Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

Vale Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation 2018

And so Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation 2018 died the way it lived: as a show that was probably too good for Channel Nine, and so didn’t do enough good for Channel Nine. But if the show itself was good – which in its own way it most definitely was – then why did it fail to click?

Let’s state the obvious: putting any kind of quiz show on at 7.30pm on a Monday night is a pretty big gamble. It’s the primest of prime time, the point where commercial networks have trained audiences to expect high stakes reality television, not a load of strange piss-farting about presented by a host gurning away while wearing wacky costumes. The logic of commercial television is that the more expensive the show, the bigger the return on investment; TAYG was too expensive for Nine to put in a crappier timeslot, but a crappier timeslot is exactly what a comedy gameshow needs to succeed.

Not that this version of TAYG didn’t succeed, on creative terms at least – Micallef was as manic as ever, the team captains actually had smoother chemistry than the originals (how strange is it that Amanda Keller was on the original TAYG? She made no impression whatsoever), the games were entertainingly bizarre in a “kids television” way, there were some decent guests on (Tim Rodgers and Aaron Chen in the final episode were two people nobody expected to see on Nine any time soon), and there was enough going on with the questions that if there are any families who still sit down to watch television as a family they would have been able to compete among themselves in a moderately entertaining fashion. There’s something for everyone!

And yet… maybe it was the lengthy run time (no comedy game show needs to go longer than an hour, even with commercials), maybe it was the short series order that meant everyone felt like they had to generate chemistry instantly, maybe it was the general feeling that Channel Nine simply isn’t the place to go for comedy that moves even slightly outside the mainstream, but this revival never quite captured the old magic. Even if that old magic almost certainly only exists in our nostalgia-addled minds.

With Have You Been Paying Attention? currently going gangbusters – this year it would usually rate at least 200,000 viewers more than TAYG, despite screening an hour later – it was no surprise Nine wanted to get in on the comedy game show action, and bringing back a proven success was easily the smartest way to go about it. Micallef is still firing on all cylinders – no Hey Hey it’s Saturday revival here – and the show itself did pretty much everything right that it got right the first time around. And yet, here we are: waving goodbye to a ratings fizzle (one week it came in fourth in its timeslot) that we’d be very surprised to see return.

Still, let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, which really feels like something they should have turned into a segment on TAYG. We got eight more episodes of one of the more off-the-wall shows in recent Australian television history, and for eight weeks (well, seven) the biggest commercial network in the land put local comedy on in prime time on the biggest night of the week. Sure, it wasn’t a ratings smash – but neither were the last two seasons of the original TAYG, and we all know they were the best ones.

Further Movement at the Station

First, the bad news: according to Fairfax, wog humour is back and it’s broader than ever!

“Why can’t more non-Anglo characters be doctors or lawyers?”

In debates about racial representations on screen, this is a perennial refrain. According to some critics, the blue collar jobs of fictional Mediterranean migrants are gratingly stereotypical (and insufficiently inspiring).

Never mind that a law degree is the archetype of white, middle class respectability. For a new breed of “wog” humorists, such assessments ring hollow.

Don’t worry though, these stereotypes are a-ok – because they’re grounded in fact:

As a general rule, Mediterranean migrants – having fled the deprivations of war-ravaged Europe, while speaking almost no English – did not step into professional jobs upon arriving in Australia. Rather, they worked long hours in factories, shops and restaurants.

This reality informs most Sooshi Mango characters: pensioners obsessed with Chemist Warehouse, for instance, or fathers aghast at the prospect of their children spending $25 at Grill’d. (“You no go anywhere! We make hamboorgar here!”) Occasionally, the racism they endured is re-directed at other ethnic groups. (One old Italian man accuses another motorist of driving “like a Chinese”, oblivious to his own dreadful road skills.) But mostly, it’s channelled into a defiant pride.

We could go on about how outdated stereotypes often result in lazy thinking – which leads to bad comedy – but why bother when the article does that for us:

“It’s raw, blue and dirty,” says ABC’s comedy chief, Rick Kalowski. “But the crassness isn’t a substitution for comedy. It’s always funny.”

Superwog revolves around a teenager and his best friend, struggling to cope with life in the suburbs. It’s something the Saidden brothers can relate to, having attended a “colonial and regimented” elitist private school. Indeed, many of their jokes are at the expense of uptight white people.

Kalowski is rankled by accusations of stereotyping. “There are endless examples of god-awful Australian films that seem custom-built to get five-star reviews or be included in a festival,” he says. “They’re just as stereotypical as so-called ‘wog’ comedy and it’s interesting no one singles them out.”

