Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

Forty Three Episodes Standing Still

It’s easy to point out the general shittiness of The Weekly, but what about specifics? What are some of the concrete things it’s doing to make it just so hard to watch?

*heavy sigh*

Look, this is a show where someone was paid very well indeed to write “we’ve all seen your military muscle, now put it back in your trousers”; even for clearly rubbish “critics” like us this is a whole lot of low-hanging fruit. It’s got to the stage now where they don’t even show the clip then bring the snark – they break up the clip into segments so Pickering can comment on what’s happening as it happens. Showing the start of a clip, ranting a bit in one direction then going “whaaaaaa” when the next bit of the clip is shown to develop in a different direction is just… it’s just… why?

*stares off into the distance for twenty minutes*

Oh yeah right; concrete advice. Look, one of the things just about every decent long running political satire does is turn their targets (usually politicians) into comedy characters. For a while there in the 80s it was so common we had entire puppet shows based around the idea, but most shows do it – you just focus on a politician’s quirks, play them up in your coverage, and soon enough you’ve got a running gag. Remember Bill Shorten and his zingers on Mad as Hell? That kind of thing.

You do this because characters are a great source of comedy. If you’re doing political satire week in week out eventually you’re going to strike a run of weeks where not much is happening. So it’s handy to be able to make jokes about politicians even when they’re not actually doing anything funny. It’s something to keep the viewers coming back for. It’s a bit of fun. It’s a laugh.

In three years, The Weekly has never once managed to do this. The closest they’ve come is running a bunch of clips of Mark Latham on Sky talking about cooking, only all they contributed to the joke that Mark Latham was talking about cooking on a supposedly political program was a big slice of fuck-all. Otherwise it’s just been “nutty One Nation politician is nutty” and that’s if we’re lucky. Seriously, this is about as basic as political satire gets: study politicians, find funny quirks about them, make fun of politicians. You had one job.

But is that really The Weekly‘s job? We’ve mentioned more times than we care to remember that the current management at the ABC are very keen on the look and feel of political satire – they just don’t want anyone to say or do anything to offend our politicians. Some might say this has been the case for a very long time and previous shows managed to get away with a fair bit. They might also point to Mad as Hell as a show that seems to be able to say quite a bit about our current leaders. But who knows what pressure the cast and crew of The Weekly are under? They can’t be putting Hard Chat to air each week of their own free will.

Tonight Pickering himself described The Weekly as “News, comedy… celebrity guests” to Sam Neill. We actually laughed a bit during that segment, because Sam Neill is funny and he was – get this – playing a character. But Pickering was right: The Weekly is about news, comedy and celebrity guests. And of those three things, the news and the interviews pretty much take care of themselves: the news comes from other sources, the guests are going to talk so long as you ask halfway decent questions.

The reason why we bang on and on and on about The Weekly is because it’s about as high profile a comedy show as you can get in Australia in 2017 and yet the comedy is just… basic. It’s the bare minimum. A lot of the fun of comedy comes from seeing people have fun mucking around, but where’s that on The Weekly? Where’s the parts where it feels like a show made by people having fun? Where’s the silly moments where the joy in being stupid comes through?

And if you don’t have that, if comedy has just become a job for you, then where’s the slick no-nonsense professional comedy you can take pride in? We’re telling an ABC satire that’s been running for three years and 43 episodes that they might want to look into finding things about politicians they can make fun of? This kind of thing demeans us both.

 

Thanks for your time, again

The best thing you can say about a tribute show like John Clarke: Thanks For Your Time, a show which ideally wouldn’t exist because we’d rather John Clarke was still with us, is that it made us want to re-watch various John Clarke shows. It was only half-an-hour, and it was put together in a week, but it was a great tribute to a great man.

Remember The Gillies Report? We don’t, but it looks like it was heaps of fun and would be worth a watch. Happily, there’s a heap of it on YouTube.

What about The Fast Lane – a show that comedians who watched it at the time rave about, but never seems to get released on DVD. Oh well, someone’s put it all on YouTube. Yes, all of it!

How about Death in Brunswick? You can stream it online for not much money.

There are also loads of things available from John Clarke’s own website, including this excellent compilation of early Fred Dagg sketches and this Clarke & Dawe boxset which contains the best from A Current Affair and The 7.30 Report. Sadly not the footage of Jana Wendt laughing, though.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, you really should watch John Clarke: Thanks For Your Time. Not many people can unite Paul Keating, Lano and Woodley, Max Gillies, Gina Riley, Sam Neill and Michael Leunig. That’s because there was only one John Clarke.

