Australian Tumbleweeds
Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Press release time!
***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
NEW AUSTRALIAN COMEDY SERIES
‘IDIOT BOX’ LAUNCHES FEBRUARY 7
Life in the suburbs isn’t easy for childhood mates Hugh and Gav. Boredom reigns supreme.
Surely there is more to life than smoking bongs, watching porn and stealing street signs?
February 7, 2017 – A brand new Australian comedy set in the deep depths of suburbia highlights the utterly absurd, insular lives of childhood mates Hugh and Gav. Two twenty something blokes who realise they’ve been wasting their lacklustre lives watching mind numbing television and jerking off to average pornography instead of actually living. Rather than go quietly into their 30’s like good, obedient citizens, Hugh and Gav decide to really f*ck things up properly and ‘do something’ with their lives.
Idiot Box is a hilarious 14-part comedy series written and directed by Benjamin Bryan and produced by Caitlyn Bryan. Idiot Box serves up short, sharp glimpses of Hugh and Gav’s downright hysterical and at most times questionable escapades in snappy 1-3 minute clips. After watching you’ll be left wondering “What the hell just happened?”
The team behind the series, Ben and Cait, are a brother and sister duo who share a passion for creating engaging content for the big and small screens. Idiot Box is a crowd funded project that has occupied their busy lives for the past two years, where they have spent time recalling their own juvenile antics as a source of inspiration.
“I said to myself, what would happen if we never grew up? What if we lived our adult lives as big children? It’s really an ode to my childhood, growing up in the suburbs; where you did crazy and absurd things just through boredom”, explains Ben of what motivated him to write Idiot Box.
“The special thing about Idiot Box is the simplicity of the concept. Hugh and Gav really are just two idiots attempting to go about their lives in a world where they are unlikely to ever really succeed at anything”, adds Cait.
After kicking his fiancée out of the house, Ben set up his home as Idiot Box HQ and went about shooting the whole series in one week on a budget resembling what would cover the cost of a dozen burgers from Macca’s, roping in unassuming mates to help realise his dream.
One of those trusting mates was Liam Seymour who brought the character of Hugh to life with not much effort, he explains what appealed to him about the project.
“I immediately related to Idiot Box from the moment I read the scripts. It was the familiar suburb life for a young lad, the crime, mayhem, intoxications, boredom – it’s all so accurate.”
“When I was a kid I made a pact with my best mate that we would never leave the town we lived in and we would stay there forever… Gav represents what my life would be if I stuck to that pact”, adds Chris Gibson who convincingly plays Gav.
We all grew up with someone like Hugh or Gav, whether we liked it or not. Available online from February 7, Idiot Box gives us the chance to re-live those care free times of acting like a dick and thinking we got away with it.
So those of you for a hankering to relive the days when Chris Lilley played Extreme Darren on The Big Bite finally have a new show to fill that “short clips of dumb pranks” void. Oh wait, YouTube is full of that stuff.
On the up side, at least with two minute clips a dumb idea is all you need, and from the little we’ve seen they seem to be throwing pretty much everything they can think of on the screen – while the press release might be describing a show about a pair of mates looking to amuse themselves, the show itself seems to just be more about various random situations where the two badly dressed leads just happen to be involved.
Put another way, does seeing people getting punched in the balls, having two liters of milk thrown at their head, tucking half eaten paddle pops into their dressing gown pocket and pretending Kim Kardashian is their missing wife sound amusing to you? If so, you now have around half an hours worth of clips to watch.
Dumb deal = dumb satire – We analyse the parodies of Trump and Turnbull’s phone call
It’s been almost impossible not to stumble across a parody transcript of the Trump/Turnbull phone call in the past couple of days, what with topical LOLZ being ten a penny on the internet. Even our nation’s newspapers got in on the act with these pun-tastic front pages:
Australia’s papers today @RNBreakfast pic.twitter.com/ddrqJ1VA5P
— Matt Bevan (@MatthewBevan) February 2, 2017
The best online comedy is short and to the point, with frequent gags to keep the audience from closing the window and heading off to look at something else. New Matilda’s attempt at a Trump/Turnbull transcript got it seriously – and boringly – wrong by re-working now ancient-seeming quotes from Trump’s campaign speeches and generally going on for far too long…
POTUS: This is a dumb deal. I can’t believe how it happened.
PM: (wheeze) The arrangement was agreed between myself and President Obama, he….
POTUS: Obama wasn’t born here. Listen to me, an extremely credible source has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud. So what he says is UnAmerican. He didn’t exactly have a positive impact on the thugs who so happily and openly destroyed Starbucks in, where was that? Don’t get me wrong, I like him. His wife’s a bit old. I have a great relationship with the blacks, like I said, but they weren’t born here. So the deal is that you send us some more people that weren’t born here right?
PM: That’s correct sir, they are refugees and we’re unable to accept them because they came by boat illegally. Sir and we have a ban on people coming by boat to our country. If they come by boat they can never set foot in Australia, not even to visit family.
POTUS: I know about your boat ban. My people told me about your boat ban (points to Bannon, thumbs up). I like it. I’ve got one here now. I mean from Muslim countries where I don’t have hotels, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you and your old wife, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists….
Also, and kinda like in The Weekly, the writer, Dr Liz Conor, seemed to think that making it sound as much like the real Trump and Turnbull as possible would make this automatically funny. Er, no. You also need to include some jokes. And having Trump constantly call Turnbull “Talcolm” doesn’t count.
We quite liked this, though:
PM Turnbull: Good Afternoon President Trump.
POTUS Trump: (to Spicer) Can you believe this guy, he thinks it’s afternoon.
SPICER: Just go with it. He’s working off an alternative calendar.
Junkee’s Lee Zachariah did a better job, picking up on the manners of speaking and modes of behaviour of Trump, Turnbull and Trump’s team but making it funny:
TURNBULL: And naturally, the people of my country extend their best wishes for a smooth—
TRUMP: [muffled] Steve, put that TV back on CNN. I don’t care if you just like his little moustache, stop watching your videos in the oval office. Use one of the TVs in the bathroom. Don’t disturb the peacock.
TURNBULL: As I was saying, Australia is committed to—
TRUMP: Hold on. [muffled] Reince, what’s the deal with Australia? Do they like me? Uh huh. Right. [clears throat] My people say that Australia changes leaders every two years. Your government is very unstable, very unstable.
In a similar vein, was our old friend Ben Pobjie of Crikey:
MT: Indeed. What I want to talk about is, your predecessor –
DT: The guy from the urban areas. I remember him. Obamacare. Ruined America. Terrible country, America.
MT: … your predecessor agreed with us that the US would take 1200 of the refugees we have in detention and resettle them in your country. I was calling to make sure that that deal still stands. Are we all good, Mr President?
DT: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Saddam Obamacare told you we would take your refugees? Why the hell would we want your refugees? We don’t even want our refugees. Do you even read the news? Do you even have Twitter?
We’re prepared to give Pobjie some points for the Saddam Obamacare gag, although this does highlight the inherent problem with all of these transcripts, and why they’re not exactly side-splittingly hilarious: they have to explain their own premise extremely slowly to get to the anything approaching comedy.