And we all know what he means by “endless examples”, don’t we. You know, there’s… that film. And the other one. And that one that was on at that festival. Ahhh, you know what we’re talking about, right?

But while there’s still this stereotype of Australian film as this endless parade of upper-middle class wank, it’s no longer all that true. There are no “endless examples”, because those films hardly get made any more. A decade ago you could point to something like Somersault; almost every Australian film this year has starred Shane Jacobson and no-one’s giving him a five-star review.

Of course, for those of us of a certain age, we grew up with wanky Australian films and so they’re a stereotype that has a basis in fact – for us. But you just have to look at the list of Best Film winners at the AACTA Awards over the last decade to see there’s been a serious shift in the kind of films Australians hand out awards to. Red Dog? The Babadook? Lion? Where’s the stereotypes there? For a new generation of comedy fans, those jokes won’t make any sense; most people don’t think about “Australian film” as a thing beyond Chris Hemsworth fighting Cate Blanchett in the last Thor movie.

If you’re going to defend your stereotype-based comedy by claiming there are other stereotypes out there that are getting away with it, it’s probably a good idea to check and see if those other stereotypes are still current outside your own memories. Otherwise people might think what you really mean is nostalgia, and that’s not anywhere near as funny.

*

Speaking of marketing, the one ABC show about consumer affairs that didn’t treat selling shit to idiots as the pinnacle of human civilisation seems to have got the chop:

The ABC has put popular consumer affairs program The Checkout on ice, with executive producer Julian Morrow breaking the news to fans on Friday morning.

Said news being broken in this fashion, which we’d describe as “somewhat salty”

So sustained was the outcry that the ABC had to then explain that the show wasn’t being axed – merely being put on hiatus:

An ABC spokesman confirmed the broadcaster wouldn’t be commissioning a seventh series “at this time”.

“The programming slate regularly changes for any number of reasons, including the need to strike a balance between new and returning programs,” he said. “Putting The Checkout on hiatus does not preclude the program from returning in the future.

“The ABC is proud of its long association with The Checkout and production company Giant Dwarf.”

There are at least two ways to look at this:

A): by stressing the “hiatus” angle, the ABC have made it clear that if the current cuts to the ABC’s budget are sustained – and considering Pauline Hanson seems to have made kicking the national broadcaster a direct path to gaining her party’s support in the senate, it’s hard to see the Liberals letting up even if they hadn’t recently voted to sell the whole ABC off – then programs people actually watch are going to have to be taken off the air. And it’s not like the Liberals can complain, as this is exactly the result they wanted. So by making it clear that this current policy will have consequences, the ABC have let the public know that if they want the ABC to continue in its current form, they have a choice to make at the next election. Well played, ABC!

B): As the ABC is basically run by right-wing types these days – by which we mean either literally card-carrying Liberal supporters, people earning six figure salaries for whom the working class are just the people who used to live in the funky gentrified suburb they now call home, or folks so worried they’ll offend the current government they’re bending over backwards to push the Liberal Party side of things just in case – a show that points out the shonky scams and dodgy nature of corporate Australia was always on thin ice. Who needs consumer affairs when there’s a nightly business news segment anyway? And it’s not like Gruen is going anywhere. Maybe The Checkout should have had Gerry Harvey on each week to give his side of the story just for balance. Boo, ABC, boooooooo.

Or maybe it’s just that, having run for five years, it’s not like The Checkout was a spring chicken. And with Giant Dwarf’s War on Waste seemingly going strong*, it’s not like The Chaser are out of the consumer affairs business just yet. Dammit, if only there was a television program out there to tell us what to think about important issues like these. When’s Screen Time coming back?

*correction: we’ve since been informed that War on Waste is not a Giant Dwarf production and that The Chaser’s Craig Reucassel appears on it as a host-for-hire.

When Things Get Too Serious For Laughter, There’s Always Nanette

Hannah Gadsby’s live show Nanette has been receiving a second round of rave reviews now that it’s available on Netflix, many of them repeating the same few points over and over again because yes, it’s a show that really is shocking and powerful and deeply moving. The sharper of these new round of reviews usually mention at least one of two things: the show intentionally isn’t all that funny (especially in its second half), and it’s also very timely in the age of #metoo. We’d go further; Nanette is very timely, but part of what makes it timely has nothing to do with #metoo – and everything to do with it not being funny.

