Australian Tumbleweeds
Very Small News
Press release time!
11 10 2017 – Media release
Don Angel is Back in Very Small Business: Gristmill’s new satire for ABC TV
Gristmill co-founders Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope
AACTA award-winning production company Gristmill (Little Lunch, Upper Middle Bogan) have secured principal production investment from Screen Australia in association with Film Victoria, for Back in Very Small Business – a brand new comedy series commissioned by the ABC.
Starring Wayne Hope and Kim Gyngell, Back in Very Small Business will re-imagine the world of Don Angel, first introduced to audiences in 2008 with the AFI and Logie-nominated ABC series Very Small Business.
Back in Very Small Business finds Don (Wayne Hope) at the helm of the World Wide Business Group, where he and his business partner Ray (Kim Gyngell), have found success in their ‘Don’s Dirty Dog Wash’ franchise. Encompassing five other small businesses, the WWBG is staffed by an ethnically diverse, gender fluid, psychologically fragile menagerie, all hired on government subsidies. While Don enjoys the spoils of his burgeoning empire, he continues to be plagued by the consequences of both his morally questionable business practises and his delinquent emotional life.
Back in Very Small Business will feature a brilliant cast, showcasing some brand new faces alongside some of Australia’s finest comic performers. The full cast will be announced in December, when production begins.
Creators Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope said: “We’re extremely excited to be making Back in Very Small Business and we really hope there is room in the world for one more bombastic, emotionally stunted, shonky guy called Don.”
Featuring 8 x 27min episodes, the comedy series will be produced, executive produced and written by Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler, with Butler also taking on directing duties. Greg Sitch and the ABC’s Rick Kalowski are the executive producers, with Gary McCaffrie completing the writing team. The comedy series will be broadcast on the ABC, with international sales to be handled by Super Java Distribution.
Collaborators and Gristmill co-founders Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler are prolific creators of Australian television and films. Their ABC comedy series Upper Middle Bogan won Best Television Comedy series at the 2016 AACTA Awards for the third season, and has enjoyed multiple AACTA and Logie Award nominations across all three seasons. Their children’s ABC3 series Little Lunch won the 2016 Prix de Jeunesse Award in the 7-10 Fiction Category, the 2017 Logie for Most Outstanding Children’s Series, and was nominated for an AACTA award.
“Gristmill have created an enviable catalogue of exceptionally funny, irreverent and incredibly clever comedy content that is uniquely Australian,” says Sally Caplan, Head of Production at Screen Australia. “We expect Back in Very Small Business will be an equally successful outing for them and commend the producers for updating the characters in this show to reflect a contemporary, diverse audience.”
“We’re delighted to partner with the ABC to see the return of Don Angel, Australia’s most inept businessman, for Back in Very Small Business,” says Jenni Tosi, Film Victoria CEO. “As leading producers of comedy for audiences and screens of all sizes, Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope will once again bring the sharp, satirical and laugh-out-loud funny moments for this Melbourne-grown comedy and we look forward to its return.”
Back in Very Small Business will commence filming in December and into the new year, and will air on the ABC in 2018.
We’re filing this one under “very good news”, as we were big fans of the original. Roll on 2018!
(Though just quietly, having Don in charge of an actual staff seems to be slightly missing the point of what made the original so much fun)
Someone Left Off the F
Press release time!
ABC celebrates and debates the Arts
Sarah Blasko, Hannah Gadsby and Chris Taylor lead a culture charge
Thursday, October 5, 2017 — New film and TV review show Screen Time heads up an exciting and diverse slate of arts programs, coming soon to the ABC.
Ranging from fine art and fashion, to music and movies, the line-up celebrates the best of art and culture across the spectrum. We explore disparate worlds of music with Sarah Blasko and composer Nigel Westlake; and different approaches to art and life with Anh Do and comedian Hannah Gadsby. We look at the phenomenon of child prodigies, explore storytelling in its many forms, as well as cultural clashes playing out through film making and social issues. The centrepiece of the ABC’s upcoming arts programming is the multi-award-winning flagship documentary series, Artsville. This next season of beautifully crafted films includes a fascinating and funny look at the making of an Australian horror movie as well as a moving portrait of Australian band The Go-Betweens.
David Anderson, ABC Director of Television says, “At a time when arts coverage is fast losing space in the mainstream media, the ABC is proud to celebrate Australia’s cultural life and bring some great arts programs to all Australians.”
