Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

In For the Long Haul

Having Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation and Have You Been Paying Attention? on back-to-back (there was even time this week to go from one to the other without missing anything out) is both a great way to get two-and-a-bit hours worth of something close to actual entertainment from the commercial networks, and a handy way to do a bit of compare and contrast between the two. They’re similar shows that are often funny in very different ways but yet still manage to deliver similar jokes: HYBPA? isn’t exactly known for its physical comedy but sticking Tom Gleisner next to a Rugby player twice his size did get a laugh out of us.

So hey: how great is it to have two Australian television hosts who are in their second or third decades of just doing comedy? There’s an idea floating around out there that comedy is a young person’s game and it’s one people at all levels have bought into: TV producers will tell comedians they’re too old when they’re barely in their 30s, while plenty of performers seem happy to race through comedy on their way to being all serious (or just doing stuff where their lack of comedy skills is no longer a drawback). The result is that many of Australia’s older comedy figures still active in the media don’t actually do much comedy: that forthcoming episode of Andrew Denton’s interview show where he talks to Madga would have been a sure-fire laugh riot in the late 90s, but these days it seems set to be a warm bath with the occasional wry smile thrown in.

And comedy is hard. We’re not really the types to go on about how drama gets all the awards and kudos while comedy has to do pretty much all the same stuff and be funny on top to be a success, but you only have to look at the wide range of Australian “sitcoms” that are really just tepid dramas to realise that there are an awful lot of comedy performers who’d like to get the hell out of comedy on the first bus that’ll stop to let them on.

Both Shaun Micallef and Tom Gleisner have occasionally dabbled in various less-funny media work, but to date they’ve largely made comedy their home. And watching their respective quiz shows on a Monday night, it’s not hard to see why: they both really seem to enjoy it. Obviously it takes a lot of skill and practice to make television comedy seem effortless, but both of them really do seem to be having a lot of fun just piss-farting about.

That’s what sets them (and in part, the shows they host) from your more run-of-the-mill comedy panel shows (and yes, we did appreciate the many jokes on HYBPA? this week at the expense of Cram!). It’s one thing to be a decent television host – even Australia has plenty of them – but it’s another very different thing to be a comedy show host who actually adds laughs to proceedings. Take a look at Spicks & Specks (it’s not hard to do – it’s basically propping up ABC Comedy); Adam Hills is a perfectly decent host doing all the right things, but despite what the ABC publicity department would have you believe, Hills himself isn’t really anything special. He’s pleasant enough and handsome with it, but he never stakes out any comedy ground for himself.

We’ve gone on about Micallef enough over the years for his virtues as a performer to be well trod ground; everyone now understands that when a TV writer says that Micallef is “divisive” or “not to everyone’s tastes”  what they really mean is that he’s funny and not everyone wants that in a host. But Gleisner is just as impressive in his own low-key way: not only does he keep things moving along (no easy task when you’ve got five comedians each trying to fit in one-liners every time a question goes off the rails) but he gets in his own jokes – which are often surprisingly harsh – and usually gets a couple swipes in at Sam Pang each week. Much like Micallef back when TAYG was largely about him mocking Josh Thomas, he gets in just enough character comedy to be a distinct comedy figure in his own right – not just the guy who asks questions while everyone else cracks wise.

There are few truly rubbish hosts on Australian television; even Dave Hughes managed to make his own show work. But a great host lifts the whole show. There’s a lot of reasons why both TAYG and HYBPA? work, but the fact they both have truly funny hosts is a definite plus.

The again, Randling had a reasonably funny host and look where that ended up.

The Logies gets less funny every year

The nominations for this year’s Logies have been announced and we have a question: Where’s the Most Outstanding Comedy Program category gone?

Logie awards 2018

Last year, and for several years previously, the Logies had two comedy categories: Best Entertainment Program, decided by a public vote and for which comedy shows were eligible, and Most Outstanding Comedy Program, decided by a panel of peers. Now, the Logies has dropped the Most Outstanding Comedy Program category and included a Most Popular Comedy Program, which will be decided by a public vote.

In one way this is a good thing – the Best Entertainment Program category was an odd one, which meant that shows as different as Family Feud and Upper Middle Bogan was competing against each other; it was a category that needed a re-think. But the loss of the Most Outstanding Comedy Program is something we should question.