Nanette is a show that deconstructs comedy – well, a fairly specific kind of performance-based comedy, it’s not like Gadsby spends twenty minutes on single-panel gag cartoons or anything – to reveal that comedy is in many ways the enemy of truth. Comedy, according to Gadsby, is based on creating tension and releasing it, which creates an abusive relationship; you’re making people feel bad so that you can then make them feel good. Worse, when comedians act like they’re telling the truth, they’re really leaving out the truest part of the stories they’re telling – to create a punchline, you have to strip all the nuance out of a story. Crudely put, comedy is bad, and she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with it.

Gadsby is a skilled performer delivering material that’s clearly heartfelt. She’s also telling an audience that came to see a comedy show that what they came to see is bad and they should probably feel bad for being a part of it. You’d think that this might be a tough sell, but Gadsby knows what she’s doing: she also details a number of brutal experiences she’s had at the hands of white men, while pointing out that the white male-dominated art world (and by extension, our world in general) treats anyone who’s not a white male very poorly indeed. It’s not a big leap to conclude that this is the truth that comedy won’t let her say; in the age of #metoo, who wants to stick up for comedy after that?

It’s this idea that now is not the time for comedy – that today, things are simply too serious to be laughed at – that’s the real point where Nanette surfs the zeitgeist. Despite feeling like the natural order of things, this is a fairly recent development: back in the mid-00s, AKA the last time America was ruled by a right-wing despot determined to plunge the world into chaos (gee, it’s almost as if the USA has some long-term structural problems that need to be addressed), two things were different: a): George W Bush had started two legit wars that had killed hundreds of thousands of people, which is something Trump hasn’t yet managed to do, and b): comedy was the last hope of western civilisation.

We exaggerate slightly. But back then The Daily Show and Jon Stewart, along with various other truth-telling comedians and comedy documentary makers, really were a big part of the US push back against Bush Jr. and his cronies. Back then, when things were probably pretty much just as shitty as they are now (two words: Dick Cheney), comedy was seen as a vital way to tell truth to power and a general force for good. Back then, laughter was a way to release all the anger and tension people were carrying around thanks to the general crappiness of the situation they found themselves in. Now, barely a decade later, comedy only makes things worse.

The shift was a gradual one. With Obama in power, the old left-wing comedy scolds had less to scold; the generation that replaced them – your John Olivers and so on – were more about nailing it on smaller issues. Then in the run up to the last US election everyone in comedy spent nine months mocking everything there was to mock about Donald Trump and he became president anyway, which took the wind out of their sails and then some. Now the idea that comedy is going to “nail” anything is pretty much dead; even Saturday Night Live has largely put away their Trump sketches.

And then the years of rumours around Louis CK turned out to be true and he’s one of the first high profile sex creeps taken down by #metoo. Which is another problem for comedy, because CK had been one of the shining lights of progressive stand up, a guy who was seemingly doing things right. We’re not saying that his demise was in any way enough to take down an entire art form, but if you’re a certain kind of progressive comedy fan then his fall definitely casts a pall over the whole thing.

After all that, here comes Nanette – an extremely well-made and powerful piece of theatre that relentlessly demolishes the idea that comedy is anything more than lies that make people laugh under false pretenses. At a time when comedy clearly has no impact on the outside world and some of its biggest practitioners are hypocrites and molestors, is it any wonder Gadsby’s message resonates so strongly?

Let’s not forget, in 2018, the idea that a work of art should be judged on subjective merits is firmly on the way out. Audiences increasingly want art that aligns with their (political) beliefs, and does so in a way that’s both straight-forward and obvious. As comedy is notoriously subjective – what you might find hilarious someone else might not find funny at all – then all comedy is suspect unless its message is firmly on-point.

That’s why Nanette is perfect for our times: it’s a comedy show where Hannah Gadsby gradually discards being funny entirely in favour of getting her message out there in the bluntest possible terms.

And because her message is good, her show is also good. Which is about as blunt as it gets.

The funny side of the Logies

When you look at who and what won Logies this year, it says a lot about the state of TV comedy in this country. Comedy is there to sweeten the pill. The pill, in the case of the Logies, being hours and hours and hours and hours of industry backslapping, product promotion and…well, that’s all it is really. There used to be a third element – selling more copies of TV Week – but no one buys magazines anymore, so maybe it’s about selling any copies of TV Week? Frankly, it’s a bit of a surprise that TV Week is still published at all!

Logie awards 2018

But, if you were sensible enough to sit through less of this year’s Logies presentation than we did, here are some of the things you missed…

Dave Hughes opened the show with some stand-up. He gave Barnaby Joyce a bit of a spray, and later did some material about Don Burke. Then realising he was slagging off someone famous on national TV and hastily back-tracked and said how much he loved Don Burke. Then he realised that was an even worse look and retracted that. Wow, that never slagging off other people in the industry thing is really hardwired in celebrities. Even comedians, who shouldn’t really be worrying about that kind of thing at all!