What follows is a big old list of “great arts programs”. Some of which are somewhat comedy-adjacent.
Screen Time, starts on Tuesday 17 October, 8pm on ABC and iview
Hosted by Chris Taylor, with an ensemble cast of regular panelists, Screen Time goes beyond the binge to bring you the latest from the world of TV, streaming, cinema and the web. From highbrow to lowbrow, prestige ‘golden age of television’ moments, to bedroom YouTube stars, it’s all worth talking about for our cast of screen timers. Entertaining, but rooted in cultural critique and analysis, Screen Time will be the go to show for anyone who likes to watch … just about anything!
Artsville, series starts Tuesday 31 October, 9.30pm on ABC and iview
Up first, two-parter Horror Movie – A Low-Budget Nightmare, follows actor-turned-filmmaker Craig Anderson, as he embarks on a rollercoaster – and at times – comedic journey to make his first super-low-budget horror feature film, Red Christmas. Tuesday 31 October & Part 2 – Tuesday 7 November, 9.30pm.
Production credit: Fridge Jam Productions. Screen Australia.
The Book Club Christmas Special, Tues 19 December, 9.30pm on ABC and iview
Jennifer Byrne along with cohorts Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger return for their annual Christmas Special “Five of the Best.” Taking in their top five books of the year we will also open voting lines to the Book Club audience to nominate their 5 Best Books of the Year.
Underscore, Wednesday 1 November on iview
Acclaimed Australian composer Nigel Westlake has scored films like Babe and Paper Planes. In this iview original series he draws on his own deeply personal journey through grief and loss to create the soundtrack for a new film – Australia’s first Muslim rom-com, Ali’s Wedding. We follow the process from paper to recording with his many collaborators like singer Lior and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
HIVE, series of 3 films coming in 2018 to ABC and iview
An initiative between ABC Arts, the Adelaide Film Festival, Screen Australia and the Australia Council for the Arts, giving artists from many disciplines the chance to make their first film.
Guilty is a feature length film focusing on the last days of artist and executed Bali Nine prisoner Myuran Sukumaran. It is written and directed by visual artist Matthew Sleeth, who ran art workshops in prison with Myuran throughout his rehabilitation.
Remembering Agatha is a half-hour hybrid live-action whimsical drama overlaid with animation. Directed by artist and writer, Emma Magenta, it tells the story of a woman overwhelmed by family obligation and the domestication of her spirit, before she discovers a mysterious portal offering her the possibility of resolving her grief and saving her crumbling marriage.
Production credit: Create NSW.
Oddlands is a half-hour drama directed and co-written by Back To Back Theatre’s artistic director Bruce Gladwin. It tells the blackly humorous story of a team of people with intellectual disabilities from a supported employment service, who travel into a restricted zone to plug a hole in a deserted nuclear facility.
Hannah Gadsby’s Nakedy Nude, coming in 2018 to ABC and iview
Award-winning comedian Hannah Gadsby will apply her unique sensibility to the representation of the nude in art. Part lampoon, part deconstruction, Gadsby will draw on her art history background to navigate between dry humour, irreverence and serious art critique.
Production credit: Barefoot Communications. Create NSW
Anh’s Brush With Fame season three, coming in 2018 to ABC and iview
Archibald People’s Choice award-winner, comedian and author Anh Do returns with the much-anticipated third season of Anh’s Brush With Fame, getting up close and personal with an exciting new line-up of Australian celebrities, to be announced soon.
Production credit: Screentime.
The Mix, continues in 2018, Saturdays, 6.30pm on ABC NEWS and iview
The Mix has had a fresh coat of paint and brings you more great arts content from around the country. The new look weekly arts, entertainment and culture program features contributors including Zan Rowe, Myf Warhurst, and artists Eddie Sharp and Abdul Abdullah. Bringing audiences a unique look inside what’s happening in the arts and giving you a weekly culture fix! The program is repeated on ABC TV on Sunday afternoons.
The ABC has been cutting back on arts coverage pretty much since its second week of existence, so on some level all this is good news. But that’s not our level. Our level is one filled with blaring alarms at the use of words like “comedic” and “whimsical” and “blackly humourous” and “Anh Do’s painting again”. Because whether you like arts coverage or comedy, there’s a lot here to actively dislike.