Admittedly, we almost never agreed with the choice of the panel of peers – was Please Like Me really last year’s best comedy in a field that included both Mad As Hell and Upper Middle Bogan? But, historically, the Most Outstanding Comedy Program category has at least given the kind of shows that the public were never going to vote for some recognition at Australia’s biggest TV awards ceremony. Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell was deemed Most Outstanding Comedy in 2016, in 2015 it was Utopia – both good choices.

So what happens if the peers want to award an outstanding comedy program in the future? Does it get a nomination in the drama category? Or do outstanding comedy programs have to hope they’ll get an AACTA Best Television Comedy Series nomination (last year’s winner was Utopia)?

Meanwhile, here’s our list of comedy nominees in various categories. Which leads us to another question: what’s with the love for Rosehaven in the acting categories? And in what sense is Dilruk Jayasinha a newcomer?

MOST POPULAR ACTOR
Aaron Jeffery (Underbelly Files: Chopper, Nine Network)
Erik Thomson (800 Words, Channel 7)
Luke McGregor (Rosehaven, ABC)
Ray Meagher (Home And Away, Channel 7)
Rodger Corser (Doctor Doctor, Nine Network)

MOST POPULAR ACTRESS
Asher Keddie (Offspring, Network Ten)
Celia Pacquola (Rosehaven/Utopia, ABC)
Deborah Mailman (Cleverman, ABC)
Jessica Marais (Love Child, Nine Network; The Wrong Girl, Network Ten)
Julia Morris (House Husbands, Nine Network)

GRAHAM KENNEDY AWARD FOR MOST POPULAR NEW TALENT
Dilruk Jayasinha (CRAM!, Network Ten; Utopia, ABC)
Matty Johnson (The Living Room, Network Ten)
Sam Frost (Home And Away, Channel 7)
Sophia Forrest (Love Child, Nine Network)
Sophie Dillman (Home And Away, Channel 7)

MOST POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM
Anh’s Brush With Fame (ABC)
Family Feud (Network Ten)
Gogglebox Australia (Foxtel/Network Ten)
Hard Quiz (ABC)
The Project (Network Ten)

MOST POPULAR COMEDY PROGRAM
Have You Been Paying Attention? (Network Ten)
Here Come The Habibs (Nine Network)
Hughesy, We Have A Problem (Network Ten)
Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell (ABC)
True Story With Hamish & Andy (Nine Network)

As for a prediction for who’ll win the popular vote for Most Popular Comedy Program? Our money’s on Have You Been Paying Attention? even if our heart says Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell. (Or the would-have-been-nominated-for-Most-Outstanding-Comedy-Program-if-the-category-still-existed Get Krack!n.)

MC Scat Chat

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with a show that’s just a jumble of unrelated parts, but there is definitely something wrong with The Weekly. No, we’re not talking about the way its listed as a comedy yet features straight news segments asking why isn’t dentistry covered by Medicare (hilarious!), or the fact it was allowed to go to air this week without Kitty Flanagan, AKA the only part of the show worth watching. We’re talking about interviews.

Everybody knows the celebrity interview is bogus. It’s an act: the guest has something to sell, the host needs to fill time, and the funnier and more entertaining the end result the further it’s gotten from the truth. Which is fine, because entertainment is what the celebrity interview is all about. But you have to decide up front what kind of entertainment you’re going to provide.

Each week The Weekly provides viewers with two diametrically opposed forms of celebrity interview. Charlie Pickering usually does the “straight” interview, where he plays nice with the guest and in return the guest gives lengthy, seemingly open replies to his softball questions. It’s cuddly, pointless TV: even when the topics are difficult, the interviews themselves never are. As for finding out anything exciting or new… you’re watching The Weekly; get outta here.

Then The Weekly serves up Tom Gleeson’s segment Hard Chat, in which he asks supposedly difficult questions and milks it for all the awkwardness he can. This week’s installment with Andrew Denton – there to promote his own interview show – was the kind of edgy television that seems edgy right up until the moment you actually think about it. Asking Denton about getting Rolf Harris to sing Stairway to Heaven? Reminding him of Randling? Suggesting he tries to make people cry on his interview shows? Does anyone really think this was the first time in his life that Denton was asked about this kind of thing?

But Hard Chat – a one joke segment that stopped being funny two seasons ago – does serve one minor purpose: it points out how tame and ineffectual Charlie Pickering’s interviews are. Hard Chat isn’t edgy television designed to make us squirm: more often than not it’s the bare minimum a legitimate interviewer should do. Denton trying to make guests cry has been a running joke for a decade – any serious interview with him about his current show should cover that area, and the fact that kind of question is shunted off into a joke segment shows just how pointless and soft most “serious” celebrity interviews are.

