get right, and compared to previous years we’re living in a golden age, what with True Story, Have You Been Paying Attention and Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures doing well. The last thing we need is yet another crap unfunny comedy lurching onto our screens and stinking up the place so badly all anyone takes away from the mess is that Australian commercial television should leave the funny stuff well enough alone.
And if you disagree… well, Pilot Week may be over, but there’s still new episodes of Street Smart being shown each week.
*the answer, obviously, would be ‘none of them” as nothing in Pilot Week did better than 500,000 ratings-wise, which technically makes them all flops – especially as most did worse.
Number One with a Bullet
Press release time!
Spicks and Specks reuniting to celebrate ABC’s Ausmusic Month
Hands on buzzers, it’s time to play Spicks and Specks! ABC is thrilled to announce that Australia’s favourite music quiz show is coming back for a one off, one night, hour special. Kicking off ABC’s Ausmusic Month in November, Adam Hills, Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough are gearing up to celebrate Australian music as only they know how; with returning old favourite games, some new surprises, and of course plenty of laughs.
Our team captains will be joined by award-winning rapper Adam Briggs, singer, songwriter Ricki-Lee Coulter and comedians Frank Woodley and Denise Scott. Dropping in on the night will be a fantastic line-up of Australia’s music greats, both past and present. They’ll all play along, put their music knowledge to the test, share their anecdotes and perform live.
With our favourite comedians also joining in, the Spicks and Specks Reunion Special promises to be an unforgettable night of music and madness.
The Spicks and Specks Reunion Special will screen as part of ABC’s annual Ausmusic Month in November. For the month of November, ABC celebrates and embraces Australian music across all its platforms with special initiatives, live performances and programming, highlighting and paying tribute to the diverse, depth and variety of Australian music. Stay tuned for more Ausmusic Month highlights.
Yaaaay! Finally Josh Earl, Adam Richard and Ella Hooper will get to make their triumphant… oh, wait. It’s not the 2014 reboot reunion we’ve all been waiting for? Bugger.
Just to get in early before all the “why oh why did the ABC ever let it go?” hot takes, here’s why Spicks and Specks mk.1 ended:
a): The ABC was getting rid of all of its in-house productions, for reasons that were never particularly clear but almost certainly driven by ideology – mostly the belief that the private sector is always better at everything. How’s that working out?
b): Spicks and Specks was put together on a punishing schedule – at least some of the main cast had been complaining for years about its rush job approach to production. Basically, the leads were burnt out; the ABC had killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
So while b): explains why all your favourites left, a): explains why the ABC didn’t – at first – simply recast the main hosts and keep it going. Which would have made a lot more sense than the fuck-up approach they ended up taking once someone there realised the show that had been the ratings lynchpin of the ABC’s Wednesday night line-up (you know, the night where they actually used to win the ratings) had slipped away.
Don’t worry though, because back in 2012 the ABC had a sure-fire replacement all lined up to take Spicks and Specks‘ place in our hearts and on our screens for the next 27 weeks and beyond. Get back to us when they do a reunion special for Australia’s favourite word-based quiz Randling, ok?
Pilot Week Day 6 – it’ll make you hungry
As the only sitcom of Pilot Week, Dave O’Neil’s Dave looked like a breath of fresh air. Until we started watching it.
Dave is about one day in the life of Dave O’Neil, suburban comedian and family man. He takes his kids to school, hangs out with his mates, has to find a famous friend to host the high school fete, and struggles with the burden of being famous enough that people know him without being famous enough that people respect him.
For a while – a long while – after Curb Your Enthusiasm first aired, there was a rush of Australian comedians pitching shows that would be about them and their wacky yet also extremely relatable upper-middle-class lives. Peter Moon did one. Nick Giannopoulos tried to do one. Dave Hughes sort of did one. And now Dave O’Neil has done one. So it’s safe to say this is a straight-down-the-middle pitch to “mainstream Australia.” If you’re hungry for jokes about how much Dave likes his food, you won’t go starving here.
O’Neil has been working off-camera as a writer for decades on countless Australian comedy series, so script-wise this is pretty tight. There are call-backs, running gags, plot twists that make sense, and a few nice moments of character work (ie, Dave’s wife’s slightly OCD worries about leaving the hair straightener on). The suburban locations were good, the cast were strong, and if none of the side characters really made much of an impression past the initial joke… well, this is a pilot: those roles would almost certainly be recast anyway.