Call us crazy, but if we can have a schedule full of sports programs that take sport seriously, why is it seemingly impossible to have even a single arts program that doesn’t involve some kind of wacky prankster? Why is it assumed that sport is somehow intrinsically entertaining whereas the arts – which, it may surprise ABC programmers to learn, is often designed to be entertaining – can’t be allowed on television without assurances that we won’t be taking it seriously and “comedy” will somehow be involved.
We wouldn’t mind so much if the comedy was actually funny – fingers crossed for Gadsby’s show (her BBC radio show on art was pretty good) – but these shows are never made with comedy in mind. They’re lightweight pissweak explainers aimed at a seemingly disinterested audience, failing to appeal either to actual arts fans or people who couldn’t give a fuck while giving off the stench of a contractual obligation without even the marginal competence you’d usually expect from someone going through the motions. The ABC doesn’t put on arts coverage because it doesn’t rate, and the reason why it doesn’t rate is because they do a half-arsed job of it.
But hey, let’s take a closer look at what has to be one of the dumbest ideas for a television program in recent memory and we still remember The Agony of the Body:
Screen Time, starts on Tuesday 17 October, 8pm on ABC and iview
Hosted by Chris Taylor, with an ensemble cast of regular panelists,
(Word is these panellists are not so much movie and television experts as people like Benjamin Law – engaging wafflers who happen to watch television and movies. So… Gogglebox only without the charm?)
Screen Time goes beyond the binge to bring you the latest from the world of TV, streaming, cinema and the web. From highbrow to lowbrow, prestige ‘golden age of television’ moments, to bedroom YouTube stars, it’s all worth talking about for our cast of screen timers.
It’s a half hour show covering four areas, each of which could easily fill a half hour show on their own. At the Movies used to take half an hour just for movies. Meanwhile, there is so much new television being created just out of the USA it’s no longer humanly possible for anyone to watch it all. “And we’re covering the web!” This has zero chance of going in-depth on much of anything, which would be fine if they were, say, covering some obscure sport that nobody knew anything about. But this is a show about television. It’s on television. The people watching it already know about television.
Entertaining, but rooted in cultural critique and analysis, Screen Time will be the go to show for anyone who likes to watch … just about anything!
Don’t be worried ABC viewers, we put “entertaining” first so you don’t have to worry that the scary panel will start using big reviewer words like “boring”. What kind of analysis are we going to get from a panel of personalities on a show hosted by a television producer? Probably not going to be bad-mouthing a lot of local product, we’re guessing. Maybe not pointing out any trends that might be embarrassing to any of the local networks either.
You know, like how dumbing down arts coverage to appeal to people who don’t care while alienating those viewers who do is a pretty stupid way to attract viewers.
Someone Just Found $20 On The Floor And They’re Spending Up Big
In recent months we’ve been wondering time and time again: what kind of comedy can the ABC make when they can’t afford to make anything that’s not an overseas co-production? And now we have the answer: really cheap comedy:
Adam Zwar and Trent O’Donnell are set to make a six-part comedy for the ABC set entirely in cars, which will follow people from Sydney’s western suburbs as they drive to work.
In fact, we reckon they can go even cheaper than that:
Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler are making a sequel to their 2008 six-part comedy Very Small Business for the ABC.
Very Small Business, you may recall, was a sitcom originally set entirely in a disused office (they expanded on it when the ABC complained it looked too cheap by adding a bunch of cutaways to outside locations). You may also recall it was actually pretty funny (and extremely spot-on with its jokes about the world of dodgy magazine publication), so a return in an age where bottom-rung publishing is even more cutthroat can only be for the good.
Squinters, on the other hand, sounds like a concept we’re going to need to hear a bit more about. Are the characters carpooling? Constantly on their mobile phones? Repeatedly involved in massive pile-ups? Having done our fair share of slow crawls into the city for work we’re fairly confident that comedy is not the natural outcome of sitting in a car for fifty minutes at a time.
But as usual, the stinger is in the tail:
Neither the ABC nor Jungle has confirmed the show.
No rush there, guys.
Why we’ve given up on The Edge of the Bush
It’s fair to say we haven’t really taken to The Edge of the Bush, Anne Edmond’s short-form sitcom airing each week after Get Krack!n’. It’s partly the clash of dark and moody and over-the-top, zany characters that isn’t working for us, but also that it feels like an idea that seemed hilarious on paper or in the rehearsal room but just doesn’t work as a finished TV show.