Or, to put it another way, you can’t do a parody of the transcript of a phone call without a lot of scene-setting. You have make it feel like an actual transcript, and have the callers exchange pleasantries and state their positions on the deal they’re discussing. All of which means it takes ages to get a half-decent gag like Saddam Obamacare.
John Birmingham’s AlienSideBoob newsletter took a different tack, by imagining a call between Trump and former Prime Minister Paul Keating, an extract of which he tweeted:
If you were a subscriber to AlienSideBoob you’d have the FULL text of this historical Keating/Trump smackdownhttps://t.co/8aBF9S3hz9 pic.twitter.com/Ri2kBs6n8H
— John Birmingham (@JohnBirmingham) February 3, 2017
It’s not exactly side-splitting, more a smattering of slightly Keating-esque wordplay and a shitload of swearing, but it’s possibly a better spin on the premise. (We don’t subscribe to AlienSideBoob, so haven’t read the full thing).
Perhaps all these would have been funnier if they were actual sketches? Perhaps Clarke & Dawe are working on one right now? Or The Weekly? Oh no, please not a The Weekly take on this. Forget we said anything. Forget we posted this blog at all.
Oh, and here’s an actual sketch based on this phone call, posted by Junkee. Sketches: maybe not such a great idea either.
The Weeks Just Fly By
Is it just us – and it usually is just us – or did that bit at the very start of this week’s The Weekly (now back for 2017!) basically say new regular Briggs was hired because he’s black? Obviously that’s not what they planned to say with their hilarious and of-the-moment parody of that “we can’t all wear white” kerfuffle on Nine’s afternoon news chat show three weeks ago, but when his arrival is presented as the solution to the problem of the show’s cast all being white – instead of the much larger problem of the show’s cast often not being funny – well… yeah, maybe it was just us. It’s not like this show makes a habit of confused and muddled messages.
Before the holidays we heard from a source that one of the main reasons why we keep seeing The Weekly time and time again despite nobody seeming to watch it is because it’s cheap – an episode costs (or did when it first began) around half what an episode of Mad as Hell takes to make. And yet somehow Mad as Hell is a dozen times more hilarious; maths is a funny thing. Unlike The Weekly, which is so cheap to make because roughly a third of the entire show now is just news clips from other networks with Charlie Pickering turning up every now and again to a): explain the context, or b): make the kind of joke people were yawning at on The Glasshouse a decade ago. It’s barely television: watching the news with a smartarse mate would be funnier.
Of course, having a third of the show being jokes over other people’s news clips worked just fine for Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, but that’s because they had good jokes and – more importantly – had a charming, funny, likable, funny host (now? Maybe not so much). Pickering, on the other hand, seems actually uncomfortable interviewing castmate Briggs; we refuse to speculate why.
Oh, ok: maybe it’s because Briggs has an actual point of view that can be used to generate decent comedy – his line about how he’s okay with eating lamb on Australia Day “even if lamb is the only thing you openly admit to slaughtering” was the closest thing to an actual controversial opinion The Weekly‘s ever had. The nearest Pickering got to a point of view was some comedy whinging that his co-workers didn’t want him to go down the pub with them, which for an outrageous joke seemed fairly plausible to us.
It’s not that The Weekly is completely devoid of comedy: there was one joke about morse code that was as old as… well, morse code, but it still got a laugh. But then there was material like the bit about a One Nation candidate that didn’t boil down to “he attacked single mums on government handouts but his party leader is a single mum on government handouts” – that was the actual punchline. Here’s an observation: just observing something that’s going on isn’t always enough in comedy. Sometimes you have to put a bit more effort in to make it into something that’s known in the trade as “funny”.
But maybe that’s not a good idea either. This episode’s Tom Gleeson segment – he seemed to have had his time cut down to make room for Briggs, so thumbs up there – was a bit on fake news (or as Gleeson called it, “alternative facts”) that felt like a couple of overly eager puppies had watched a bunch of Clarke & Dawe segments and thought some wordplay would be fun to try. Only where Clarke & Dawe would have finished up with a punchline that was a smart summing up of the issue, this bit of garbage ended with:
Pickering: “You’re fake news!”
Gleeson: “You are!”
You’re not quite up there with Clarke & Dawe just yet, guys. Maybe wait a few decades. Then quietly give up.
Fortunately, at some stage in proceedings Kitty Flanagan came along and did a bit that once again made us wish she was on some other, much better show. Or even just that they put her segment up the front so we could watch it each week instead of giving up five minutes in.
Her attempt to hold a real-life “pub test” wasn’t even that great a segment (though drunks passed out down the pub will always get a thumbs up from us); it’s just that Flanagan is a funny performer with a distinct comedy point of view that isn’t about being aggressively smarmy or willfully ignorant. If the ABC gave her a solo show we’d watch it, which puts her ahead of her co-hosts, both of which have been given their own shows and… yeah.
Being cheap is a problem with The Weekly, but it’s not the problem. There are ten writers listed in the end credits for a show that’s roughly one-third interview. If it takes ten writers to come up with the limp shots Pickering is making at stale news topics, something’s wrong. If Pickering is writing his jokes all on his own, something’s wrong. If The Weekly can’t do better than just covering the news using other peoples’ clips and occasionally dropping in a “yeah, good one Trump”, something’s wrong. If this is as good as The Weekly‘s going to get, something’s wrong.
And if the ABC thinks this pointless news recap show is actually something to be proud of, then yeah, there’s something wrong.
On Your Bike
In news that surprised no-one with the slightest idea of how money works, this just happened:
Hey I have news. We have decided Season 4 #PleaseLikeMe is the last. I've loved making this show for you all so much. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/QKAk5nZQLV
— Josh Thomas (@JoshThomas87) February 2, 2017
While it’s mildly interesting to us that it seems the show has ended because they “feel like it is complete” and not because the US network funding them went out of business and the ABC was probably not all that excited to go back to full-funding a show that rates so poorly its viewer numbers might just be a statistical anomaly, to be fair there really wasn’t much of anywhere left for the story to go. So much like the end of season one then.
And seriously, we’re not at all saddened that Thomas’ lust for killing off characters for cheap emotional engagement didn’t lead to the fifth season of Please Like Me becoming a Hunger Games-style murder-fest. His cast of characters weren’t that annoying to watch standing around talking about themselves seemingly for days on end, honest.
Stop Laughing… we certainly did
The first series of Stop Laughing…this is serious was a worthy if largely unsuccessful attempt to cover the entire history of Australian comedy in three 1-hour programs. Now it’s back for a second series, and in the first episode, the topic was characters.
At the start of the episode, the following theory was posited: Barry Humphries is Australia’s King of Character Comedy, but his successor is Chris Lilley.
Let’s just let that sink in a bit.
Okay, this isn’t the first time anyone’s made this comparison. Also, we get it: both Humphries and Lilley have created a range of authentically-Australian comedy characters and had success with them around the world. There’s only one difference really: Chris Lilley, when you add it up, isn’t very good. And less than 15 years into his career, we have no idea whether the fact that we haven’t heard from him for more than a year and that his last TV series was 2014’s Jonah From Tonga means that he’s quit character comedy altogether or not. Surely, if he’s the new Barry Humphries, he and his characters are always going to be popping up in places?