Here’s a problem we didn’t think we’d have with Dave: it turns out Dave O’Neil isn’t a great actor. He’s playing a lovable, slightly beleaguered suburban dad, but O’Neil – who’s a likable performer – constantly defaults to a kind of broad comedy bluster that feels a little put on. It’s sketch comedy acting in a sitcom that’s largely aiming for naturalistic, and it means we never quite click with “Dave” the way this kind of story requires us to.
Sure, loads of sitcoms have been built around stand-ups who aren’t great at acting. But this isn’t like Seinfeld where Jerry Seinfeld is part of an ensemble and is deliberately playing a kind of stand-offish jerk: this is a show about Dave O’Neil, where he’s the focus of literally every single scene. He’s got a couple of scenes next to Glenn Robbins and Robbins – playing a character that is if anything slightly less realistic than Dave – is totally relaxed and believable as his character in a way that Dave never quite is.
Are we saying Dave O’Neil is so bad an actor he can’t convincingly play himself? Yeah, nah: just being yourself in front of a camera is extremely difficult, and it’s not a surprise that O’Neil – who’s on-camera work has either been in sketch comedy or playing a comedy version of himself on panel shows – might seem a little forced in a half hour sitcom built around himself. It’s not that he’s not funny either; it’s easy to see him being hilarious in a different kind of sitcom where his broader performance was more in tune with the general tone. But here, in a sitcom shot entirely on location with a cast of professional actors and a story that’s clearly meant to be a slightly heightened version of reality, his performance is just a little bit out of wack.
So should this go to pilot? Well… maybe not this exact show. But a show a lot like this – one where maybe there was a stronger supporting cast, even one where the focus was shifted slightly (O’Neil would be a great dad in a sitcom where the focus was on the kids) – would definitely be something worth watching. Just don’t expect it to turn up on the ABC:
Over the period between shooting and airing, O’Neil struggled to find a home for the comedy, with no luck from ABC.
“ABC is where I became known doing Spicks & Specks, Good News Week, Adam Hills, Randling and all sorts of stuff. But if you are a white middle-aged man they don’t want to see you, basically,” he says.
“They are doing all sorts of diversity, which is great.”
Pilot Week Day 5 – it’ll make you… um…
As suspected, Trial by Kyle was just Judge Judy hosted by fading media question mark Kyle Sandilands. Not surprisingly, it completely failed to hold our attention, had none of the spark of the original (where the original joke was that a real judge had to deal with this rubbish) and couldn’t even be considered comedy.
So it was shit: let’s move on.
Pilot Week Day 4 – it’ll make you wonder
Hey look, Kinne’s back!
And we mean that in the truest sense of the term, as Kinne Tonight is pretty much identical to Troy Kinne’s previous show on Channel Seven: there are traditional sketches, rapid-fire listical skits, a bit of live stand-up, the kind of harmless street prank that Hamish & Andy used to do, and plenty of Kinne himself being a knockabout decent bloke. If it ain’t broke, and so on.
Pretty much the only things new here are a couple of live sketches and an interview that’s mostly about asking embarrassing questions (the target is Rob “Milsey” Mills, so that’s fine). The opening sketch even features Roz Hammond from his Seven show; maybe it’s a hold over from 2015? Still, there’s always a sense throughout that we’re getting a peek into the way Kinne sees the world; there’s a fair bit of variety in the bits, but they’re all held together by a particular and distinct point of view.
The result is about as good a sketch comedy format as we’ve seen in this country in a long time. Unlike Skit Happens, which just felt like random scenes clumped together, this has a reason for existing as a show; with Kinne as host, there’s a decent hook to hang the show on, and his comedy voice gives it a tone that’s a lot stronger than just a bunch of things a writer’s room thought was funny.
And it’s not like he dominates the show either*; there’s a small sketch troupe that rapidly establish their own personalities, making it possible to throw in the occasional corpse or silly improv and have it feel like a bunch of mates messing around. You know – exactly the tone you want to have on a sketch show.
If only it was funny.
Kinne Tonight does everything right, but the material just isn’t there. The best sketches and moments get a laugh or two, but the worst – and there’s too much of the worst – just lies there. The opening “what if coffee orders reflected the wankers doing the ordering” sketch had good points but definitely needed tightening up, and that was a problem across the board.
Too many sketches felt like they’d thrown in every possible variation on the original idea when they really should have whittled it down to the top five (or three). Even with Kinne literally explaining the premise before the sketch about what it’d be like to have parents like the hapless dolts on infomercials, it was hard to figure out exactly what was going on there – it really needed to set things up more strongly in the sketch itself.