There are lots of positive things to say about Anne Edmonds. She’s masterful at dissecting the culture of the Australian suburbs, particularly its less nice aspects, and no one handles a shift in tone quite like Edmonds. Those sudden U-turns she does? Genius. Her MICF show this year, No Offence None Taken, featured plenty of those, and it was a well-deserved Barry nominee.
The Edge of the Bush also does a pretty good job of nailing what’s so clever – and annoying – about all those Scandi Noir and Scandi Noir-influenced dramas we’ve seen in the past half-decade: the bizarre storylines, the over-played horror, the endless repetition of key plot points, the flashbacks, the characters looking off camera when they remember something “from the past”… Problem is, none of this is actually made funny in The Edge of the Bush; it’s an accurate parody, but not one made hilarious.
Maybe it’s that this seems to be a show about incest. That guaranteed laugh-getter, incest. We’re not saying you can’t do jokes about incest, just that if you do they’d better be hilarious. A rule which, as long-time readers of this blog know, is something you can apply to anything you try to do in comedy: it better be hilarious.
Having said all this, we’d really like to see more from Anne Edmonds. Her appearances as Helen Bidou in Get Krack!n alone justify that. Just not more of The Edge of the Bush, if that’s okay.
Krack-a-Lackin’ Oppertunities
You know how sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head and you just can’t shake it? No, we’re not talking about wondering why Tom Gleeson has his own show; we mentioned this line from The Guardian’s review of Get Krack!n a while back –
Not long ago, most of us had never heard of Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney; now we can barely imagine Australian comedy without them.
– and while we pointed out at the time it was a bit off-base considering their lengthy comedy careers, the fact that a professional television reviewer would think it was a reasonable observation has stuck with us.
See, it’s not like the two Kates lunged at Australian comedy from out of nowhere. Kate McLennan’s career includes a range of comparatively high-profile sketch shows (Let Loose Live, Live From Planet Earth, The Mansion), while Kate McCartney also has a bunch of sketch work to her name (Big Bite, Hamish & Andy) and appearances on a range of Australia’s increasingly popular dramedies (Offspring, The Time of Our Lives). They’re not new to this.
But what’s happened in the decade since they both started their comedy careers is that Australian television comedy has lost pretty much all interest in developing new talent. The networks are more than happy to find new talent and give them a go – see the ABC’s endless run of online-only talent competitions – but as far as giving anyone a chance to actually go beyond being “the next big thing”… yeah, nah.
Partly that’s because those sketch shows the Kates were in were… well, they were shit. Sketch comedies pretty much died out here a decade ago and they’d been mostly rubbish for about a decade before that. But that was largely because they were written by the same tight-knit group of shithouse writer-producers who have since gone onto fortune and infamy while the actual talent on the shows was hung out to dry.
Without sketch shows, Australian television has done a disastrous job of developing the next generation of comedy talent. Both The Chaser and Hamish & Andy have been around for close to 15 years; Chris Lilley got his big break on Big Bite over a decade ago. Working Dog and Shaun Micallef have been around for twenty years or more. Wil Anderson is no spring chicken. Neither are the Gristmill team. You get the picture.
That’s not to say no-one’s risen through the ranks. Anne Edmonds is getting a bit of attention at the moment thanks to the one-two punch of her appearances on Get Krack!n and her own series The Edge of the Bush, but she’s had five years of relatively steady work since her debut on Wednesday Night Fever (mostly with sketch troupe Fancy Boy, but also on Dirty Laundry Live) to hone her skills. We can talk about talent and having the right attitude to comedy until we’re blue in the face, but if you’re not getting a regular chance to develop your skills you’re not going to be able to make decent television.
The obvious solution is to clear out the dead wood – and with Chris Lilley at least, that seems to have happened. But the oldies are still funny; the problem isn’t that we’re not getting (some) good comedy, it’s that we’re not giving the next generation – or at this stage, the one coming up after that – the chance to become as good as the oldies they’ll eventually replace. There’s simply nowhere for people to seriously develop their television skills, which means that even when skilled comedy performers get promoted to the big leagues (well, the Australian big leagues, which, ha) they often stumble. Remember Woodley? Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane? Problems? Super Fun Night? Okay, not that last one.