Call to John

The final skit of the first episode of ABC2’s John Conway Tonight has host John slapping on a mortarboard and giving a dodgy speech about having to leave university for reasons (“you all know what I did”) to the general befuddlement of his audience. It seems like the kind of random, ill-judged sketch you’d expect from a community television-standard talk show – the kind of thing a bunch of mates would think sounded hilarious, only to find while actually doing it that… nah.

But there’s a twist: after leaving, Conway returns to berate the audience – it seems the whole idea was that they would give him a Dead Poets Society “Oh Captain, My Captain” style tearful send off, and as they didn’t live up to their side of the deal he’s going to do it again and this time they’d better get it right. It’s a smart twist to a seemingly dud sketch, and if you were actually in the audience it’s a twist that definitely would have improved your experience.

Sitting at home though, it didn’t work quite so well. And that was the experience of a lot of John Conway Tonight, a show that managed to be slightly better than your average C31 talk show without actually being good enough to work on a “real” television network as it-

– and before we go any further here, let’s get one thing straight: we know the joke is that the show is shit. Well, not “shit” but a shoddy mess full of awkward and ill-prepared segments put on by people unafraid of lengthy pauses and fluffed lines. The joke is that the show is a mess and if we wrote a review saying “this show is bad because it’s a mess” then ha ha the joke is on us.

Okay, now if you’re a child then this has just made your show review-proof. “It’s MEANT to be bad, geddit!”. But as people who can legally buy excessive amounts of alcohol we can tell that there’s a big difference between a show that’s making fun of shit shows and a show that’s just plain shit. John Conway Tonight at least occasionally tries to be the former; occasionally it drifts a little too close to the latter.

Then again, maybe we’re reading too much into all this. A lot of the jokes here really did seem like the kind of thing a bunch of mates might think would be funny just to see on television. The Milkman coming up from behind the couch holding up different sized bottles of milk? Cat News? A fairly average phone impression of Michael Caine done multiple times? (Owen Wilson was better, because who does Owen Wilson?) This is all stuff that’s funny when it’s happening right before your eyes in a pub backroom after you’ve had a few; watching it on a Sunday night sober? Let’s not.

Part of the problem is that as a host John Conway is just… John Conway. As comedy characters go he’s a slightly shabby guy hosting a ramshackle talk show… only that’s also exactly what he’s doing for real, and as the host of a sloppy tonight show there’s not enough of a character there to make it work as a send-up of shit shows. Remember Dame Edna? Alan Partridge? Norman Gunston? John Conway will remind you of none of them.

That’s not automatically a fatal mistake – having him seem like a regular guy who’s flailing just a little definitely grounds the show in a way that could work with different material – but when he’s doing bits about raising money to send someone to Milan only they spent the money on guinea pigs then it’d be handy for him to have a comedy character (flailing loser? Angry tightwad? Sadsack dreamer?) that could give an exaggerated response to the craziness.

But every time we were about to give up and walk away – well, change the channel, why would we walk away from our own television set – something just funny enough would happen to draw us back. Conway himself seems like the kind of host it’ll be easy to warm to after a few episodes; the various cheesy Tonight Show elements (crap announcer, sleazy manager moving up from the dead-end world of the fish & chip industry while shouting out bad hashtags) weren’t overdone; the times when they were clearly doing jokes they thought were good (the puns in Cat News) were kind of endearing even when the jokes themselves sank without trace.

The real find, of course, is Aaron Chen as Conway’s sidekick. Often comedy characters based on awkward earnestness are a pain in the arse, but Chen made it work by actually saying funny lines every time he chimed in. His story about apple crumble was halfway decent, and his street talk segment was the first time we’ve found a street talk segment funny in years, with a lot of whip-smart interactions (“what’s your favourite answer?” “What?” “That’s a question”) and a set-up that didn’t revolve around making strangers look stupid.

If Australia has to have tonight shows – and as a grown up country it really should – this is probably the best we can currently hope for: a cheap, shoddy production made by people who really want to get laughs. It’s hardly appointment viewing (if people watched television on Saturday nights then a Saturday night timeslot would be better – people getting pre-loaded before heading out seem like its natural audience) but as community television sinks slowly into the swamp that is streaming content it’s good to see that the tradition of shabby pissfarting lives on – for another twelve weeks at least.