There was some kind of dance routine involving Julia Morris, but we couldn’t find any footage of that online so you’ll just have to imagine it.

Also, Bert Newton turned up and did his thing…

…and Shaun Micallef gave us a song. Sort of.

And the voiceover man…was Tony Martin!

…Which was an interesting way to keep people entertained between lots and lots of boring awards, but not one that everyone seemed to understand or like, especially BuzzFeed Australia.

To be fair to BuzzFeed, we’re not entirely sure Tony Martin’s voiceover comedy worked 100% of the time; in some circumstances, getting a straight voiceover artist to do it straight might have worked better than a bunch of references to obscure pop culture. But having said that, we’re coming at this as people who’ve been listening to Tony Martin doing comedy voiceovers for more than 30 years, which meant that it all sounded like comedy to us – even the straight bits.

Still, nice to see Tony, as Richard Wilkins put it later, “join the Logies family”. (Clearly, he’s forgotten about the various times Tony Martin’s reminded the world that he used to be Richard Wilde.) And it was impossible not to enjoy Tony’s sign-off and salute to Pete Smith at the end of the show. (P.S. Nice suit, Tone.)

But back to the awards. Here are the people from comedy who won something:

Most Popular New Talent – Dilruk Jayasinha

Most Popular Comedy Program – Have You Been Paying Attention?

Most Outstanding Factual or Documentary Program – The War on Waste

Most Popular Entertainment Program – Gogglebox Australia

…all of which are fair enough wins in categories that, as we’ve argued before, aren’t great for comedy. Especially comedy programs that aren’t on a commercial channel. Which let’s face it, is most comedy programs made in this country.

Oh, and Tom Gleeson’s #Denyer4Gold campaign, which started on last week’s episode of The Weekly, seems to have worked, in that Grant Denyer (whose axed show Family Feud was up against Hard Quiz in the Most Popular Entertainment Program category) won the Gold Logie and a Logie for Most Popular Presenter.

Massive congratulations to Tom Gleeson on his big achievement. He can put that alongside the Australian Fast Bowler and being the third funniest cast member on The Weekly in his list of achievements.

As for comedy and the Logies, this was no 2001 Micallef-hosted laugh spectacular, but it was better than we’ve seen in recent years. And that’s probably the best you can expect from the Logies in 2018.

While we’re here, it always fascinates us who from the old guard of TV personalities turns up at these things and who doesn’t. Bert Newton is a given, and will presumably continue to appear at the Logies for as long as he’s able, but there’s been one notable multi-Logie-winner who’s been absent for some years and that’s Daryl Somers. Does he no longer see any reason to appear now that he doesn’t have a reason to pull a shocked face?

Or is even Daryl self-aware enough to know that in the era of #MeToo and woke people checking their privilege, no one wants to see the guy who famously kept his female co-stars down and brought back blackface?

Leaving a Mark

Twenty-four hours ago, Australian comedy was rocked to its very core:

Mark Humphries

24 June at 20:49

Tomorrow is my last day at The Feed SBS VICELAND. I have been extraordinarily privileged to work on the show and I am grateful to all of you who have supported the work Evan and I have done. The time feels right for us to move on.

Okay, maybe it was slightly more than 24 hours, we’ve been too distraught to check the clock.

Humphries first came to our attention as part of the team on The Roast, a show we were completely unimpressed by during its four year attempt to make The Chaser look brilliant. Actually, there was one time it was hilarious: when they cracked the shits after being axed in 2014:

“We’d also like to wish young, promising comedians like Shaun Micallef and The Chaser the best of luck as we pass the torch down to them.“

Classic stuff.

Anyway, after The Roast crashed Humphries soon turned up doing short segments on SBS’s The Feed, which we largely ignored for a range of reasons, none of which were that we weren’t exactly sure which one of the guys from The Roast he actually was. But in the last six months or so he’s either hired a new agent or started getting good at his job, as various profile pieces started turning up letting us know that once again a fresh-faced white guy from a well-off background in inner-city Sydney is Australia’s top satirist.

“Most people reading this are going to go ‘Who?’” Humphries insists. “Most of Australia doesn’t know who I am.”

That is likely to change soon. Humphries’s recent work as Barabbas Loins, a character who happens to enjoy an eerily similar life trajectory to Barnaby Joyce, has risen to particular prominence, sealing Humphries’s status as one of the best satirists in Australia.