Like all right-thinking people, we’re really enjoying Get Krack!n. But it’s not without flaws. Some of the ideas are great in theory but not in practice, the tone can be a little too all over the place, occasionally episodes seem to lose their way and some of the segments land more firmly on “weird” than they do “funny”. Is it better than most ABC comedy? No doubt. Is it better than the second season of The Katering Show? Maybe not.
The Kates made their comedy debuts on sketch shows well over a decade ago. Imagine what they’d be capable of now if they’d been able to get steady work in television comedy for the last decade. Imagine how much more choice we’d have when it comes to comedy today if there’d been steady work available for anyone in television comedy over the last decade. This country has a shitload of comedy talent out there getting rusty while nobody at the networks seems to have any idea how to use them.
Mind you, Tom Gleeson’s got his own show.
TEAM work
For a while now we’ve been enjoying the occasional, but very much worth the wait, podcasts from the TEAM Effort team. That’s T for Tony Martin, E for Ed Kavalee, A for Ash Williams, M for Lawrence “Moonman” Mooney and Effort for, um, the guests, who have included the likes of Tom Gleisner, Leigh Sales, Jane Kennedy and Hamish Blake.
The TEAM Effort team – Ed Kavalee, Lawrence Mooney, Ash Williams and Tony Martin
If you liked Get This, this is very much the Martin/Kavalee reunion you’ve been waiting for; they’re even playing clips of Rex Hunt saying “How good is this?”. And amazingly, given how Get This ended (it was axed by Triple M in circumstances that suggested management weren’t exactly fans of the show), the TEAM Effort is made by Triple M and produced by Triple M Melbourne’s Hot Breakfast producer Jay Mueller in the studios of Triple M.
It probably helps that Kavalee’s a big name at the M’s these days, being the co-host of the Brisbane breakfast show, but even so, it seems like a miracle that this show actually exists. This is a Triple M production where no one talks about sport or tries to appeal to whatever tradies are supposed to be into. How did this slip through the net? Are the TEAM breaking into the studios at night and bribing the security guards to keep schtum?
However they managed to get it out there, the TEAM Effort is exactly the kind of freewheeling chat you’d expect from a podcast involving four men talking to each other, but made with the sort of quality and care and attention that only a group of people with decades of broadcasting and stand-up experience between them are going to turn out. Oh, and to get back to our wonder at how the hell this is managing to go out under the Triple M banner, much of the conversation in recent episodes seems to have been about executives that various members of the TEAM have encountered at Triple M or its parent company Austereo. This is exactly the kind of sailing-close-to-the-wind material that presumably got Get This axed – how good is this?!
In fact, the TEAM Effort is a show that’s rapidly putting many of the other well-known comedy podcasts to shame; its most recent episode made it to number 12 in the iTunes Australian podcasting charts. Not a bad effort, TEAM Effort, not bad at all.
The Wils to Pay the Bills
So presumably this makes sense to someone:
Comedian Wil Anderson is set to return to radio as a host on Triple M’s Hot Breakfast, joining Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy.
For once we’re not being snarky: while we’ve known Mick Molloy was moving on from his breakfast radio gig for a while now, having once again worked his way up the radio ranks to become a prime-time player, we kinda figured his replacement would be someone like the much-touted option of Lawrence Mooney. You know, a knockabout blokey comedian who officially likes sport and would know his place in the scheme of things.
And knowing your place is a very important consideration when you’re working alongside Eddie McGuire. Molloy was very much the comedy relief in the early days of The Hot Breakfast, and while it seems logical to suggest the show’s improvement in the ratings has come about in large part thanks to Molloy’s growing stature in Melbourne’s AFL-focused media – his not-The-Footy-Show-footy-show The Front Bar is currently rating extremely well – it was always very clear that he was not the main attraction.
(well, he was if you were listening to hear funny stuff, but Molloy is a professional who was in at least some ways rebuilding his career; having been around once before, he knew how to keep his head down)
Wil Anderson, on the other hand, has had a somewhat different career. Anderson is a very successful stand-up comedian who’s hosted his own breakfast radio show and been front and center as host on a pair of long-running ABC panel shows. He doesn’t exactly seem like someone you’d hire expecting him to play second fiddle to a game show host whose main qualification for anything beyond that is that he currently runs a football club.