Oh wait, and here’s where Lilley’s got a serious problem, the reason Barry Humphries has managed to keep Dame Edna going since 1956 is that he’s cleverly adapted and evolved the character over time, to ensure she’s always relevant and can work in different mediums. Ja’mie, in contrast, seemed pointless by the end of We Can Be Heroes, let alone the end of Ja’mie: Private School Girl. Imagine her in 50 years’ time.
But Lilley’s characters weren’t the only ones Stop Laughing…this is serious made out were any good. There was at least three minutes on those highly memorable Fast Forward characters Brent Smyth & Barry. Wait. You don’t really remember them, either? Let us flip through our battered copy of Fast Forward – The Book and remind you…
Okay, they were two sleazy advertising executives, played by Steve Vizard and Peter Moon, who each week were given a brief by a client and usually came up with something idiotic, inappropriate or distasteful. To be fair, they were a decent parody of the sort of people who worked in Sydney or Melbourne ad agencies by day and lounged around inner city wine bars by night, but we wouldn’t have said they were particularly memorable or hilarious.
Then we realised why they might have been featured – and this is just a theory, but… Steve Vizard was there as a talking head, but he appeared in almost no regular Fast Forward sketches which might not be considered politically incorrect these days (yes, Brent Smyth was sexist, but that was the point).
Roger Ramsheet from the Fukurri rugs ads? That involved Vizard browning-up and doing a Middle Eastern accent. The gay air steward? That involved Vizard doing limp wrists and a camp voice. The Brian Bury impression? Limp wrists and a camp voice again. L’iar and DeShonko: Licensed Real Estate Agents? A crazy Italian accent from Michael Veitch as DeShonko. Which leaves just Brent Smyth & Barry and Darren Hunch as not particularly offensive in 2017. What a legacy.
There was, rightly, a long section in this show about Kath & Kim, as well as nod to today’s comedy with a look at Black Comedy, but that was kinda it. Apart from a brief return to Chris Lilley, and a sort-of examination of his blacking-up as S’Mouse and Jonah towards the end of the show. What is it with Australian comedy and blacking-up? This show didn’t tell us, sadly.
What we really needed to see more of were some of the shows that were skimmed over. Norman Gunston, for example, a character as big in his day as Ja’mie and Mr G. Or a look at the characters from The Gillies Report and The Big Gig, both hugely popular programs. What was great about those shows? We’re none the wiser after this episode.
Overall, Stop Laughing…this is series feels messy and misguided. Sometimes in need of editing, sometimes in need of extending. There are two more episodes to go, which will look at funny women and variety, so let’s hope they’re better. But given that structure was a problem in the first series of this program, we’re not holding out hope.
Australian Tumbleweed Awards 2016 – The Results!
Australian comedy hit a new low in 2016, though if you’re anything like us you probably didn’t realise it at the time. Why would you? On the surface it seemed business as usual: a handful of standout shows, one or two duds and a whole lot of stuff forgotten before the end credits finished. In fact, compared to previous years you might have been forgiven for thinking things were improving. The days of obvious turds like Randling and Wednesday Night Fever seem firmly behind us. Blandly competent is now the order of the day.
And that’s the problem right there. 2016 was a shit year for Australian comedy not because of a handful of high profile flops stinking up the outhouse, but because the general standard across the board continues to sink just that much lower. It used to be that our comedy failures failed because they didn’t make us laugh; now making us laugh is something most comedies don’t even attempt. Sitcoms are just dramas without the drama; news satire is just news with a sneer. Sketch shows aren’t even allowed on broadcast television – which is probably a good thing as they all feel like promo reels for the directors’ advertising career.
It doesn’t take much to figure out why we’re stuck in a place where the last thing Australian comedy wants to do is make people laugh. In a Golden Age that we’re probably imagining, television was set up to serve the audience: make a funny show, usually it rates well, everyone wins. Now the audience is the last thing on anyone’s mind. The ABC is so cash-starved the only way a show can get made is if it attracts outside funding, which is why half their comedy output is suddenly coming from parts of the country willing to fund infomercials. As for the other half, that’s made with an eye to selling the format overseas and cashing in that way. Coming up with something Australians might want to watch? Why would you even bother?
The resulting thin but steady flow of mediocrity is slowly digging a trench that will become Australian comedy’s grave. Being funny gets in the way of the business of keeping the clients happy anyway (what if they don’t get the jokes?) – putting out show after show seemingly designed to erase the very idea that Australians can get laughs just seems like a side benefit. And who even wants funny comedy? The people commissioning comedy seem actively opposed to the idea going by what they’re putting on air (and what they’re not: do a comparison between the comedy the ABC funds and the comedy that only makes it to series once overseas money comes on board – the results may surprise you). TV reviewers openly mock the idea that “getting laughs” is a thing comedy should do, which seems odd until you read their own attempts at comedy. And everyone else realized there’s no money in it years ago and moved to LA.
Faced with all this, it’s tempting to simply shrug and accept the current state of play. It’s not the ABC’s fault they don’t have the money to fund anything more complex than a show where a man in a suit sits behind a desk and makes news jokes; it’s not the commercial networks’ fault that they can get better ratings making cheap drama than not-so-cheap comedy. But fuck that. The networks – all the networks – still find money for quality drama. Overseas networks are throwing money at our comedy because they think what we’re doing here can work around the world. And yet time and time again our local networks give the thumbs up to watered-down half-arse so-called “comedy”. Time and time again local “talent”, given the rare opportunity to make their own show, display all the comedic skill of a sagging retaining wall. Time and time again we’re asked to accept shit as the way of the world.
Just because 90% of Australian comedy is reasonably competent on a technical level doesn’t mean we should accept competent as the high water mark. Too often in 2016 we gave a pass mark to a firmly average show because we thought that at least it wasn’t a total waste of time. But each average show drags the level of quality just that little bit further down. Judging by the number of press releases we see trying to sell some upcoming show on the basis of it being hilarious, Australian comedy is still considered to be something people actually want to watch.
A few more years like 2016, though, and that’s just not going to be the case.
Worst Sketch or Short Form Comedy
RUNNER UP
Friendlyjordies
27.16% of the votes
Political comedy: how’s that working out for you? After a year that seemed largely designed to remind us all of the Peter Cook line about how well 1930s Germany’s flourishing Wiemar arts scene prevented the rise of Adolf Hitler, the idea of someone using their YouTube comedy to push a left-wing agenda seems delightfully quaint. Fortunately, Friendlyjordies backed his political views up with a lot of spot-on comedy… oh wait, no he didn’t.
RUNNER UP
The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
41.98% of the votes
The concept of a comedic “Year in Review” show is a pretty good one. The idea of doing an end-of-year version of The Weekly, not so much. At least with the regular weekly Weekly, they have the excuse of only having a few days to put the show together; considering they had all year to plan for this one, the results were even more embarrassing than usual.