 

 

Once were comedy Warriors

If there’s one thing we admire about the new ABC series The Warriors it’s the makers’ honesty. While various shows market themselves as comedies or comedy-dramas, when they’ve barely two gags in them to rub together, once it started shooting and realised it wasn’t funny, The Warriors quickly re-branded itself as a drama.

ABC Media Release Tuesday, October 11, 2016:

ABC TV, Screen Australia and Film Victoria announced today that filming has commenced in Melbourne on The Warriors, a provocative new 8 x 30’ Indigenous comedy drama series.

Created by Tony Briggs (The Sapphires) and Robert Connolly (Paper Planes, Barracuda), The Warriors is set in the world of Australian Rules Football. It explores the elite world of professional sport through the eyes of two new recruits – plucked from obscurity to fame and fortune – and two established players as they are thrown together in a share house in Melbourne.

With temptation at every turn and a lot of football, there’s no guarantee these young men will run through the banner for the first game of the season.

ABC Media Release – Wednesday, November 2, 2016:

New dramas for 2017 include Newton’s Law, The Warriors and Seven Types of Ambiguity, as well as new seasons of the strikingly original Cleverman and Glitch, and the much loved home grown favourites Janet King and The Doctor Blake Mysteries.

The first episode of The Warriors aired last night, and it’s sort of possible to see how they maybe could have kinda thought they were a comedy drama. This isn’t a show featuring complex characters who, for example, engage in psychological warfare with each. There are also no murders, rapes, or even terribly much intrigue.

The characters, such as they are, are exactly what you’d expect to find in a sitcom set at a footy club: the shouty club President, the harassed-but-hardened PR lady, the reckless, fun-loving players, including the one who takes drugs and roots around. And, key to this program, the innocent new recruit, fresh out of an Aboriginal community in Queensland, who’s experiencing life in the big city for the first time. These are characters that with a funny script could be funny. Except the script’s not funny.

So, instead, we have eight episodes of light drama, where the one who takes drugs and roots around will probably get into trouble for taking drugs and rooting around, which will give the harassed-but-hardened PR lady some work to do. And the innocent new recruit will probably learn a few life lessons but mainly just be quite a sweet character.

It’s something for the footy fans, we guess. That scene where they all got lost in the sports museum and started reflecting on how much they loved the game of footy? Aawww.

As for those of us who like comedy, it’s hard not feel diddled out of a new comedy show. Especially in a week where the news in the world of Australian comedy couldn’t have been bleaker.

The Boys Are Back, The Boys Are Back In Town

And thank fuck for that, because he’s pretty much the only thing that separates The Weekly from an especially shithouse extended episode of Media Watch. And that’s on a good day: week in week out we struggle to detect any concrete difference between what Charlie Pickering does on this show and what the random chumps do on Gogglebox.

In theory the other cast members are trying, though at this stage Hard Chat is just trying to get us to buy a replacement television for the one we stomped to death during this astoundingly arse segment. Having Dave Hughes on? He’s a comedian – doesn’t that defeat the point of the segment? Oh wait, the segment defeats its own point, because the point of television is to entertain.

The Briggs mystery seems to have been solved too, because after tonight’s appearance – which makes what, three for the year? – it seems clear that they’re only going to wheel him out for a segment that directly relates to his own personal experience. So while Flanagan and Gleeson get to burble on about anything under the sun so long as they think it’s funny, the other “regular cast member” only gets on air when the show wants his perspective on something. So what were they thinking when they made him a series regular? They were going to run stories about being Aboriginal every single week? Oh ho ho ho not on a show aimed at “regular” Australians they’re not.

Ah, who cares. Wack on the news, make a bunch of shallow snide comments about it and then crack open a tinnie because that’s another week’s worth of work as Australia’s premiere political satirist done. That’s right guys, the torch has been passed:

We never thought we’d approve of a One Nation policy on anything, but stripping $600 Million out of the ABC budget seems a pretty fucking good idea to us right about now.

John Clarke, thanks for your time

We honestly thought Clarke & Dawe would never end. Two men, a couple of chairs, a great script – the perfect satirical format.