Yet everybody (in Melbourne) knows that if Eddie McGuire is on a show, it’s the Eddie McGuire show. We couldn’t possibly give less of a fuck about sport and even we’ve heard rumours that part of the deal to lure Eddie McGuire back to hosting The Footy Show earlier this year was that Channel Nine’s other footy show – the much more serious and news-based Footy Confidential – would either be downgraded our outright axed because if Eddie’s hosting a footy show then that’s the network’s only footy show. But he’s reportedly good mates with the Working Dog folks so maybe he respects comedians more than he does rival footy show hosts.
No doubt this makes sense to everyone for all manner of reasons. Anderson probably wants a steady job in his home town. Triple M want a big name to get people to listen to their morning show. McGuire wants to be the host of the number one breakfast radio show in Melbourne. Mick Molloy wants to step up to the drivers seat after six years playing third fiddle on breakfast radio. Everybody wins.
We just can’t see this particular team-up lasting all that long.
Safeway the Fresh Food People
Press release time!
Triple the laughs in October, on ABC
Get ready to triple your laughs with three new comedies premiering next month on ABC and ABC iview.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017 — Get ready to triple your laughs with three new comedies premiering next month on ABC and ABC iview.
Fans of comedy legend Shaun Micallef rejoice… Australia’s longest serving caretaker Prime Minister Andrew Dugdale is back in a new series of The Ex-PM. Beloved comics Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor return to quirky country life in a second season of Rosehaven. And, motherhood and mayhem go hand in hand in mothers’ group comedy The Letdown, starring Alison Bell and Noni Hazlehurst – and based on the Comedy Showroom pilot named Best Television Screenplay at the 2016 AACTA Awards.
ABC Head of Television David Anderson says “We’re lucky here in Australia to have such dynamic and risk-taking comedy talent. It means there is always a sense of freshness and edge in what we get to see. Next month’s line up is no different – Rosehaven, The Letdown and The Ex-PM are a great showcase of Australian comedy at its best. We look forward to sharing triple the laughs with our audiences!”
ABC Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski says “These three series Rosehaven, The Ex-PM and The Letdown – the first a small town charmer, the second a joke-packed political satire, the third an often heartbreaking comedy-drama, from creators/stars both established and new – speak to the ABC’s unceasing commitment to be the home of Australian comedy of every kind. We couldn’t be prouder of all three shows.”
Rosehaven Wednesday 25 October at 9:05pm
Daniel (Luke McGregor) and Emma (Celia Pacquola) are back in a second season of their hit, award-winning Rosehaven. They’re housemates and workmates again and finally both feel like they belong. The question now is whether Rosehaven agrees. Also stars Kris McQuade, Katie Robertson, David Quirk and Sam Cotton. Sundance TV (USA) now co-presents the show with ABC TV, bringing this quintessentially Aussie comedy to the rest of the world.
The Letdown Wednesday 25 October at 9.35pm
The Letdown is the story of Audrey (Alison Bell), a struggling new mum, and the parents group she thinks she doesn’t need. The series proves that being a parent can be both extreme and hilarious. Directed by Trent O’Donnell the show also stars Noni Hazlehurst, Duncan Fellows, Sacha Horler, Leon Ford, Lucy Durack, Celeste Barber, Leah Vandenberg, Xana Tang and Sarah Peirse. Netflix will stream the series globally outside Australia and it will be available on Netflix in Australia after its run on the ABC.
The Ex-PM Thursday 26 October at 8.30pm
Comedy is back on Thursday nights with the return of the hit series The Ex-PM. Retired, third longest serving caretaker Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Dugdale (Shaun Micallef) is called back into the political fold to run in a sudden, ‘must win’ by-election. Also stars Nicki Wendt, Kate Jenkinson, Francis Greenslade, Nicholas Bell, Lucy Honigman, Ming-Zhu Hii, Jackson Tozer and the late, great John Clarke in his final television appearance.
PLEASE NOTE:
The Letdown episode 1 is the original award winning pilot, now starring Duncan Fellows as Jeremy, with 6 brand new episodes to follow.
The original seasons of Rosehaven and The Ex-PM will be available on ABC iview from Wednesday 11 October and Friday 13 October respectively.
Do we really need to point out that two out of three – the least interesting two at that – are international co-productions? Of course not. “We’re lucky here in Australia to have such dynamic and risk-taking comedy talent,” remember? Because comedy series about a quirky small country town and motherhood are such big risks.