WINNER
The Weekly with Charlie Pickering
59.25% of the votes
While 2016 was, all things considered, a pretty grim year, there was one blindingly bright silver lining: the idea of left-leaning news satires making a difference by “nailing” the big issues was brutally curb-stomped, dragged through the streets and strung up from a lamppost. Yeah, The Weekly never actually threatened to change anyone’s mind about anything, what with its firm commitment to only ever serving up platitudes so mild they were certified infant-safe, but still: now that the paper-thin justification for its refusal to make even the slightest gesture towards actual comedy is gone, what’s left? A smug-as-fuck host with nothing to be smug about, a comedian with an arsehole persona that’s starting to seem like less of a persona with every passing day, and Kitty Flanagan, who deserves better. If the rumours are true and the only reason this is still on the air is because it costs half as much per episode as Mad as Hell, we’d still rather have five more episodes a year of Mad as Hell.
What the voters said about The Weekly with Charlie Pickering…
If I was interested in smug condescension from a smirking idiot I’d watch The Bolt Report.
Pulling punches, calling out only the most predictable of incontrovertible evils, episode after episode. The Weekly did the impossible: it excelled in mediocrity.
Seeing as the ABC wants The Weekly to go viral so badly, would it help to rename it Friendlycharlies?
Worst Sitcom
RUNNER UP
The Wrong Girl
20.83% of the votes
This is about as close to a sitcom as the commercial networks get these days, which is to say it wasn’t a sitcom and was only very rarely funny. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much of anything else either, aside from an opportunity for Channel Ten to try and boost real estate prices in the Melbourne suburb of Yarraville. You know, if you walk literally half a block in any direction from the shopping strip where they filmed this show, it looks just like every other suburb in Australia: there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
RUNNER UP
Pacific Heat
23.61% of the votes
Pacific Heat took almost three years to make, so why is the animation barely a step up from Scooby Doo and why does the script seem like something someone discarded 40 years ago? A stylistic choice, perhaps, but one that works far less well than when Working Dog did it in Funky Squad. It’s hard to get away with sexist and racist gags when you’re not parodying the 70s, even ones that are (hopefully) intended to be tongue-in-cheek.
WINNER
Please Like Me
54.17% of the votes
Clearly, Please Like Me is no longer trying to be a sitcom. Yet at the same time, it’s doing something even more disappointing: it’s not trying to progress in any meaningful way. It’s just more of the same characters experiencing mental illness and how awkward life is these days, with the occasional death or suicide thrown in towards the end of the series as a focal point for the last episode. Occasionally it’ll try a change of pace, like that dancing teddy bear on the bus thing, but even that was little more than an excuse to enlarge the twee rut this series has dug itself into. Not to mention try to go viral.
There have been hints in the media that a further series is far from guaranteed, with producer Todd Abbott saying:
If there’s a story left to tell, then it’s worth doing.
If only that were actually true! Series 5 is a dead cert.
What the voters said about Please Like Me…
I was surprised at first that we still made sitcoms, then I was shocked that Josh Thomas’ pile of crap got yet another season.
At this point, it’s the ‘worst’ just by virtue of having no interest at all in being a sitcom. An obnoxiously twee fantasy of millennial insularity peppered with dreary angst? Sure. A sitcom? Hell no.
I thought Please Like Me was the letter sent to the daisy-chained centrists who write in the Fairfax media.
Worst Topical Comedy
RUNNER UP
The Chaser’s Election Desk
36.11% of the votes
The Chaser just seem tired these days. Tired and out of decent ideas. Anyone who thought about it slightly would have realised that the long desk gag would stop being funny after about 10 seconds, yet they built the show around it, and persisted with it for the full five weeks. If the sketches had been largely good we could maybe have forgiven them for it, but they were only just slightly better than what Charlie Pickering and chums might have offered instead. And none the better for being pretty much what we’ve been seeing from Chaser election specials since 2001. Like Please Like Me, it’s hard not to be disappointed that The Chaser haven’t progressed their approach to comedy over the years. Particularly given they’ve had a lot longer than Josh Thomas in which to do it.
RUNNER UP
The Yearly with Charlie Pickering
50% of the votes
An end-of-year satirical round-up should not only be packed full of the best gags the writers can come up with about the key events of the year, but it should have a wild, last-day-of-school-blowout feel to it. It should be a show which really takes it to the edge, then blows it up into the sky like it’s the New Year’s Eve fireworks. Sure, war-, death- and crappy-election-result-filled 2016 wasn’t exactly the best year ever, but a decent satirical program shouldn’t feel like a wake. This did. A wake for satire itself…
WINNER
The Weekly with Charlie Pickering
72.22% of the votes
With almost three-quarters of our voters voting for this show, it’s worth asking: how is this still on-air? Who are the people who think this is more than passable as either comedy, entertainment or satirical commentary? Is a lame observation followed by a deadpan stare all it takes to amuse the majority of the Australian public? When we write posts on this blog pointing out the flaws with various local shows, it’s not uncommon for a reader to post a comment defending the program we’ve criticised. So, it’s notable that we’re still waiting for someone to post a comment defending The Weekly. And until we get one, we can only conclude that no one really likes this program and that its continual presence on air is due to some kind of administrative error. Or that its return to our screens next week is the sign of the apocalypse that comes after the inauguration of President Trump.
What the voters said about The Weekly…
Now that we’re saturated in topical comedy and news satire programs, there’s no excuse to settle for this.
Pickering’s snark is soulless.
A waste of a perfectly good desk and suit.
Worst Panel/Game/Interview/Light Entertainment/Stand-Up Show
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Hard Quiz
30.13% of the votes
Well, they’ve turned everything else into some kind of game show, so why not a segment on one of the worst satire programs we’ve ever seen? And if you were the person arguing that there’s a place on TV for an Australian version of Pointless but for cynical Generation X rather than your Baby Boomer parents, then, hey, dreams can come true! Ever wonder why the losing contestants never punch Gleeson in the face as they leave? An action which would be very much within the spirit of this hateful show. So do we.
RUNNER UP
Luke Warm Sex
31.51% of the votes
If you’re going to make one of these semi-serious, “[COMEDIAN X] looks at…” shows, the choice of topic is as important as the comedian. Judith Lucy’s series on religion was funny because she’s fairly cynical about faith and belief and could make plenty of gags about its inherent ridiculousness that the audience could laugh along with. Luke McGregor trying to get over his anxiety about sex and relationships, on the other hand, was more the kind of thing that lends itself to a serious documentary. Because unless you have a heart of stone and feel no guilt at laughing at the sex-scared loser, you’re basically just going to have sympathy with the guy. The other problem: when you get down to it, sex is either something you’re involved with and totally into, or something that when you’re a step removed from it actually looks kinda weird and gross.
WINNER
You’re Back in the Room
38.36% of the votes
Oh, sweet baby Jesus we totally forgot this crap ever happened: guess hypnotism must be good for something. Bad enough Channel Nine thought publicly mind-controlling a bunch of dupes was suitable for a series of lengthy prime-time specials, but why resurrect the grimacing spectre of Daryl Somers as host? And that’s not just because we loathe Somers, the most rabidly unpleasant figure on Australian television – which, yeah, okay, is like trying to draw a distinction between Stormtroopers in one of the more sinister Star Wars installments – but seriously: it’s a show where a hypnotist brings people up on stage, hypnotises them, explains to the audience what he’s going to get them to do, then they wake up and do it. Where’s the role for a host? Then again, it could have been worse: they could have brought Daryl back on a show where he was given more to do than act like a gurning prat.