Well, John Clarke’s still dead so sure, why not this guy?

Anyway, his most recent media profile – all of the ones we could find seemed to be from News Corp papers so he must be doing something right – contained this bombshell:

Humphries is also more politically neutral than his comedy would suggest. “I think I am perceived as a progressive because of the network I’m on. And because, absolutely, more often than not we do target the conservative side. But I really would stress that the conservative side is in government, and so they are a bigger target naturally,” he explains.

“People might disagree with this but my feeling is that presently there are more characters on that side who lend themselves to caricature and ridicule than there are on the left. That is open to interpretation. I would actually love to do more stuff lampooning the left, but I think Labor and the Greens either don’t have as many characters or are a little more careful with how they present themselves. I should also state that my grandfather represented the Liberal Party in State Parliament, by the way.”

Oh sorry, that wasn’t a surprise at all. We meant this:

As for what the future might hold, Humphries reveals to Stellar that his SBS contract — and that of writing partner Williams — will finish at the end of this month.

“I would love to do more things with SBS in some capacity because it is — I know it’s a cliché — but it’s a great place to work, and the people are wonderful. I feel privileged to work there. Having said that, I love sitcoms and I would like to just go away and think of something that I could bring to the table. Maybe there is no appetite for that, but I feel that it’s time to at least explore that avenue.”

…

With that, he takes a deep breath. “It just feels time to see what’s out there.”

Usually with this kind of story we’d be wondering “did he jump or was he pushed” right about now. But let’s be honest: as a privately educated son of an ABC staffer currently getting glowing write-ups in News Corp papers, Humphries is probably the only working comedian in this country who can afford to quit a steady gig in the hopes of getting something better.

That’s not to say this won’t be the last we ever hear of him – whatever the quality of his work, short political comedy sketches aren’t exactly a thriving business in this country (is anyone still watching those Thursday evening Sammy J sketches on the ABC?) – but he’s probably gone about as far as he was ever going to go at SBS. And moving aside to give new guys a go is the way comedy is meant to work on the bottom rungs.

Of course, sitcom production in this country is dependent entirely on whether you can a): get overseas funding or b): work for Jungle so, uh, good luck there. Maybe a Barabbas Loins movie?

+UPDATE+

Well, that was quick. And fairly unsurprising:

TEN has formally confirmed its Pointless game show to be co-hosted by Dr Andrew Rochford & Mark Humphries.

A “reverse Family Feud,” the game show sees three teams of two contestants each searching for the most obscure answers to a variety of topics, and score as few points as possible.

No idea who’ll actually be hosting yet – you’d assume Mark, but we’d have assumed the ABC would have been making a local version of Pointless so clearly we’re not the best ones to ask.

And while it’s good that someone has finally decided to just straight-up remake the low-stakes game show that Australian televison’s been ripping off for years, the existence of shows like Hard Quiz and Think Tank might mean Australians could have already had enough of quiz shows based largely on charm and chat. No big cash prizes? No second series.

Anyone know what Evan Williams is doing next?

Tonightly 2.0 and the elephant in the room

Tonightly, the ABC Comedy nightly satire show that’s divided opinion on this blog and in the world of the mainstream media, is back. It was always going to be interesting to see how it would change in this new series, with the arrival of new executive producer Dan Ilic who promised (jokily) “to make it the highest rating nightly-satirical-comedy-show on Australian TV”, and the recent call for new talent, but then came one hell of a curveball: the recent allegations against host Tom Ballard.

Tom Ballard of Tonightly

Ballard has strongly denied the allegations, and the ABC has stood by him. But if the allegations are ever proved they would somewhat contradict the woke comedy both the show and Ballard are famous for, and Ballard would have to go. So, how does a satire show deal with something like this? Answer: very subtly.

The first two episodes of the new series included segments on the horrific rape and murder of young Melbourne comedian Eurydice Dixon. Sexual assault is something Tonightly has done stories on before, so this wasn’t a surprise, and because some of those who work on the show knew Dixon, feelings on the show were understandably high. Ballard himself made his feelings on sexual assault clear, without mentioning the allegations against himself – and there’s no reason to think he was anything other than utterly genuine.

This is part of the show’s coverage of the story. It set the right tone and had a few laughs in it – textbook Tonightly.

Other than that, the only possible reference to the allegations was a line in a segment about ABC privatisation in which Ballard said:

Yesterday, Michelle Guthrie, who is the managing director of the ABC…who I happen to think is a wonderful and great person who I love very much. [KNOWING LAUGHS FROM AUDIENCE] She’s very good and lets people keep their jobs. [MORE LAUGHS]

Wow. And then it was back to the comedy, which included a parody of an old-school politically incorrect comedian of the Kevin Bloody Wilson school, called Squidsy Mulligan, and segments on the World Cup, the return of Clive Palmer, and the policies of the government and Labor on refugees.