Boring interviews are as much a part of television as hair spray so we’re not blaming The Weekly for that. But when you run a soft puff piece interview back-to-back with a segment making fun of soft puff piece interviews, there’s something wrong with your show. What, holding up a sign that says “this segment is bullshit” during the interview was too difficult?

You could perhaps argue that this is what internet-era television looks like: discrete segments that bear no relation to each other aimed at an audience savvy enough to accept this disconnect as the equivalent of scrolling through Facebook. Or you could argue it’s the result of a sloppy, slap-dash show latching onto literally anything that seems even slightly entertaining and throwing it all at the wall to see what sticks.

You don’t need us to say which side we’re on, do you?

Generations

Well, our worst fears came to pass: despite starting at 7.30, Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation ran just long enough to overlap with the start of Have You Been Paying Attention?. Comedy fan crisis! Fortunately TAYG is being repeated this Wednesday night (weird that HYBPA? is currently one and done screening-wise though), plus there’s all the various online catch-up services that may or may not work depending on the mood at the network.

And the show itself? As host Shaun Micallef pointed out, Nine wanted back the exact same show that aired on Ten almost a decade ago – only with a different logo, different opening, different set, different team captains… and maybe different host, lets wait and see on that last one. So despite a lot of the core elements remaining consistent with the previous version (same producers, same host, same writers), this definitely felt a little like a show finding its feet.

Back when TAYG began on Ten, there was a mildly spirited discussion around the comedy traps as to whether we should be a): glad to have Micallef on our televisions in any form, or b): annoyed that Micallef was wasting his time on an otherwise fairly average comedy game show. As the show became wackier over the years, the b): fell away a little, but there was always the sense that out of all the things Micallef could be doing with his time, hosting a game show wasn’t the top of the list.

So not bursting out the gate like a maniac was a bit of a problem with this revival, because TAYG is a pretty basic gameshow at its core and what made it work the first time around was that the creative side of things were confident enough to go very big and very crazy. So a version of TAYG that’s playing things relatively restrained is not the best TAYG.

Yes, this episode did feature Robyn Butler licking a window blindfolded while revealing that the most exciting letter to lick is “G” and the whole thing wrapped up with a tractor cleaning contest that largely featured Andy Lee throwing eggs, but compared to the Golden Age TAYG things were barely rolling downhill.

Obviously there’s some bedding in to take place. The original TAYG had a surprisingly strong dynamic between Micallef and the team captains – strong enough to give both Josh Thomas and Charlie Pickering substantial career boosts, which is even more impressive considering we’re talking about Charlie Pickering and Josh Thomas. And this version has a stronger foundation: Robyn Butler and Andy Lee are both proven comedy quantities who’ve worked with Micallef before, while Gen Z captain Lawrence Boxhall will presumably be ruthlessly mocked for being an infant just as soon as is reasonably possible.

On the plus side, the show does have (in common with HYBPA?) the feeling that pretty much everyone involved is having a fair amount of fun. Micallef himself has sharpened his skills as a host after all that work in front of the live Mad as Hell audience, so there’s more going on than just fake keyboard skills and answering fake phone calls from Eddie McGuire.

And to be fair, coming down more on the side of the basic quiz stuff was probably a good move for the first episode back after an extremely long break; we might have wanted it to be zany right from minute one but throwing in a few basic quizzes based on pop culture history first didn’t really hurt.

The thing with TAYG is that it’s always a bit of a high-wire act. Unlike HYBPA?, which really just needs a group of funny people to get comfortable shouting out news-related quips, it’s a show that has a lot more moving parts. It took a fair while on Ten before it really became something special, and this run doesn’t have that long to get up to speed. It’s still a fun show and Micallef is a great host, but when you’re up against Have You Been Paying Attention? fun alone isn’t enough.

The path to paradise begins in hell

On the surface, Corey White’s Roadmap to Paradise looks like another of those shows, in the tradition of John Safran, which uses comedy to make a point. Except it isn’t; Corey White takes a different approach. He’s got actual solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing our society – the state of democracy, excessive capitalism, affordable housing – solutions which could really make a difference. He wants to make us laugh too, and he succeeds, but mainly he’s making a point.

Corey White's Roadmap to Paradise

This approach feels very timely. The 90s/00s attitude of giving it to all sides because they’re all dreadful, and not taking a firm stand on any serious political issues, has clearly got us nowhere. Also – and we’re about to say something we don’t often say here – sometimes comedians have to be serious about things to be effective. Sometimes, going for laughs would ruin the show.