What the voters said about You’re Back in the Room…
Didn’t know it was even a show.
I actually tried to kill myself.
Daryl Somers has no reason being back in our living rooms.
Worst Film
RUNNER UP
Down Under
46.81% of the votes
Hey, coming second in a race to the bottom isn’t that bad, right? And neither was Down Under, which had the rare attribute for an Australian comedy film of an actually funny concept. Sadly, that concept had already been pretty comprehensively explored in the much funnier Four Lions, and most of the changes to that concept here only underlined how tricky it was to get Four Lions right. Maybe if it had taken itself more seriously it would have been a better film; if your comedy is based on the idea that idiot bogans who constantly swear are sure-fire laugh-getters, maybe you’re the one who needs to take a good hard look at yourself.
WINNER
Spin Out
53.19% of the votes
It takes real talent to make a film about a B&S Ball that isn’t even accidentally interesting. It’s an event where a bunch of drunk country folk go berserk driving heavy machinery, and yet somehow this insipid little nothing of a movie managed to avoid presenting audiences with a single memorable line or incident. Maybe going documentary-style would have been too confronting for city audiences – people die from being driven over while sleeping in a sleeping bag at these events, after all – but then there’s the tried and tested comedy path of having stupid people do silly things still waiting to be explored. But not by Spin Out: showing a clearly deeply-felt respect for everyone apart from those who’d paid money expecting to be entertained, this revealed B&S attendees to be attractive, moderate-drinking, morally upright young people with minor personal issues that could be solved by nothing more dramatic than a good old-fashioned chat. If only someone had one with the film-makers before they wasted both their time and ours.
What the voters said about Spin Out…
Australian cinema at the moment is so bad that I haven’t even heard of either movie being nominated, in fact, I don’t want to even find out about either film due to the likely scenario that either film is extremely unfunny.
At least Down Under had a good script – Spin Out is just passable mediocrity and doesn’t show B&S balls properly. Also, no one that attractive would be at a B&S Ball.
This B&S ball was more BS and balls.
Worst Critic
RUNNER UP
Debi Enker
29.31% of the votes
“There’s no such thing as having the wrong opinion” is what we’d usually say here. But, you know, politics in 2017; let’s just say it’s not possible to have the wrong opinion about a television show. So the fact that Enker has been a firm and articulate supporter of multiple Tumblies winner Please Like Me for four years now is 100% fine with us: dusting off phrases like “the best Australian comedy you’re not watching” when after four years the problem isn’t that people aren’t watching – it’s that they’ve tried the show, decided they didn’t like it or simply weren’t interested, and are now actively avoiding it? Hmm. Defend it all you like on its artistic merit, but claiming it’s popular on iView when the iView figures aren’t publicly available isn’t really helping anyone.
RUNNER UP
Helen Razer
34.48% of the votes
Razer has been a regular here for about as long as we’ve been running these awards, so it’s safe to say her career as a critic has been fairly closely examined over the years. Fortunately for us, the gardening columnist, op-ed photocopier and occasional live comedy reviewer continues to forge new ground in reviewing: her latest book, The Helen 100, not only manages the rare feat of featuring the author’s name twice on the cover, but also features her on every one of the 312 pages as she occasionally refers to the 100 people she dated to try and get over her broken heart. So if you’ve enjoyed her distracted, self-involved reviews of comedy shows, chances are her review of a string of people looking to forge some kind of romantic connection with her should make for gripping reading. Exactly what’s being gripped remains open to speculation.
WINNER
Ben Pobjie
53.45% of the votes
Hey, here’s something interesting: it seems that Ben Pobjie’s bio over at Fairfax – where he writes pretty much exclusively about television – says “Ben Pobjie is a comedian and satirist.” And thank your god of choice for that, because if he was still working as a television critic and was employed by Fairfax to write reviews of currently screening television programs on a regular basis then the way he continues to publicly ask various television personalities and network executives for work would be seriously embarrassing. A professional television critic going around trying to get work as a cricket commentator, Q&A panelist, Bachelorette contestant and Shaun Micallef flunky would be someone who clearly had no idea of how criticism actually works, a glad-handing careerist worthy of nothing but pity for his desperate antics. But fortunately for him and us, Ben Pobjie isn’t a critic: he’s a comedian and satirist so it’s all fine and dandy. Clearly we screwed up big time even having him in this category, for which we most sincerely apologise. Mind you, Fairfax might want to stop putting “review” in the title of his articles.
What the voters said about Ben Pobjie…
Pobjie’s continued employment proves that mediocrity and having the ‘right’ opinions will get you everywhere.
Winning this award would just give Pobjie some more material for his next appearance on I Love Green Guide Letters. On the other hand, I do genuinely hate him.
Given Pobjie spends half his time trying publicly to get work on TV shows, clearly, he doesn’t think much of himself as a critic either.
Votes for Australian Tumbleweeds
24.14% of the votes
The writers of the Australian Tumbleweeds proved once again in 2016 that they are bitter, twisted, failed-at-life losers, with nothing better to do than spend hours of their time ranting into the internet ether, desperate for someone to take note of the very, very important things they have to say. So we say, good on the 24.14% of voters who were brave enough to put those bitter, twisted, SAD people back in their hate-filled boxes with articulate and considered criticism like this:
You guys should neck yourselves.
Appalling!
Deserved.
Ya shit mate.
Worst Sounding New Upcoming Show
RUNNER UP
Sheilas
20.83% of the votes
This year, Screen Australia announced it was funding an awful lot of new comedies, including the web series Sheilas, which they trailed as:
A playful celebration of the forgotten and most badass women in Australian History
Re-reading the press release, almost all the shows sound fairly terrible, but Sheilas stands out not just because it’s produced by Chaser-run production house Giant Dwarf, but for the words “playful”, “forgotten” and “badass”. What’s the betting this show will be chock-a-block with tough yet kooky characters (because female comedy characters almost always have to be kooky, for some reason), existing in various historical eras, but about as funny as The Weekly if it had been on air during the weeks following the Port Arthur Massacre? Odds on, we reckon.
RUNNER UP
Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures
25% of the votes
Having re-made Frontline as two separate but rather similar political sitcoms over the past decade (The Hollowmen and Utopia), Working Dog have recently made a contemporary version of Funky Squad (Pacific Heat), and are now planning to bring back not only Thank God You’re Here but Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures, itself an early noughties re-working of the Wallaby Jack sketches from The Late Show. There’s a theme here, and it’s that Working Dog have totally run out of ideas. And unless this new series of All Aussie Adventures takes Russell Coight into hilariously-uncharted territory, this is going to be really disappointing.
WINNER
Mustafa Needs a Wife
31.25% of the votes
Australian Muslims face prejudice and hardship at every turn. They’re more likely to be living in poverty than non-Muslim Australians, they have a harder time getting work than non-Muslim Australians, and a sizeable proportion of non-Muslim Australians worry that the sole reason they live here is to blow stuff up. Well, at least there’s one thing they can do every bit as well as non-Muslim Australians: get funded by Screen Australia to make a show that sounds kinda shithouse…
Newly dumped 26-year-old Mustafa must find himself an Afghani wife in a month… or else his mother finds one for him.