To go back to our original question about how the show might evolve, the answer is… not much. This is very much Tonightly as Tonightly has always been: a slightly shambolic mix of topical stand-up, self-deprecating gags, crappy props, and sketches which need a little more work. The only new-seeming feature was some newspaper cartoon-style animations by Glen Le Lievre in between segments. Oh, and the show now has a Facebook page. So if you were hoping for big changes at Tonightly you’ll be disappointed.

It seems that if there are changes to be made to Tonightly, they’re going to happen slowly. And as the show has already found a groove that enough people seem to like, why make big or sudden changes? “Steady as she goes” seems the watchword here, about both the allegations against Ballard and the show itself.

Your ABC: forming strategic partnerships to bring digital content to wider audiences.

Press release time!

The ABC and Screen Australia are excited to announce that production has commenced this week in Melbourne on Superwog, a new six-part comedy series for ABC COMEDY and YouTube.

Produced by Princess Pictures in association with the ABC, with principal production investment from Screen Australia, and financed with support from Film Victoria and YouTube, the project will forge new ground with episodes released on YouTube, ABC COMEDY and ABC iview – marking a first ever full series collaboration between the ABC and YouTube.

The dual broadcast plan will give Superwog’s huge loyal fanbase more of the show they love both online and on TV, while also exposing a true Aussie comedy success story to a whole new ABC audience. This partnership is yet another example of how the ABC is continually looking for innovative ways to engage with audiences as they shift towards on-demand content, including forming strategic partnerships to bring digital content to wider audiences.

Created by and starring YouTube sensations Theodore and Nathan Saidden, Superwog – the inspired-by-real-life tale of a flawed teenager and his crazed family in heartland suburbia – is also the first original scripted series to air on ABC COMEDY. This commission reaffirms ABC’s commitment to investing both in Australia’s emerging and culturally diverse comedic talents and in original scripted programming. The series also sees the ABC and YouTube embark on a new collaborative partnership.

Developed over eight years by the comedy duo, the Superwog YouTube channel has garnered an extraordinary 180+ million YouTube views and almost 900k subscribers, cementing their spot as Australia’s most watched YouTube comedy stars.

The Superwog series follows the often misunderstood, dysfunctional Superwog family as they struggle to navigate life in the Australian suburbs. Superwog is a porn and fast food obsessed teenager enrolled in a prestigious private school. His misadventures with best friend Johnny often cause Superwog’s primitive, highly-strung father extreme stress as he battles to keep his delusional but fiercely loyal wife happy.

ABC Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski said: “We’re so happy to bring Superwog to ABC, to be in first time business with YouTube, and for this to be our first scripted original for ABC COMEDY. Superwog’s Screen Australia/YouTube Skip Ahead Pilot was one of the funniest half hours I’d ever seen, and the full series is a cracking addition to our unrivalled comedy offering. ABC is serious about comedy, and about working with incredible Australian online comedy talents like Theo and Nathan Saidden to bring them to new audiences here and around the world.”

Sally Caplan, Head of Production at Screen Australia said: “The viral success of Superwog across their YouTube channel, boosted recently by their Skip Ahead pilot is simply staggering. To see them forge forward into this half hour series with YouTube and ABC COMEDY is an incredible opportunity for the Saidden brothers, as well as for both platforms exploring this innovative collaboration and release strategy.”

Head of YouTube Partnerships, Australia and New Zealand, Ed Miles, said: “We are delighted to be supporting Superwog in partnership with Screen Australia and the ABC, as they take this exciting step into creating narrative content. The Australian YouTube creator ecosystem is incredibly strong and it’s fantastic to see the ABC collaborate with creators to tell unique, local stories and embrace a multi-platform strategy to reach and engage audiences on YouTube as well as broadcast TV.”

Film Victoria CEO, Caroline Pitcher said “Edgy, irreverent and hilarious, Superwog has been a game changer in the online space and Melbourne’s Princess Pictures team have read this consumer popularity superbly. Congratulations to the Superwog and Princess Pictures team who will produce the entire long form series in Victoria.”

The Superwog pilot, funded by Screen Australia and Google as part of the Skip Ahead initiative, was the highest trending YouTube video in Australia last year, with over 3.4 million views (90% Australian based) and the most watched piece of content in the country in 2017.

The six by half-hour Superwog series will screen later this year.