Things were looking a bit shaky for John Clarke and Bryan Dawe towards the end of the Howard years, when Gerard Henderson was banging on about left-wing bias in comedy and shows were being axed or tinkered with to appease the government. Then the ABC axed Clarke & Dawe from 7.30 and shunted them off to…wherever it was. We, along with thousands of others subscribed to them on YouTube and watched them there instead. We only watched their last sketch on YouTube a few days ago. This can’t be real.

7.30 aired a pretty good obituary of John Clarke last night. Watching it, we realised how many generations he entertained. For some, he will always be gumboot-wearing sheep farmer Fred Dagg. For others, his best work was as the straight-faced sports journalist discussing the fictional sport of Farnarkling on The Gillies Report. Then there was The Games with its put-upon sports bureaucrats and 94-metre running tracks. Or maybe you just enjoyed all 30 years of Clarke & Dawe. How could you not?

Bryan Dawe, Clarke’s long-time collaborator, was too distraught to speak to 7.30, but he did say this to the Sydney Morning Herald.

It wasn’t Clarke and Dawe that was the most important thing for me… It was the in-between. It was the space between our work as Clarke and Dawe: the conversations, the phone calls, the emails, the fun, the empathy, the understanding. The friendship. And all that means.

John is such a big canvas it is impossible to explain how I feel… I got to experience this man’s humanity, his generosity, his brilliance and above all, his kindness.

He was such an insightful, generous, gorgeous human being, and I’m so fortunate and honoured to have been his friend and co-conspirator for so long.

There have been many articles written about John Clarke in the last 24 hours, and the key theme of most, apart from his comic genius, was Clarke’s humanity. He loved and delighted in other people. And while his job was to give it to politicians with both barrels, he also recognised them as fully-rounded human beings in difficult situations.

A lesser satirist views politicians and public figures through their soundbites and gaffs, exploiting these along with their accent, hairstyle, mode of dress and physicality. Clarke’s genius in Clarke & Dawe was to ignore and remove all this. Whether he was Julia Gillard, John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull or some anonymous spokesman, he always dressed and spoke the same. What interested him was what politicians and public figures did and said, and how that affected the rest of us.

Every week, whoever Clarke was being, whatever he was being interviewed about, he was always, simultaneously, instantly recognisable as his character, offering us a completely new and original take on the situation, and being really funny. And no one could deliver a line like John Clarke. No one. As Tony Martin said…

We’ll no doubt have more to say about John Clarke in the coming months. For the moment, we wish to express our sympathy to his family, friends, and colleagues, and to hope that the ABC will produce a tribute to John Clarke for us fans. Perhaps a documentary or further DVD releases? A definitive summation of John Clarke’s life and career. If that’s even possible.

Australia’s Funniest New Zealander Dead at 68

The ABC has confirmed that John Clarke – yes, the funny one – passed away over the weekend of natural causes while hiking in the Victorian Grampians. He was 68.

It’s hard to underestimate the size of this loss. As a mentor and friend he was an invaluable part of Australia’s comedy scene, and his weekly work with Bryan Dawe was a fixture on our televisions for thirty years. He was also extremely funny, which can’t be said often enough.

No doubt we’ll be saying it again soon and at length once we’ve gotten our heads around this tragic news.

*edit* The ABC have released an official statement. The magnitude of our loss is only made clearer by the comedians who contributed.

Monday, April 10, 2017 — The ABC is saddened at the loss of John Clarke, whose work as a satirist and performer made him a greatly admired and loved figure on the national stage.

The writer and performer for three decades alongside his on-air partner Bryan Dawe offered insightful and cutting satirical commentary on issues of national importance. From the 1970s when he introduced Australian audiences to his character Fred Dagg from his native New Zealand, to his work on The Gillies Report and The Games, John Clarke was a central figure in Australian comedy and satire.

ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie said the unexpected loss of John Clarke would be felt by everyone at the ABC and by audiences across the country who had come to love his biting sense of humour.

“Australian audiences have relied on John Clarke for always getting to the heart of how many Australians felt about the politics of the day and tearing down the hypocrisy and at times absurdity of elements of our national debate.

“We have lost a giant presence on our screens. Our hearts go to John’s family, his wife Helen and two daughters, Lorin and Lucia.”

Statement from the family of John Clarke

The much loved and respected satirist and writer, John Morrison Clarke (b 1948) has died suddenly of natural causes on Sunday 9 April. Beloved husband of Helen, father of Lorin and Lucia, grandfather of Claudia and Charles and father-in-law of Stewart Thorn.