Oh great, a sort of caper-comedy about relationships. We were wondering what to do with ourselves once we’d finished watching all the Judd Apatow films.
What the voters said about the Upcoming Shows of 2017…
My nephew is 5 years old and loves watching Nickelodeon and Disney. And on these channels they have sitcoms aimed at teen’s and preteens and other little kids. Each sitcom is profoundly silly and over the top. I mention this because any of those kids shows are far funnier and more entertaining than any local adult crap that is being made right now. That’s shitscarey when you think about it! And to make matters worse an old comedy that hasn’t been on air since 2003 will be funnier than anything new on tv as well. That’s an extremely sad statistic on the health and well-being of Australian comedy at the present moment.
I just voted for anything described as a dramedy, or with the phrase ‘hilarious and heart-breaking’.
Fuck all these shows. They’re all gonna fail anyway and the ones that achieve mediocre success will not get a second season unless international interest is shown.
Best New Comedy
RUNNER UP
Ronny Chieng International Student
27.59% of the votes
In perhaps one of the least surprising results here, it turns out that letting someone good at being funny come up with his own show results in a show that’s funny. That might seem somewhat obvious: if you’re wondering who could possibly think otherwise, may we direct you to the rest of this year’s results. Chieng is a charming and likable lead, the insights into student life are sharp and funny, the whole thing is progressive in a way that feels natural and did we mention it’s funny? The full season later this year can’t come fast enough.
RUNNER UP
Rosehaven
29.31% of the votes
Luke McGregor’s had so many chances at the ABC one of them had to pan out eventually, and it’s no real surprise that it came in the kind of mild, fish-slightly-out-of-water show that the ABC audience often takes to heart. It’s a show where you really, really, really have to be on board with the characters to get much more than “hmm, nice scenery” out of it; fortunately for those who’re yet to warm to McGregor’s slightly awkward, slightly flailing persona this also features fellow ABC long-hauler Celia Pacquola. She’s been funny in everything she’s been in: this is no exception.
WINNER
Sammy’s Playground Politics
37.93% of the votes
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Sammy J’s Playground Politics was hilarious. Sammy J’s been one of the funniest people in Australian comedy for years now, and while his recent sitcom Ricketts Lane was a slight stumble, his live shows were so good and he’d been the best thing in so many sub-par shows, he was bound to come up with a real winner sooner rather than later. And having him turn his talents to politics should have grabbed our attention too: maybe it was year after year of the increasingly disinterested and diluted Chaser churning out satire-by-numbers each election that made us think Australian politics was a laugh-free zone. Whatever the reason, this came out of the blue to ruthlessly mock the grubby, shallow world of election politics in a way that was both on-point and consistently funny. Having it return for an end-of-year special has us hoping Sammy J’ll figure out a way to keep it going in 2017; political comedy in this country could definitely do with more of his pre-school-level insights.
What the voters said about Sammy J’s Playground Politics…
Sammy J absolutely crushed it.
Sammy J was enchanting in his role as the Play School-esque host.
Playground Politics was a strange idea but executed so perfectly. The parody was accurate, the satire sharp, and the jokes funny. Brilliant work from Sammy J.
Best Comedy
RUNNER UP
Clarke & Dawe
27.94% of the votes
At a time in Australian comedy history when comedies that Australians actually laugh at are given less airtime, Clarke & Dawe’s weekly 150 seconds of satire remains something to treasure. Every week they really nail it, and with seeming effortlessness show us how satire should be done: succinctly and with care and attention paid to every word and every inflection. 2017 marks the 30th anniversary of pair’s first satirical interview. Long may they remain on air!
RUNNER UP
The Katering Show
32.25% of the votes
A difficult second series? Far from it. If anything, series two of The Katering Show was better than the first with Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney finding no shortage of food trends, TV chefs and lifestyle choices to parody. Because of its focus on the dynamic between the two characters, and its determination to take the comedy as far as it can go (who else was making references to the movie Safe in 2016?), this series has endless potential.
WINNER
Mad as Hell
55.88% of the votes
Speaking of endless potential, if Mad As Hell isn’t still on-air in a decade’s time, there’s something seriously wrong down at the ABC. Sure, there is something seriously wrong down at the ABC (see above), but at least they’ve had the good sense to keep making this. Like the other two finalists in this category, Mad As Hell has a strong, well-developed comedy voice and a commitment to being as funny as humanly possible in as many ways as humanly possible. You know what makes us mad as hell? Not that Mad As Hell isn’t on all year round (as much as we’d like that, even the best things are best rationed), but that the ABC still can’t find a group of comedians who can make a show that’s even half as good as what Micallef and friends can. That is a serious problem for our comedy future. But until someone fixes it, release the kraken!
What the voters said about Mad As Hell…
Globally 2016 was an unceasing dumpster fire of hate and bile. Mad as Hell‘s absurdity and subversive wit were the only thing that cut through the horror.
A perennial favorite.
Cancel The Weekly, and broadcast Mad As Hell all year ’round!
Predictions for 2017
Seven executives, having noted the flurry of new comedy talent initiatives on the ABC and SBS over the past couple of years, briefly flirt with the idea of commissioning their own. Then they’re offered an enticing new reality format at an international TV fair and forget all about it.
Following further budget cuts, the ABC replaces its stand-up showcase Comedy Next Gen with a Skype feed from The Comics Lounge. Mad Mondays is nominated for a Logie.
Further displaying their commitment to local comedy, the ABC will rebrand everything that’s not news programming as “local comedy”.
Chris Lilley will jump-start his flagging career by returning with his first batch of fresh characters in a decade. Unfortunately, audiences won’t take his all-new and totally original comedy characters “Kath” and “Kim” to heart, forcing him to return to his day job as a kindly old caretaker at an unnamed private girl’s school in Sydney’s inner east.
The Weekly will follow Please Like Me’s example and basically not even try to be a comedy anymore, advertising itself as “News. No Joke.” as it adopts a format of running day-old news stories then cutting to Charlie Pickering sadly shaking his head in silence. Despite hitting a new low in ratings, they’ll do it again in 2018 in the hope that we’ll accept that as the new normal for satire in this country.
The ABC will air a flurry of new comedies at the start of the year, another burst at the end, and just forget about the seven months in-between apart from maybe one show if we’re lucky. Despite hitting a new low in the ratings, they’ll do it again in 2018 in the hope that we’ll accept that as the new normal for comedy in this country.
Following the success of upcoming Paul Hogan biopic Hoges, Seven will greenlight Lawson, a biopic about Josh Lawson focusing entirely on the time he played Paul Hogan in Hoges. Adam Zwar will play Lawson.
For the 20th year in a row, the future of comedy will be “the internet”. Even though that’s where you found us.
Vote now in the Tumblies 2016!
Voting is now open in the Australian Tumbleweeds Awards 2016!