Okay, so somewhere in this maze of funding bodies slapping each other on the back at having decided to give some cash to something that’s already massively successful, we’re going to assume an old-fashioned television series is getting made. Uh, yay?

Cry and the World Cries With You

Nanette, Hannah Gadsby’s farewell to comedy – though not, if you pay close attention, to live performance necessarily – has been going gangbusters the world over since it won the 2017 Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It’s gone on to win Best Comedy at the Adelaide Fringe, the Edinburgh Comedy Award, and a shed-load of glowing reviews from both UK and US critics as she’s toured the English-speaking world. There’s even a book due later in the year, titled Ten Steps to Nanette. It’s now available on Netflix. And it’s not a comedy.

Thing is, this isn’t news:

Thing is, Nanette’s not comedy.

“No. It’s narrative,” Gadsby says. It’s a string of stories that draw together the varied dark events of her life in the cause of demanding that the audience understand the damage society can visit upon children who find themselves on the outside. Like her.

Audiences and critics who have borne witness to the raw power of Nanette tend to leave the theatre not remembering the jokes so much as the emotion invested in the performance.

So, to get the obvious side of things out of the way: Nanette is an astonishingly powerful and well-crafted hour of stand-up, an absolute must-see for which words like “devastating” barely scratch the surface. Shows this memorable and angry come along rarely;  we humbly suggest you don’t let this particular kick to the head pass you by.

That said, if you’re desperately in need of the healing power of laughter, this may not be the show for you. In fact, a large chunk of the show is built around the idea that laughter is not the best medicine, and can (and often is) be used to hide some of the harsher truths of our society. These truths aren’t exactly news to anyone paying attention to the current state of our society – straight white men, hang your heads in shame – but they’re illustrated with a depth and power here that hammer them home hard.

So effective is Nanette, and so deeply personal is Gadsby’s story, that there hasn’t been all that much (that we’ve seen) discussion of her thesis. Which is a shame, because it’s one that deserves further unpacking: if there are things comedy can’t do, what do we do with comedy?

In Nanette, comedy is largely about creating tension, then defusing it. But according to Gadsby, this artificial tension is fake; worse, it’s part of an abusive, manipulative relationship. She then proceeds to burn down the whole edifice in electrifying fashion, driven by an anger that’s clearly exhausting to deal with – and she’s been dealing with it for her entire adult life.

The problem with countering her argument is that many of the examples where comedy has been used to tackle issues seemingly above its pay grade have been made by the aforementioned straight white men. And make no mistake: this show is not on their side. During a blistering take-down of the history of Western (high) Art, Gadsby makes it very clear that she has very little time for artists who claim that their art allows them free reign, or just suggest that painting nudes is about more than what gets their rocks off. It’s a show driven by anger, but its message is one of compassion – and disdain for art that encourages us to see others as less than human, because that leads to a whole lot of very bad things.

Unfortunately, no matter which direction you’re punching, seeing others as less than human is also how comedy often works. And so Nanette consigns comedy to the bin.

Nanette is a show by a performer who feels that comedy no longer enables her to accurately tell her truth, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll come away from it disagreeing with her. So raw and bruising is that truth that it only feels right to agree that anything that stifles that voice is something we should cast aside.

But she’s talking about comedy. You can see our dilemma.

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Rather old news, this, but Childproof, which we reviewed last year, won Best Comedy at this year’s Australian Podcast Awards. Why do we bring this up? Because, out of curiosity, we’ve spent the past month listening to the five other comedy podcasts it beat.

What was particularly interesting was the range of styles out there. It’s all too easy to think of comedy podcasts as being “some stand-ups natter on” or “the best bits from an Austereo radio show” because most of the popular and well-known comedy podcasts are one of them. But these five programs showed that there are plenty of different types of podcast being made – and some are worth subscribing to. Anyway, here’s what we thought of them…

podcasting

Obscure Music History

This series of mini music documentaries by musician Tom Hogan looks at obscure B-sides from bands and composers you’ve never heard of. Ranging from 60’s pop to musical theatre to more contemporary styles, this includes interviews with the musicians and a full play of the song being profiled. It’s a bit like The Blow Parade but with lower production values. Having said that, it’s every bit as much a geek out for music lovers and there are some note-perfect parodies of many well-known genres.

Bloody Murder

Imagine My Dad Wrote A Porno except they’re reading out descriptions of infamous real-life serial killings rather than bad sex fiction. That’s right, detailed descriptions of real-life murders and sex crimes being interrupted by sarcastic comments. It shouldn’t work…and it mostly doesn’t. Flippancy isn’t really the right response to a description of murder, incest, rape or torture, even if the comments are never directed at the victims or their families. Unless you have a very strong stomach for this kind of humour, this isn’t for you. And anyone with any personal experience of this kind of crime should avoid Bloody Murder altogether.