John died doing one of the things he loved the most in the world, taking photos of birds in beautiful bushland with his wife and friends. He is forever in our hearts.

We are aware of what he has meant to so many for so many years, throughout the world but especially in Australia and New Zealand. We are very grateful for all expressions of sympathy and love which John would have greatly appreciated.

John’s family has asked that their privacy be respected at this sad time.

Statement from ABC Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski

“The passing of John Clarke – our greatest ever political satirist – is a tragic loss to his millions of fans and the entire Australian comedy community, many of whom (myself included) were inspired by his brilliance to want to work in comedy. John was shooting for ABC TV on The Ex-PM Season 2 until only this past Friday, and it’s almost impossible to believe he is suddenly gone. The chance to get to know and spend time with John was an honour, and ABC TV Comedy joins so many others in offering John’s family our sincerest sympathies.”

Statement from Charlie Pickering

“One Christmas I was given four copies of John Clarke’s book ‘The Tournament’ by four different people. It’s safe to say they knew me pretty well. John was a familiar part of my life and sense of humour since I was old enough to know what I liked.

It goes without saying that he had a huge influence on me and our show. How can he not? If you are going to have the nerve to make jokes about the news in Australia, you do so knowing that you will never clear the bar set by John Clarke. And his work with Bryan Dawe over decades has been as good as anything put to air anywhere in the world.

Last year Tom Gleeson and I recorded a tribute to Clarke & Dawe simply as a thank you for being our favourite thing on TV. I rang him to ask permission. The conversation got away from itself and we ended up talking about how writing a good comedy script was somewhere between poetry and physics. Whatever that middle ground is, John Clarke deserved the Nobel Prize.

My thoughts are with his family, Bryan and the Australian viewing public for their loss.”

The Abyss Gazes Also

Aww, wasn’t that opening bit of this week’s Weekly nice? The gang was all there – even Briggs, which was actually kind of puzzling because it’s hardly like he’s a series regular or anything so for all we know they pre-recorded this back when he actually was a series regular – looking up at the stars, saying lines like they were on a show that had built up their comedic personas over the years so that cracks about how pale Tom is or how alone Kitty is would get laughs rather than blank stares.

But hey, for once it didn’t feel like everyone else physically loathed Charlie Pickering, and isn’t that the best result for Australia? Imagine that: a segment on The Weekly where the host doesn’t come across as the kind of guy who goes around sticking his mobile phone in your face trying to show you clips from Bumfights? The sun really will come out tomorrow.

To be fair to Pickering and his difficult public persona, he does have to say things like “Tom hard chat’s Sophie Monk!”, which really should have been followed by him solemnly letting us know that if we’ve been struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts there was a helpline we could call. And what else is there to this show, really? A bit on how Big Business has ruined April Fools Day? A bit on how Mark Latham was fired from Sky News that was really just about the way The Weekly had a long running segment about Mark Latham on Sky News? Yet another fucking bit on fucking politicians and their fucking love hate relationship with fucking opinion polls what the actual fuck?

And blah blah blah whatever: this show’s at least 50% interview these days so even two paragraphs is really stretching our conversational limit. Shit, there wasn’t even any Kitty Flanagan this week, and she’s the funny one. Which, as we say every week, makes this show even harder to watch: clearly if they had people on board who wanted to be funny then funny this show would be – even just occasionally, around the edges – but instead… nope.

Let’s go back to that opening again. The idea of getting a few character-based laughs out of a riff on the ABC’s stargazing night is the idea that could only have come from a team of writers who have no idea about the kind of show they’ve actually been putting out over the last few years. As a generic comedy idea, sure: doing a little “behind-the-scenes” bit is a comedy staple. But there’s only two ways it can work – either you do it for the very first time with a bunch of gags that play against the way the show’s hosts come across on the regular show (“holy shit, once the cameras are turned off Pickering’s a foul-mouthed yobbo in a Jack Daniels singlet!”), or you’ve built up various behind-the-scenes comedy personas for the characters that work like an occasionally-glimpsed sitcom – Pickering has money troubles, Flanagan has a crush on Gleeson, Gleeson is a pompous windbag, whatever. You’ve seen Cheers, you know how sitcoms work.