Kinne himself is a great host for a sketch show like this, and the cast were rock-solid too. The format mixed things up so the material always seemed fresh, and the tone was light without getting snarky or self-absorbed. Kinne just needs to find a comedy nerd to team up with who can polish up his material and push it over the top. There’s no point having the best looking car on the road if the damn thing won’t start.
*if anyone remembers Shaun Micallef’s old sketch comedy rule that whenever he’s the host on a show (and as such, has the superior status all hosting scenes – he’s running things) he always plays low status characters in the sketches, they’ll be pleased to see that Kinne follows that same rule here.
Pilot Week day 3 – it’ll make you cry
So was Taboo any good? That’s the wrong question to ask, and by wrong we mean offensive: as a show about the heart-warming struggle of a group of disabled people, we should be applauding the very fact they’ve made into on Australian television screens. But it does make it a little tricky to review… and maybe that’s the point.
As easily the most worthy of the Pilot Week line-up – unless you think rehabilitating Kyle Sandiland’s career is somehow a good deed – this one hour look at stand-up Harley Breen’s work interacting with four disabled people and turning their stories into stand-up comedy is the kind of thing we’d usually expect to see on the ABC or SBS. It’s positive, feel-good television even as it deals with people dealt a bum hand by life; while tears were not shed at Casa Del Tumblies, it’s not hard to imagine those with human feelings being deeply affected.
And the stand-up material is… not bad? It’s a bit of a cheat in a way; having seen where it came from (and feeling sympathetic towards the people he’s learnt from) puts a spin on the finished material that it definitely wouldn’t have had going in cold. But you know “I know where that came from” is just as good a reason to laugh at a joke as any, and the material isn’t exactly PC either; because we’ve seen Breen listen and treat the people whose stories he’s using with respect, he’s able to safely go in harder than he could if he was just some random guy going “ha ha, you can’t walk”.
But as the ABC and SBS have learnt over the years, this kind of material is pretty much review-proof: you attack the show and it comes off as an attack on the people in the show. Good luck making it to the border alive if you happen to think You Can’t Ask That is cheap TV pandering to mainstream curiosity rather than a show tearing down barriers.
So as hard-hearted bastards, pretty much all we have to say here is that at an hour long this does overstay its welcome. Basically, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry. At least Breen isn’t painting their fucking portraits.
Pilot Week day 2 – it’ll get you drunk
One of the big problems the Australian commercial television industry faces is that it’s small. There are plenty of perfectly good ideas for television shows that we could do decent jobs of, but they’ll never get off the ground because if you’re not a massive crowd-pleasing success you’re not going to be shown in prime time, and if you’re not being shown in prime time then there’s no way to make enough money from advertising to turn a profit. Wait, isn’t this a review of Drunk History?
Drunk History is a tried and tested international format in which comedians get drunk and then try to tell historical tales. The US version has a host who gets drunk with the guests; the UK version – and the Australian pilot – simply has the guest get pissed on their lonesome, which is slightly less chummy but probably cheaper booze-wise.
This version featured two stories: Stephen Curry talking up Ned Kelly, and Rhys Darby rabbiting on about Phar Lap. Unlike Skit Happens, money was spent: the re-enactments looked good, the cast in said re-enactments was relatively star-heavy (even the minor roles: Aaron Chen, Paul Fenech and Heath Franklin made brief appearances), and if you were thinking “ooh, looks like Ten wants their own version of ratings-smash True Story“, we wouldn’t disagree with you.
But was it any good? Well, yeah: both leads are likable guys so thumbs up there, Curry’s segment was pretty rambling but there was some decent material (who doesn’t love bad Irish accents, apart from Irish people), while Darby – who has a bit more experience on the improv side of things – came up with a few decent jokes (nice work busting out the horse incest material right at the top of the segment).
Of course, the real fun here is meant to come from hearing a couple of pissed blokes trying to tell a story and messing it up, but for the most part they both kept relatively on-topic, making this more like “rambling guy at a party chatting away history” than the kind of history that ends up with someone’s head in the toilet. Basically, it’s a successful overseas format they would have had to spend money to license, and the pilot was a polished piece of work: with the very similar True Story doing well in the ratings, giving this eight episodes is pretty much a no-brainer.
But does that mean it’ll actually do well at a time when Ten has publicly said they want to shift upmarket? Uh… well, maybe this could survive as a series if they could get a bunch of high profile names involved (and if there’s free booze, why not), but otherwise all this episode did was remind us that there are a lot of decent (and not so decent) comedy ideas out there that are just too inessential to survive as prime time Australian television shows. Remember Street Smart? Was that even on this week?