Now in its 11th “amazing” year, the Australian Tumbleweeds hails the failures (and occasional successes) of this nation’s comic talent.
Your online voting form can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/tumblies-2016
You have until midnight at the end of Friday 6th January 2017 to vote. Please only vote once. Full rules and instructions can be found with the voting form – please read the rules carefully!
The winners will be announced on or about Australia Day 2016.
As always, the official hashtag is #tumblies.
It’s a Christmas Miracle
One of the highlights of this year’s election was Sammy J’s Playground Politics, a faux kids show a la Play School that sunk the boots into our politicians with a cheezy child-friendly grin. So good news! As part of the ABC’s seemingly endless enthusiasm for putting on comedy during the non-ratings period, this week sees a special Christmas, uh, special in which Sammy J goes to town on the current state of the political landscape.
It’s already up on iView if you don’t want to wait until the free-to-air premiere Wednesday night, and for a ten minute show it manages to pack in a lot of decent gags (we laughed at “The undying corpse of Kevin Rudd window”), some extremely well-crafted political nativity figures, and a guest appearance from a politician who’s actually pretty good at the condescending tone required of a children’s show host. Not that that’s really much of a surprise.
(as usual, letting a politician in on the joke is always a bad idea, but at least here forcing him to put on the creepy tone of a children’s show host makes it seem like part of the joke is on him)
We’ve scratched our heads before over the ABC’s current policy of putting comedy on during non-ratings – hey, we’re not seeing any first-run drama going to air in January – and they’re not done yet:
Relax after Christmas with three new comedies exclusive to ABC iview: Goober, Almost Midnight and Lost in Pronunciation
Monday, December 19, 2016 — Three new 6 x 5minute narrative comedy web series, Goober, Almost Midnight and Lost in Pronunciation – all collaborations between ABC and the South Australian Film Corporation – will launch exclusively on ABC iview during the Christmas/New Year week. The series showcases new South Australian screen talent both on and behind the camera.
Goober is about Harry (Brendan Williams), a too-friendly Uber driver, convinced that every passenger will be his next best friend. Harry is on the autism spectrum, and spends his days bemusing and confusing his passengers – despite the support of his dad (Shane Jacobson), always just a hands-free phonecall away with encouragement and wisdom.
Harry is eternally optimistic, especially when it comes to Wendy (Ashton Malcolm), who works in the booth at Harry’s favourite drive-thru restaurant. Harry is convinced that any day now he and Wendy will be happily married. With a house. And six children. And a dog. All he has to do is summon the courage to talk to her about something other than ice-cream.
Goober comes to iview on Boxing Day. Written by Ben Crisp. Produced by Kirsty Stark. Directed by Brendon Skinner and Simon Williams. The show is from Epic Films – Screen Producers Association of Australia’s 2016 Breakthrough Business of the Year.
Almost Midnight is a coming-of-age romantic comedy, with each of the six episodes set a year apart against the backdrop of that glorious moment when boundless promise and uninhibited drunkenness combine – the final five minutes of New Year’s Eve. Dave (co-creator/writer and director Stephen Banham) wants a fairy-tale romance, but lacks the ability to meet or, more importantly, keep the woman of his dreams, Jen – especially when he’s hampered by the appalling advice of his best friend and self-professed ladies’ man, Acka (co-creator/writer Aaron Casey). Over six New Year’s Eves, we witness Dave’s growth from a bumbling wall-flower to a fully-matured man, comfortable in his own skin and ready for love. But when the clock strikes midnight, will he get his wish or turn into a pumpkin?
Almost Midnight comes to iview on Boxing Day. A We’re Not Boys Production. Producers: Alex Keay and Peta Bulsara.
Lost in Pronunciation is a ‘fish out of water’ comedy series from the award-winning and fast-rising comedian, Venezuelan born Ivan Aristeguieta. It premieres Sunday 1 January on ABC iview.
Lost in Pronunciation is the autobiographical story of a young man who escapes the dangers of Venezuela only to find himself in ‘the lucky country’s’ safest, friendliest state – South Australia. With the help of two Aussie housemates, lesbian tradie Tia (Lori Bell), and her hipster vegan brother Scott (Nic Krieg), Ivan learns that to become a permanent resident isn’t so much about ticking boxes on a form, but adapting to the strange and unique customs that we may take for granted, but make us truly Australian. Created and written by Ivan Aristeguieta and Chris McDonald. Director Richard Jasek. Produced by Julia DeRoeper. A collaboration between ABC iview, the South Australian Film Corporation and JDR Screen
But if they’re half as good as Sammy J’s Playground Politics, the only complaints we’re going to have will be about the timeslot.
It comes but once a year
In word terms, 2016 was the year of “democracy sausage” and “post-truth”, but if the world of comedy had its say it’d probably go for “banter”, a term rightly mocked in The Yearly with Charlie Pickering for describing conversation that sounds funny but actually isn’t. Oh, the irony. But as joke after half-arsed observation died and/or went nowhere in the ABC’s end-of-year round-up the other night, it became clear that the problem wasn’t that The Yearly… contained a lot of banter – banter, in the right context, such as a pub, can be quite amusing – it’s that The Yearly… wasn’t funny at all.
Peak unfunny was achieved about a minute into Tom Gleeson’s report on live baiting in greyhound racing, the premise of which was that he was doing a fearless report about how live baiting had been wrongly banned despite all evidence to the contrary. Was the intent of this sketch that Gleeson was a kind of post-truth reporter, ignoring all the evidence that he was wrong? Or was it more that he was just an idiot for continuing with his line when all the evidence showed that he wrong? Whatever the high concept was meant to be here, it didn’t work. And the largely unresponsive studio audience seemed to agree.
Then there was that running gag of Pickering’s where he called Hillary Clinton “President” when he was describing how her campaign was going in February. Yeah, we get it, she was meant to be a shoe-in for the White House, except…calling her “President Clinton” throughout the show doesn’t work as a gag. We know how it turned out in the end, and any end-of-year wrap-up has to remember that. Cue a confused reaction from the audience.
An ability to understand what’s going to make an audience laugh is important in comedy, and that ability seems to have been lost on the people who made The Yearly with Charlie Pickering. Maybe they should have stuck to making sarky gags about the likes of Harambe and Kim Kardashian? They’re easy, lazy and crap, but at least people respond to those.
The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, it was announced to the three people who made it through the whole hour of The Yearly with Charlie Pickering, will return in February. And we’re fairly sure we know already how funny it’s going to be.
And, sure, President Trump will be in post by then, and satirists usually shine when there’s a right-wing idiot in charge – remember the hilarious glory days of satire during the George W. Bush/John Howard years? Except, on the back of a year marked by celebrity death and dodgy election results in countries around the world – not to mention the ongoing horrors in Syria – can we really rely on Charlie Pickering to make us laugh? A man seemingly not willing to credit his audience with knowing the 2016 US election results?
Vale Please Like Me yet again
It’s safe to say we haven’t been in tune with the critical consensus around Please Like Me from the start. Critics love it; we’re left scratching our heads. But the antics of the last few weeks have gone at least some of the way towards explaining this gap, because as we’ve read report after report after report about how the show’s fans have been wailing and gnashing their teeth over the tragic death of Josh’s mum, we’ve been thinking “hang on a second – how many fucking people have died on this show already?”