What doesn’t work is dumping your four regulars into a bit where they make jokes based on comedy personalities they just don’t have. Well, Flanagan has a bit of one thanks to her knowing how comedy works and dropping in jokes about her boozing, etc in her segment, but even then they’re clearly “jokes” rather than supposed personality traits that the jokes are coming from (it’s the difference between saying “I’m a drunk!” and doing a comedy bit where you’re actually meant to be drunk). But everyone else? Nothing. Briggs talking about how he keeps a telescope in his car in case he’s car-jacked so he can belt the car-jackers with it? What’s funny about that beyond “ha ha, he hit a guy with a telescope”?

So what we have is a crack team of comedy professionals putting together a prime time show but who, based on just about the only bit of scripted interaction in the episode, don’t seem to understand how humour works. This isn’t us being all esoteric and wanky: if you’re going to make jokes about your news hosts being off-duty, either the laughs are going to come from the difference between their work and play personalities or from them being funny characters when they’re not working. What else is there? Wordplay? Pranks? Decent stand-alone jokes? Laughing at the fact this show is running for twenty fucking weeks and they don’t yet seem to have figured out how to be funny?

The hosts of The Weekly aren’t lovable comedy characters we’ve warmed to over the years. In one case and possibly two, we’re fairly sure a golden retriever in a suit would be better at every aspect of their job. You want them to seem funny? Have them say funny things.

You know, like “this is the final ever episode of The Weekly“.

 

Night-time is the Right-Time for Tonight-time

Press release time!

JOHN CONWAY TONIGHT

PREMIRES SUNDAY APRIL 16 @ 9PM ON ABC2

Busting out of the comedy scene already wearing a suit and tie, John Conway is ready to be the tonight show host Australian TV never knew it needed.

John Conway has talked his way onto ABC2 and John Conway Tonight is going on the telly – late night talk shows are back in Australia, baby!

At 9pm every Sunday from 16th April for twelve weeks, ABC2 will air the smallest tonight show in the world, from the smallest nightclub in the world. John will dance, entertain, interview smashing guests and endeavour to keep the chaos in order, all while the literal and metaphorical walls of his own show collapse around him.

He’ll be joined by his sidekick Aaron Chen, his manager Robbie Tarocash and the best handpicked Australian comedic talent, including: Will Erimya, Jenna Owen, Ben Russell, Victoria Zerbst, Penny Greenhalgh, Sam Campbell, Clinton Haines, Tom Walker and Edan Lacey.

“I’ve scoured the Australian comedy scene and have brought together some of the cleverest idiots it has to offer. We’re on to something here – can somebody please help me find out what,” said Conway.

Coming at you from a cosy small bar where pizzas are served mid-show and there’s every chance of interruption, it’s a tonight show on the edge of reason. A riot of characters and controlled chaos, and an absurd and hilarious tribute to late night TV.

It’s John Conway Tonight!

You’ve been warned. Personally, misspelling “premiere” is a bit of a red light, but it’s not like anyone ever called Rove literate and look how well that turned out.

Ripper, Donna!

Sketch group Aunty Donna have been releasing episodes of their new web series Ripper Aussie Summer every Friday for the past seven weeks, and it’s quite good. The trio play various characters, gathered together in a backyard for a barbecue, except, this being Aunty Donna, this backyard is very much its own universe.

One of the things we’ve always liked about Aunty Donna is that they’re good at both capturing typical Aussie characters and at making sketches which are just plain silly. In the first Ripper Aussie Summer sketch, What Did You Do Last Night?, Zach’s description of (well, song about) his night of drinking is so ridiculous you can’t believe he’s still here. Then Lee de Paauw came along and we realised this is basically a documentary (in song form).

Then there’s Waving, a surreal and bizarre sketch about taking friendliness too far. If you don’t mind that the payoff is one that could only happen in the universe of Aunty Donna’s ripper backyard, it’s a good one.

Then there’s Afternoon Sillies, a gleeful piece of ridiculousness that will delight anyone who remembers the childlike comedy stylings of people like The Goodies.

It’s also worth dipping into the Aunty Donna back catalogue and checking out one of their other web series, 1999. Ever wondered what would have happened if the office you worked in had gone a bit Lord of the Flies one day?

We also enjoyed the musical theatre vibe of Being Bigoted in the Workplace…

…and the escalation that happens in this sketch when the trio indulge in some marching powder.

Like we’ve said before, this is good stuff, and it’s a massive shame that Aunty Donna have never been given their own TV series. But on the other hand, when the trio can make and release high-quality comedy online, find a big audience and not have executives tell them what to do, well, everyone’s a winner!

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