When White’s talking about the problems he sees in our society and his solutions to them, the absolute worst thing he could do is chuck in some zingers in the middle of his argument. Instead, he lays out the facts as he sees them, trusts the audience to go with him, but, equally, isn’t afraid to throw in a few irreverent laughs when they won’t detract from what he’s saying.

Corey White is a comedian who really understands how and when to use different tones. And Roadmap to Paradise is a show worth watching, with arguments worth thinking about, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them.

It’s a shame The Weekly with Charlie Pickering can’t get the balance as right as Corey White (or even Tonightly with Tom Ballard) does. Serious points plus silly gags works well, serious points plus smug self-righteousness less so. Or, to put it another way, Corey White (and Tom Ballard) are playing low status and punching up or speaking truth to power, while Charlie Pickering’s playing high status and telling us all what to think and do. We all know by now which is funnier.

What’s going to be interesting with Corey White’s Roadmap to Paradise though, is later episodes in the series when White talks about problems he has personal experience of – domestic violence and foster care. These episodes are likely to be even less about laughs and more focused on solving the problems. But then, as we said, laughs aren’t the point here.

If it ain’t broke, it’s Have You Been Paying Attention?

Making a one-off funny show is relatively easy; making a long-running show is also fairly easy. Combining the two is where it gets a little difficult, and not just because of the generally held belief that a comedy that starts strong is bound to drop off quickly (aka the Fawlty Towers defense). So hats off to Have You Been Paying Attention?, a comedy panel show that features both extensive cross-promotion and actual advertising live reads and yet still somehow remains funny and entertaining as it heads full-steam towards its fifth year.

We’ve covered what makes it work pretty extensively over the years – it’s fast paced, it features a decent roster of quick-witted contestants, the news jokes are reasonably strong, the cross-promotional guests aren’t treated with kid gloves, it doesn’t care about the score, and so on – but it’s important not to under estimate the importance of on-air chemistry. Not everything out of the Working Dog stable has been a hit, but their biggest successes have all shared one thing in common: they look like shows people enjoy being a part of.

You only have to look at… eh, lets say Show Me the Movies… to see how difficult this sense of fun is to manufacture. Wacky “games” won’t cut it unless you’re Shaun Micallef and the games are so crazy everyone is laughing at the fact they’re actually going to show this stuff on television. Lengthy anecdotes from one panelist will only bore everyone else, complicated questions are boring, taking too long to explain the set-up for a segment is boring… you see the problem.

And yet week after week for close to half a year HYBPA? rotates through a reasonably large body of panelists – some of whom have been consistently awful elsewhere – and makes it look like a bunch of friends just piss-farting about. Regular panelists Ed Kavalee and Sam Pang and host Tom Gleisner provide a steadying influence, and there’s usually at least one long-time Working Dog member or buddy on the panel as well, which means that the other two slots are either taken by people who work well with them or tap into the general vibe fairly quickly.

(that vibe is also slightly more edgy than you might expect from Australian commercial television, even in 2018. There was at least one “fuck” dropped last night, and while “too soon” isn’t exactly what you’d expect to say about a joke about Princess Diana twenty years after her death, the audience reaction last night suggested otherwise. But fuck them; it was a good joke)

Whether at least some of the news jokes are either scripted or worked out beforehand doesn’t matter: there’s enough going on here that arises naturally from the set-up to make this feel like, as we’ve already said, a bunch of mates piss-farting about. The news angle definitely helps, as it’s the kind of “play along at home” element these shows need. But Working Dog have been making fun of the news since the 80s, and that bedrock level of confidence in their material definitely doesn’t hurt either – it’s hard to be relaxed about what you’re doing if you’re not really sure what you’re doing.

There’s probably more to be said here about the difference between shows you laugh at and shows you laugh with, but whatever: HYBPA? is a funny show that’s also just plain fun, and Australia could do with more of both. Long may jokes about Tom Gleisner’s age run!

As funny as cancer

SBS’s much-promoted Homecoming Queens, a seven-episode series about two millennial women living with chronic illnesses, is currently available on SBS OnDemand. Why do we mention it here? Because it’s been described as a comedy. Is it funny? No.

Homecoming Queens

Homecoming Queens joins a few other recent millennial “comedies” (Please Like Me being the best known) in not feeling the need to actually be funny. What it really is, is a dramedy. And even then, the drama side is more towards the soap end of the drama spectrum, so this is as light-touch on the various issues it tackles as can be.