Attitude Consultant

This parody of self-help and life-coaching podcasts offers guidance on how to succeed at life. Host Rohan Harry dispenses his wisdom backed by inspirational, high-energy music and sound effects, in a series of increasingly bizarre episodes. In the most recent episode, Harry tried to help Siri improve her life, resulting in an hilarious circular conversation which should really have led to the device short-circuiting. Worth a listen.

The Wallet Inspectors

Wallet Inspectors Michael Vilkins, Alex Jones and Luke Gold speak to a different celebrity or notable person each week and ask them what their wallet looks like and what’s in. This could be funny but often isn’t. With this kind of thing, there are two ways to add comic value to the premise: 1. Funny questions, 2. Funny answers and The Wallet Inspectors often fails on both counts. The result is 25 minutes of a B- or C-list celeb explaining what’s in their wallet. Think about your wallet, does it contain anything interesting or funny? No? Exactly.

Welcome to Patchwork

A list of podcasts wouldn’t be complete with at least one “three blokes sit around talking about stuff” podcast, and here it is. Christian, Dion and Josh are friends talking about their lives. You know the deal, if you happen to find these three guys funny you enjoy the show, if you don’t, you unsubscribe. And when it comes to this done-to-death genre of podcast, we’ve heard much better than Welcome to Patchwork, even if the stories about Italian grandparents are kind of endearing.

The Ongoing Insurgency

There’s a number of ways to look at this shock development:

Rebel Wilson plans to appeal yesterday’s ruling that Bauer Media pay her $600,000 in general damages, losing $3.9m in special damages.

She took to Twitter overnight to indicate her fury, presumably planning to pursue it with the High Court of Australia.

Oh right, the tweets:

I was hoping the Court of Appeal in Australia would deliver a reasonable judgement today….ummmmm seeing as that HAS CLEARLY NOT happened I look forward to appealing! There’s some really bizarre things in there guys that are so obviously challengeable!

Everybody knows I lost money after those maliciously defamatory articles were printed about me by @bauermedia in 2015. The learned trial judge and Australian jury on the case who heard all the evidence clearly agreed.

Was it wrong of me to pledge that the money received from the case was going to good causes?? To me, after working tirelessly day and night to rebuild my career, I thought it was the right thing to do.

But somehow the Court of Appeal have been absolutely flippant with regards to my economic loss, not to mention my overall hurt and distress at having to stand up to these bullies.

That’s now $4 million less going to less fortunate Australians and leaves a billionaire corporation, proven guilty of malicious defamation, being able to get away with their seriously harmful acts for a very low pay day! Clearly not fair. Come on Australia 🇦🇺

Actually, on second read… is she really planning to appeal? “I look forward to appealing” sounds like the kind of thing a celebrity tweets off the top of their head before getting proper legal advice. “There’s some really bizarre things in there guys that are so obviously challangeable!” But let’s take her at her word.

“Everybody knows I lost money”. We can think of at least one judge who disagrees.

“Was it wrong of me to pledge that the money received from the case was going to good causes??” No it wasn’t. Did her future plans for the money have anything to do with the case? No they didn’t. Would it be wrong to point out here that part of the original case was based on the argument that Rebel Wilson’s public statements don’t always line up with objective reality? Well, she won the case, so that argument clearly isn’t true. This just in: Wilson really is related to Walt Disney.

“After working tirelessly day and night to rebuild my career”. Hey, nobody asked her to do that.

“But somehow the Court of Appeal have been absolutely flippant with regards to my economic loss”. Because still getting to take home $600,000 means nothing?

“That’s now $4 million less going to less fortunate Australians”. Wait, didn’t she originally say:

“Support the Australian film industry”? Putting aside the question of whether they fit the definition of “less fortunate Australians”, when was the last time Wilson made a film here? That’d be the 2011 hit A Few Best Men. Maybe if this particular internationally famous superstar wanted to support the local film industry, a good way would be to, you know, occasionally turn up in a local film to add her pulling power to the marque.

“While this case was never about the money for me”. We refer you to her use of the phrase “economic loss”. And “I lost money”. And “pay me”.

We could go on. After all, for someone so intimately aware of the damage name-calling can do, she’s pretty quick with terms like “losers”. But seriously, can everyone involved in this just go away now?

Australian Tumbleweeds is Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.
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