This was mostly funny, largely informative and on the whole well made; it’s easily the best of the Pilot Week shows to date. And if Ten had a decent comedy timeslot available – say, if they’d worked hard to make Sunday evenings a place where various Australian comedy shows were aired – this would definitely be a good fit. But they don’t. And without a lot of support, this is the kind of decent but unmemorable comedy show that dies on its arse in this country.
Still, it’s got a better chance on a commercial network than tonight’s Pilot Week entry Taboo: that’s clearly an ABC format that’s wandered way off the reservation.
Pilot Week day 1 – It’ll give you the skits
Ten’s Pilot Week started with the ensemble sketch show Skit Happens and Sam Dastiyari’s Disgrace, in which the ex-politician and a panel analyse gutter journalism. And while the latter was a Gruen-style peek behind a curtain we’ve looked behind a number of times under our own steam, thanks, and Dastiyari and panel didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, Skit Happens was…yeah, actually it was like every traditional sketch show this country’s produced for ages. So, if you were expecting innovative new ideas and exciting talent from Pilot Week’s opening salvo, er, forget it.
Yes, that was Heath Franklin as a skateboarding Matt Preston. Because it’s seemingly impossible to make a sketch show in this country without parodying a popular show or personality via the medium of a lame high concept. Which means that we not only got Skateboarding Matt Preston but also a parody of Love Island but with desperate, single women competing for the interest of a cute fluffy cat, and a look into the life of a guy who’s Waleed Aly’s stand-by*. Stand-by Waleed, in case you’re wondering, spends all of his time in a “break in case of fire”-style glass box, waiting to be needed. Presumably, the box will be broken open and he’ll have his chance to shine in the final episode of the first series that Skit Happens isn’t getting.
Speaking of which…there were recurring characters too, or, given that this was a pilot, characters clearly designed to recur whether audiences embraced them or not. Enter Juan, the hot(-ish) Spanish fridge mechanic who can fix fridges by dancing to some sexy Latin beats and whispering sweet love to the afflicted white good. Or the Aussie backpackers driving a Combi van around Europe who have no interest in actually seeing the countries they’re visiting. Sure, we’ve all met people like the backpackers, but we never want to again. So by television logic, if Skit Happens gets a series we will. Every goddam week.
(what’s the difference between a good sketch show and a shit one? The good sketch show has sketches based on funny ideas; the shit sketch show has sketches based on “funny” characters)
Oh, and why is it that every single sketch in this show (and almost every other Australian sketch show made in the past 20 years) seems to go on for ages despite it containing just one (or less) comic ideas? Has anyone in TV ever considered that if they picked up the pace and gave that one idea the runtime it deserves (30 seconds or less), these shows might not haemorrhage viewers until they’re axed at the end of series one?
There are lots of problems with Skit Happens and sketch shows like it (and we’ll go into more detail about this when we’ve fully digested the full force of Pilot Week), but the basic problem here – apart from that it’s not very funny – is that there’s no reason for it to exist, let alone for viewers to tune in. The show isn’t built around any kind of over-arching concept or hook, and the personnel don’t seem to have a rapport or have worked together much so they haven’t developed a theme or a shared vision for what this show’s about. They’ve just created some characters and written some sketches and these are the least worst of them. Enjoy! Or not. Mostly not.
As for Disgrace… yeah, we’ve been there, done that, and it was hosted by Lawrence Mooney. But Unlike Dirty Laundry Live, this… actually, what did it do that was different from Dirty Laundry Live? Well, the entire panel was markedly less funny for starters. But surprisingly, they weren’t the usual faces, which gave it a couple points for novelty. And it desperately needed them, because a panel show discussing celebrity news is roughly 40% of Australian television once you factor in breakfast and morning shows and this did absolutely nothing to separate itself from the pack.
So yeah, this one’ll probably go to series. Just don’t expect us to tune in ever again.
* Just how bad was Skit Happens? We didn’t even laugh at the joke about Charlie Pickering’s shit-eating grin.
Now here’s… “Mr Black”
Sadly no, not this guy:
Here’s the scoop:
Stephen Curry is playing the curmudgeonly lead character who moves in with his daughter and her boyfriend in Mr. Black, a sitcom commissioned by Network Ten.