And anyway, if we were to suggest that trying to make a comedy for an international audience automatically results in bland, middle-of-the-road material designed to generate not strong feelings either way, anyone sensible reading this could throw back a dozen examples from here and overseas of comedy series this century that have done well the world over while still maintaining their “freshness and edge”.
Just none made by the ABC.
Whither Rebel?
In the wake of Rebel Wilson receiving a record payout as a result of winning her defamation lawsuit against Bauer Media, where does humanity possibly go from here? It’s the size of the payout that’s news-worthy; anyone with eyes to see knew she was going to win the second it was announced it was a jury trial – good luck finding six people in this country who won’t side with a celebrity against a gossip magazine – and it seems the judge figured Wilson’s career was on a massive upswing after Pitch Perfect 2 so why not give her all the money?
The judge accepted without qualification that I had an extremely high reputation and that the damage inflicted on me was substantial.
— Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) September 13, 2017
Wilson has since made it perfectly clear that she’s not going to be keeping the cash, instead handing it out to various as yet unspecified groups:
I’m looking forward to helping out some great Australian charities and supporting the Oz film industry with the damages I’ve received.
— Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) September 13, 2017
It seems an extremely safe bet that the media – Bauer Media in particular – will be monitoring very closely whether Rebel “most definitely not a serial liar” Wilson follows through on her pledge.
But the most interesting thing here is this tweet:
Today was the end of a long and hard court battle against Bauer Media who viciously tried to take me down with a series of false articles.
— Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) September 13, 2017
Specifically the phrase “false articles”. Because the thing is – and we’re totally not legal experts, let’s get that straight, we’re just going on what we’ve read – it’s doesn’t seem to have been the case that Bauer Media were found guilty of making shit up.
In light of this general acceptance Wilson had somewhat rewritten her own history to benefit her career and created mystery around her Hollywood persona, some have argued it was Wilson’s captivating performance in the court room which won the day, rather than the debate about the facts themselves.
But Justice Dixon dismissed the publisher’s arguments revealing Wilson’s background and branding her as a liar was trivial, saying in the judgement: “At the height of the plaintiff’s career, an international career that she had worked to build over 17 years, Bauer Media launched a calculated, baseless and unjustifiable public attack on her reputation.
Rather, while many of their basic facts were true – Wilson altered her age, fabricated much of her history, claimed to be related to Walt Disney despite no concrete evidence for it, and so on – Bauer Media were still wrong to publish articles based on those facts.
In Victoria at least, things can be defamatory even if they’re true. If a major newspaper was to write a cover story on the time Rebel Wilson dropped out of Jenny Craig with the headline REBEL WILSON: STILL FAT, it seems a fairly safe bet that legal trouble would ensue even though it could be argued that the story was technically true.
So the case here wasn’t so much that Bauer Media lied about Wilson, though there does seem to be at least a few areas where some of their facts were sketchy. Rather, it’s that by publishing a version of the truth in the way that they did, they intentionally did damage to her reputation that caused her to lose money. The judge, who swallowed whole Wilson’s legal team’s word for how successful her career was going at the time, established the massive damages payout based on that.
(personally, we would have thought the massive TV flop that was her sitcom Super Fun Night might have damaged her Hollywood career somewhat more than some stories in Woman’s Day. Not to mention between Pitch Perfects 1 and 2 Wilson appeared in a grand total of two films: Pain & Gain and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, both of which were little more than cameos. If we’d been called to give evidence, we might have said that her career path at the time – two minor roles and a flop TV series over two years – might have suggested that her big pay day in Pitch Perfect 2 was more about the franchise paying big to get her back than the amount of money she could legitimately expect to attract to appear in movies without the words “Pitch Perfect” in the title)
The upshot of all this is, Wilson sued and won over a magazine writing stories about her that were, in a number of ways, technically true. Let’s let that sink in for a moment. You can write a story about Rebel Wilson that is factually correct, and if she thinks the tone of your story is defamatory she can sue you and – based on this result – take you to the cleaners for millions. The precedent has been set that because of Wilson’s line of work, it’s perfectly reasonable for her to “[rewrite] her own history to benefit her career and [create] mystery around her Hollywood persona”; if media organisations have facts that say otherwise, they’d better keep them to themselves.