A big death in a sitcom – or a drama – is a well you can only visit occasionally. Rack up a hefty body count and each death means less whether you’re watching The Wire or The Walking Dead. Most comedy shows keep the big emotional character deaths to a bare minimum; even a show like Buffy with a double figure body count only really turned on the waterworks that time when Buffy’s mum died. So how many big deaths has Please Like Me served up?
- Season one: Peg dies, final episode set at her funeral.
- Season two: Ginger kills herself, everyone takes a camping trip to dwell on it.
- Season three: Ben has a cerebral aneurysm and could “die at any minute” for an episode or two. Has big operation that could kill him. Shock twist: he doesn’t die.
- Season four: Josh’s mum, who first appeared in episode one having tried to kill herself, kills herself.
Anyone else seeing a pattern here? A boring, emotionally manipulative, badly written pattern?
If you’re writing a sitcom – wait, we mean “dramatic comedy” – where the big third act twist every year is that somebody dies, forgive us if by season four we don’t feel surprise, or much of anything else, when it happens once again. You can be less forgiving of the way we also feel it’s lazy writing, cheap drama, and the hallmark of a show that’s been poorly written from the outset, but we clearly don’t give a shit about your feelings as truly concerned critics wouldn’t be mocking your pain when the grief is still oh so raw.
[what exactly are people grieving here? As supporting characters go “Josh’s Mum” was central to the show but not exactly top tier. Maybe if they’d killed off Tom we would have cared more. Guess there’s always season five.]
What all this kerfuffle makes clear is that Please Like Me is not a show the fans enjoy for superficial reasons like characterisation or plot or sharp one-liners. Of course they don’t: it doesn’t have any of those things. Remember how the scene everyone praised in the first episode of this season was Josh playing with a teddy bear on a bus? They’re giving that shit away for free if you’re willing to risk hanging around the local kindergarten.
What the fans seem to like is the whole atmosphere of the show. It’s an idealised fantasy of twenty-something life, a blur of cosy share houses and late night clubbing and awkward family dinners where it’s clear your parents still love you despite all your problems and friends that stick to you like glue even though you have your differences there too.
And you know what? We’re fine with that. Decent television has been made based on less. And Please Like Me does a good job of it: it always looks great, and the seemingly accidental combination of often sub-par acting and clumsy scripting actually creates a “realistic” vibe that makes it easy to buy into the fantasy that what we’re seeing is an actual slice-of-life.
But we’re not seeing an actual slice-of-life: it’s television, and calling it “honest” is a somewhat major misreading of what’s being served up. Sure, if by “honest” you mean “hey look, a show that admits people die” the label fits, but then Game of Thrones is leagues ahead in the honesty stakes there. And what else is left? “People fight”? “Relationships end”? “Josh Thomas once played with a teddy bear on a bus”?
Realism – and no, we haven’t forgotten we’re talking about a show still often described as a comedy – is about more than just presenting difficult issues.
The show has dealt with homophobia and racism, depression and workplace harassment, breast cancer and STDs. There was an abortion which, in a refreshing turn, was treated not with kid gloves but with openness and no regrets. There was commendably realistic gay sex – a lot of it.
And? Is it enough now to just present a laundry list of hot button issues? All those topics have been tackled on other, much better shows: there was a “no regrets” abortion on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend just a few weeks ago. The Office dealt with workplace harassment; STDs have been “dealt with” on comedies since the 70s. Racism? Kingswood Company did it better.
We’re well aware that we’re talking at cross purposes when it comes to Please Like Me. Fans want to talk about the issues it deals with; we want to talk about the way it deals with those issues. Not the “sensitive” way it tackles them – Josh Thomas and company are clearly not idiots, and they’re firmly on the right (that is to say, left) side of these topics – but the way it tackles them as a piece of art.
Call us old-fashioned, but it’s just not enough to take the right stance on the right issues if you want to create decent television. We don’t watch television to have our beliefs confirmed as the correct ones – we take our beliefs much too seriously to let a sitcom influence what we believe either way. We watch television first and foremost to be entertained, as that’s all it’s good for. And as entertainment Please Like Me is just not all that good.
At this stage, going on about exactly why it’s not good would be a waste of everyone’s time. Where fans see brilliant acting from Thomas, we see a firmly average actor being placed in scenes where his inability to express subtle emotions makes him a blank the audience can project their feelings on (see also: Eminem’s entire performance in 8 Mile). When you present a character with the body of his dead mother, staring blankly isn’t great acting, it’s staring blankly while the audience thinks “wow, he must be totally devastated yet also resigned because he clearly knew this was always going to happen – what a great performance to convey all that”. When he cries, he’s just in a scene where he has to cry.
How can we be so mean? How can we just dismiss the fans’ feelings when clearly this show has affected them so deeply? Surely it’s the mark of a great show to make people care so much about the death of a supporting character? Well, no.
Long-running shows make you care about their characters, especially if they’re heavily character-based. Killing off a character you care about is always going to make you feel something. Please Like Me is a niche show that rates so badly literally the only people left watching are the hardcore fans: we’re willing to bet money more people were more devastated when that guy – you know the one – died on Offspring.
Ok, so now we’ve proved conclusively that Please Like Me is crap. But don’t take our word for it – even Fairfax’s Please Like Me superfan Debi Enker knows it has serious problems:
Yes, the characters can be muddled as they confront life’s big questions: Am I gay? Is this love? Have I chosen the right career? Can I save my marriage, and do I really want to? They can make mistakes and behave badly. But one can only take so many scenes where they hang around in each others’ flats or congregate at the FU Bar and moan.
…
It’s instructive to look at the British series This Life, by comparison. It dealt with characters at a similar stage in their lives. It also had a community of twentysomething characters linked by where they lived. But, crucially, it integrated them professionally. All the principal characters were, or had been, lawyers. Key parts of the show’s landscape were its characters’ struggles with their careers: the jockeying for position, the politics of the firm, the cases they were handling.
This integration of their working lives added a dimension and momentum to the series, and gave the characters a place beyond the bars and bedrooms, affording an additional perspective. They might be stumbling around, doing self-destructive things, but there was always a sense that they were doing something.
Oh wait, that was from her review of The Secret Life of Us back in 2001. Still kind of relevant here though. For a show constantly praised for being “honest”, Please Like Me sure wasn’t interested in the struggle to make a living – a struggle that, last time we checked, tends to pretty much dominate the lives of most twenty-somethings.
So is it finished? It’s hard to imagine it going on, but we say that every year. It’d be hard to top the dead mum, but Josh still has a few friends who could fall under a bus and there’s always more hot guys to pash. But with Pivot, the US network that’s been funding the show since season two, having collapsed earlier this year and the ABC seemingly extremely disinterested in putting money into it (who could blame them – the free-to-air ratings are reportedly so low it’s being beaten by statistical errors), it’s hard to see how it’ll be back. Just one more death for the fans to grieve.
It’s hard to watch, but life itself is hard to endure. And Please Like Me just reminded us all of that.
Oh, it’s been reminding us of that for a long time now.