Created by Adam Zwar (Squinters, Wilfred, Agony) and co-written with Amanda Brotchie (Squinters, Lowdown), the eight-part series is being produced by CJZ and directed by Brotchie and Clayton Jacobson.
Nadine Garner (The Doctor Blake Mysteries, City Homicide) is Mr. Black’s estranged wife Rowena with Sophie Wright (Kinky Boots) as their daughter Angela and Nick Russell (Winners & Losers) as her sensitive, new-age boyfriend Fin. The other series regular is Paul Denny (Lowdown) as a character named Malcolm.
CJZ MD Nick Murray tells IF the idea for the sitcom came up while Zwar was developing another project with CJZ’s head of entertainment and comedy Damian Davis. The CJZ creatives loved the concept of the lead, a former sports journalist who insists on being called Mr. Black, being forced to move in with his daughter and her boyfriend due to ill health. Much of the humour turns on the fact that Mr. Black despises Fin and does all he can to try to break up the relationship.
Ten’s head of comedy Paul Leadon said: “It is a delight to be working with Adam and Amanda. They are an incredibly strong creative duo. Throw in Stephen Curry, Nadine Garner, an amazing cast, plus the team at CJZ and we have all the ingredients for a very special narrative comedy.”
Screen Australia and Film Victoria are investors in the production which is shooting in Melbourne.
The best part of these stories is always the origin of the idea, because while they don’t actually come out and say “we were laughing at this bit from The Simpsons and thought ‘lets do a show about this guy'” –
– we all know that’s pretty much what happened.
Because what’s the alternative? That Australia’s top comedy creatives “loved the concept” of a “very special narrative comedy” based around a “curmudgeonly lead character” making life hell for his more progressive offspring and her “sensitive, new-age boyfriend”?
You know, like Kingswood Country. A lot like Kingswood Country.
At least with our origin story they’re starting out with a show that was funny.
Dan Ilic’s Death Touch
Remember Tonightly?
Yeah, it’s been axed:
The ABC will not renew Tonightly with Tom Ballard beyond its final airing on 7 September. Attracting younger audiences requires bold approaches and we continually experiment with new content and new formats particularly on digital platforms. We remain committed to exploring and developing projects that connect with different demographics.
Tonightly deliberately pushed boundaries to inform and entertain. We are proud of the program and its role in supporting some of Australia’s best emerging comedy talent. Our thanks go to the very talented team members for their hard work and dedication in producing a complex and cracking show in quick time, over some 150 episodes. We look forward to working with them again in the future. A special thanks to Tom for helping us to laugh, cry and sigh about the world.
It is now time for a fresh approach. The ABC will continue to develop innovative content on broadcast TV and digital services, through comedies such as Back in Very Small Business and Get Krack!n’, and live shows such as the Splendour in the Grass TV special on Rage and the upcoming triple j One Night Stand and One Night Stand Up on ABC TV and iview.
Tom Ballard said: “Getting the chance to host Tonightly has been an absolute honour and privilege, even though we never got to be on Media Watch. I feel so proud of the ‘work’ we made and I feel so lucky to have been surrounded by laughter and stupidity for an entire year. My sincere thanks go to the brilliant Tonightly team, the ABC and the fans of Cory Bernardi.”
Whether you liked the show or not – on the whole we did, though it had its problems – this is shit news with no winners. Well, maybe The Weekly, as now a show made on a fraction of the budget and with a fraction of the time will no longer be twice as funny as it.
But c’mon, take a look at the “fresh approach” the ABC is peddling in their very own press release: the return of Very Small Business – which is great but was last seen back in 2008 – and a bunch of music specials promoting a radio station. You’d think Tonightly was an embarrassing failure being axed two weeks in rather than one of the ABC’s rare long-running comedy success stories – and even then touting these shows as a “fresh approach” is an admission that there is clearly nothing fresh about the ABC’s youth programming.
As for exactly why Tonightly has been axed… well, the whole ABC Comedy channel project must be under a pretty heavy cloud if literally the only local content made for it is getting the boot. As a local program made for a minor channel its survival was always going to be iffy; as an Australian comedy program made without overseas money its budget was always going to be marginal. And at the ABC, axing popular (or even just “popular”) youth programming in its prime is pretty much a tradition; bringing in the kids might be one of their goals, but you don’t see a whole lot of youth at management level. So maybe getting a full year was all we were ever going to get of Tonightly.
Or maybe it’s because the host had been under a cloud after indecent assault allegations and a recent sketch had gone out of its way to offend the kind of uptight people currently running the country. Hey, you just can’t help bad luck.