Chloe (Liv Hewson) is recovering from breast cancer, she has a job in a bra shop and she fancies this hot chick. Michelle (Michelle Law) has been in Sydney working in children’s TV but has come back to Brisbane after she developed alopecia, and ends up moving in with old mate Chloe. There’s a love interest for her too, a guy she knew from school, except she doesn’t want him to know she doesn’t have any hair.

Basically, this is all about dating, partying, falling for people you think are out of your league, friendship and dealing with life’s challenges. This is about issues, not gags. And let’s face it; if you want to tackle issues, cramming a load of gags into your show is probably going to prevent you from doing that.

As a nice little show you watch online, fine. As a nice little show about being in your 20s, or dealing with a chronic illness, fine. Hey look! She has cancer/alopecia but her life isn’t over – there’s a positive message there for us all, no matter how old we are. But this isn’t a comedy. Please stop calling anything that isn’t a gritty drama a comedy. Either that, or put some goddam jokes in!

Gruen to Audience: Get Plucked

Look, we all know News.com has an agenda as far as the ABC goes, and that agenda is “shut it down”. So despite us reprinting pretty much the whole thing because it’s hilarious, you should maybe take this shocking report with a grain of salt.

FUNNYMAN Wil Anderson has been accused of being not funny at all and in fact downright rude to the audience during the filming of the episode of panel show Gruen, which aired on Wednesday evening.

It’s claimed he berated the audience for not laughing at his jokes, told one woman watching the recording to “f*** off” when she said the segment was boring and later stormed off stage.

One audience member told news.com.au Anderson appeared to have a “meltdown”.

“It was a complete dummy spit. To be honest he was a bit of a brat.”

For his part, Anderson said it was a “terrible audience … just sitting back in their seats”.

The ABC played down the incident and said there was “nothing untoward” during the filming and it was simply Anderson’s regular audience “interplay”.

“Funnyman Wil Anderson has been accused of not being funny at all”. That’s comedy gold, that is.

It’s claimed things went south quickly at Tuesday’s filming during the first segment of the show, an analysis of the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal.

While it appears on screen for only minutes, the segment on Wednesday’s show took a full 40 minutes to film with few laughs coming from the bleachers.

Anderson was not happy, said the audience member, who asked not to be named.

“Afterwards, Anderson stood up and said (words to the effect of) ‘that took 40 f***ing minutes to film. I don’t want to be out of line but you guys are the worst audience I’ve ever had’”.

A plucky audience member then appeared to take Anderson on, saying the reason there had been little in the way of laughing was because the segment had been “boring”.

A “plucky” audience member you say? Are you sure they weren’t “feisty”? Or even “nuggety”?

“When one woman called out the topic was boring, (Anderson) was like ‘why don’t you f*** off then’”.

The audience member that news.com.au spoke to said the berating worked up to a point, with the next two segments taking far less time to film.

But when the show was done, rather than hanging around for selfies, Anderson went off in what appeared to be a huff.

“Storming off at the end made him seem like a real pr***.”

People at the filming, in the ABC’s Sydney studios in Ultimo, were taken aback by his abruptness, said the audience member.

“It was a complete dummy spit. To be honest he was a bit of a brat.”

Let’s be honest, Anderson does have a point – complaining about being bored at a taping of Gruen is like complaining you’re getting wet on the Titanic.

On Triple M Sydney on Tuesday morning Anderson continued berating the audience putting the blame on them for “sitting back”.

“We were doing Gruen last night and that audience was just a terrible audience,” he told The Grill Team.

“Usually we have a fantastic audience and it wasn’t that they were bad people, but they were just sitting back in seats not giving you the energy that you need so you try to rev them up. I literally just told them they weren’t doing a good job.”

He said if they wanted to “sit back” they could do that at home.

The ABC said the interaction with the audience was Gruen business as usual.

“There was nothing unusual or untoward about last night’s live recording of Gruen,” a spokesman told the Daily Telegraph.

“Wil interplays with the live audience on a regular basis to ensure high energy in the room and the audience feel engaged and entertained. Last night’s audience took this interplay with the good humour with which it was intended and Wil thanked them for their enthusiasm at the end of the recording.”

Gruen is one of the ABC’s highest rating shows and is a backbone of the network’s schedule.

So Anderson is actually some kind of… energy vampire? Guess that explains the hair.