Of course, many people are going to (rightly) argue that we all know the difference between a story that’s a hit-piece and a legitimate piece of journalism. But that’s not the point here. Wilson was, as previously stated, pretty much a lock to win this case because she’s a much-loved star and gossip magazines are scum; the big pay out is because the stories were supposedly timed to do maximum damage to her career.
But when then is the right time to point out that Wilson’s background is sketchy? If she was an up-and-coming actor or a struggling bit player, these stories could still conceivably prevent her from one day landing a potentially million-dollar role; if she’s ever made a big pay day but those days are behind her, well, actors make comebacks all the time. How are we to know another big paying role wasn’t just around the corner?
In the light of this, it seem fairly safe to suggest that coverage of Rebel Wilson in the Australian press in future will be… spotty. At best. Why risk reporting on her in any way when even the driest facts could be seen as an attack on her right to create mystery around herself? Why take the chance on conducting an interview with someone who’s been given a go-ahead by the courts to rewrite her own history? And what can you safely mention about her now anyway? Not her age, not her family history, and almost certainly not her past career as any mention of it in less than glowing terms could be seen by Wilson as “an attempt to take me down”.
As for us. we won’t be mentioning her again until she does something funny. It could be a long wait.
Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah
Okay, so we’ve already made our moral objections to Gruen painfully clear. Someone has to: a few days ago we heard an ABC radio host describe Gruen as a show that “hates advertising”. Yeah, it hates advertising so much all it does is show ads. This is a show where a panelist can say with a straight face “future advertising is not false advertising… it’s a clever use of our own imagination” and not get stabbed on live TV. It’s a disgrace.
Something else it also is, is boring. Really, really boring. It’s a 35 minute show where for at least 20 minutes a bunch of tosspots sat around a desk discussing ways to advertise the NBN. It’s a show so boring that when a pathetically poor joke about a NBN commercial slogan is made – something along the lines of “Hey, the real slogan should be ‘Can’t someone else do it?'” – the audience cheers so loudly the show comes to a halt. Maybe they thought Wil Anderson was announcing his resignation.
Look, we all know the formula here. Show a commercial, Anderson makes a dad joke – seriously, lines like “Love the NBN logo, it’s like their coverage – spotty!” are the kind of shit jokes other characters roll their eyes at in shit sitcoms – the panelists throw around buzzwords like “branding problem” and “comprehension issue” to make the audience feel like insiders, and eventually things stagger to the sole other segment this show has, where advertising firms get to advertise themselves by working to some lame comedy brief. We often crap on about how Gruen is one long ad for advertising, but “The Pitch” is a literal ad for the agencies involved; if anyone still gave a fuck about the ABC charter this would get them taken off the air.
Occasionally the show seems dimly aware that they’re promoting one of the nastier and more evil industries in our society. A panelist discussing sales strategies will say something like “In advertising we call it aspiration, but it’s envy”, thus risking the audience’s realisation that yes, this is a show that celebrates an industry based around exploiting a real life Deadly Sin; while discussing an commercial sneering at hipsters Anderson will say “How do you decide, as an industry, on a hate group” and there’ll be just the slightest pause before everyone goes on about how mocking people is all in good fun and they’re really in on the gag and it’s basically celebrating their targets anyway. Oh ho ho ho. We can’t wait until they explain some of the dodgier “No” campaign ads for the gay marriage referendum as “basically celebrating their targets”.
But yeah, mostly it’s just boring. What kind of entertainment are we meant to extract from Wil Anderson saying “I checked when my area is getting the NBN and it’s not until 2019”? That sounds pretty good considering it’s got to go all the way across the Pacific Ocean to his place in LA. Which, we’ve got to assume, is where he’d live the whole year round if he didn’t have to come back here to record Gruen.
Even the one single line you’d expect us to enjoy – Russel Howcroft saying “Someone is finally putting some comedy on air” after a mildly amusing commercial for burgers – only reminded us of how smug and pointless this show really is. Of course he has no idea that comedy – actual decent comedy – was occupying his timeslot just a week earlier, because that comedy was on the ABC and the ABC doesn’t run commercials and commercials are the only thing on television he cares about. It’d be like us making some wry observation about sport: a total waste of everybody’s time.
And then Todd Sampson said with a straight face “It’s not hypocrisy, it’s advertising”. Like there’s any fucking difference.