*and yes, for those playing along at home, this week’s episode of The Weekly did once again keep that bizarre “here’s Charlie’s upcoming monologue topics” list on screen during his opening chat. Why?

Clash of the Titans

It’s been a very long time since there was enough Australian comedy on our screens for anything to clash scheduling-wise, but here we are:

Now sure, Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation might very well be on at 7.30 (we’ve only had the day confirmed as yet), and Masterchef always runs long so Have You Been Paying Attention might not start until well past 8.30, clash averted, we all win. But it seems reasonable to guess that if you’re going to put your Australian panel comedy show on the same night as another Australian comedy panel show, you’re probably going to put them on head-to-head.

So what to do? Repeats and online catch-up services mean the idea of having to watch a show as it airs is a thing of the past, but let’s be realistic: free-to-air ratings still count. If they’re on head-to-head, whichever one you watch “live” is going to be the show you’re showing your support for. Which is a problem, as they’re both great shows and we want both to do well because there’s literally nothing else we’re going to be watching on commercial television that week. What to do?

HYBPA? is the show most likely to survive – it’s been going for ages, it’s a ratings juggernaut, it’s a local success at a time when Ten doesn’t have a lot of them. TAYG is the newcomer, the show with something to prove, the breath of fresh air up against a show that’s been around for a while – but the whole series was filmed last year so if it tanks in the ratings now it’s not really going to matter. They both deserve our support. What to do?

To be honest, we’re stumped. Dig out the VCR from the shed and tape them both?

Vale Tonightly with Tom Ballard series 1

After almost six months, we’re going to declare Tonightly with Tom Ballard a success. Not in terms of ratings…

Tonightly, which aired four days a week on ABC 2, pulled low ratings during its debut run. An average episode got less than 50,000 people watching, which meant it didn’t make it into the top 20 shows on any given day.

Not one to let any opportunity for a joke to slide, however, Ballard poked fun at the show’s ratings on air.

“I don’t know why I’m talking… nobody’s watching,” he joked at one point.

…but definitely in terms of comedy.

Tonightly with Tom Ballard

We watch/listen to various satire programs from around the English-speaking world and Tonightly is up there with the best when it comes to laugh rate – something all the more astonishing when you remember that it’s on-air four times a week.

If you’d told us a year ago, or even six months ago, that we’d be saying this, we’d have laughed in your face. For one thing, Australia has almost no heritage of doing this kind of thing successfully. For another, up until Tonightly aired, we’d not been great fans of Tom Ballard.

So, why has this show worked? Basically, it’s about attitude. Tonightly is a show that first and foremost wants to be as funny as it possibly can. It’s the kind of show where you suspect the team are putting in overtime to make the show as good as it can be, rather than working the hours they’re paid for and then downing tools.

It’s also a show that isn’t full of itself. It’s punching up; partly because it wants to, because it’s angry about the terrible things that politicians, big business, etc. are doing, and partly because it’s got a budget of about five cents.

And if you’re in any doubt, this is the sort of attitude a satire program should hold, and the sort of position it should be in. If a satire program isn’t speaking truth to power – and sometimes that means calling a member of the Australian Conservatives a c*nt – it’s not doing its job. And if it’s so drowning in budget and obsessed with slickness (rather than good writing) that it builds itself a shiny set and commissions expensive new graphics that tell you what topics the host will be talking about in his opening monologue (to the extent that you can guess the jokes before he does them – oh hai The Weekly with Charlie Pickering) then it’s got its priorities wrong.

Tonightly is a show that wants and has to make you laugh any way it can – archive footage, YouTube clips, lighting effects, sound effects, on-screen graphics, props, cheap costumes, running gags…and it worked. Tom Ballard did that “I’m just going to have a nice glass of refreshing water” gag at least six times, and it was still funny. Ditto, showing that mattress dominoes footage during the Commonwealth Games, footage so perfectly bizarre that here it is for you to enjoy in full:

Of course, it’s not all been good. The sketches have been a weak point of the show and few have been really, truly funny. We hope this is something the team can improve in series 2.

Perhaps that’s one of the things Dan Ilic intends to do when he becomes showrunner?

Or maybe his plan is to make more of the show’s sketches and segments NAIL IT to the extent that they go viral?* Whatever. As long as Tonightly still approaches the issues of the day with the right attitude, we’re onboard.

* Despite its low ratings, a surprising number of Tonightly sketches have been circulating online and turning up in all sorts of places, so kudos.

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