Australian Tumbleweeds

Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.

Up Shit Week

Briggswatch! Still in the opening credits of The Weekly, not on the actual Weekly. Then again he did just collect a decent share of $30,000 for winning the Australian Music prize, so he may have better things to do with his time. As did Kitty Flanagan, which is weird because… you know… Tom Gleeson was still on board. Whoever’s making that Sophie’s Choice: YOU’RE GETTING IT WRONG.

But that just fits in with the general approach of The Weekly, which this week seemed even more than ever to be just that little bit behind the times – and not only because the (highly edited?) interview with South Park‘s Parker & Stone finally aired, just in time for it to be completely irrelevant. Maybe someone upstairs thought it was too much like a promo for The Book of Mormon?

Look, you can blame the internet, blame the 24-hour news cycle, even blame the general mediocrity of a comedy team that just doesn’t seem to be able to come up with a single new angle or surprising take on anything, but when you’re doing seven minutes on the days-old kerfuffle over the Coopers Beer cross-promotion with the Bible Society it’s difficult not to shrug so hard you put your shoulder out. As we’ve said before, if you can’t be topical, be funny; if you can’t be funny, welcome to The Weekly.

That said, that segment did feature Justin Hamilton and it’s always great to see him on television. Cue us getting depressed thinking about all the great comedy talent we have out there not getting on television while Tom Gleeson has been around for what, fifteen years now? We’re watching a show with Kitty Flanagan as a core cast member and even she’s not on every week. Fuck this shit.

Otherwise you know the drill: a bunch of segments that really are just Behind The News for the adderall generation, a handful of uninspired comedy bits – yeah, those promos for A Current Affair are pretty funny, but maybe you might want to come up with a funnier take than simply repeating everything the promo just said – and oh look, special correspondent Jonathan Pie doing the exact same ranting rant he does everywhere he goes. He didn’t even interact with Charlie Pickering: was this swipe at Tony Blair a fresh rant or one from 2007?

But the bit that really seemed to sum up The Weekly this week was the way they a): explained to us all the internet exploding over that video where News Dad is interrupted by his bouncy kids, then b): just re-enacted it at the end of the show with no twist or joke added. Wait, didn’t you just do a bit ten minutes earlier about how this clip was massively over-exposed and already played-out? Isn’t your addition to this massively over-exposed and already played-out bit just to straight-up re-stage it like that’s somehow enough to get laughs?

Not that we’re saying this idea of The Weekly simply re-creating popular viral videos and adding absolutely nothing to them is automatically a bad idea. Just maybe shift the focus slightly: maybe have Pickering falling off a bench, or Pickering being startled by a cucumber, or Pickering taking a big ol’ shit in a cup. It’d have to be an improvement over what they’re doing now.

 

 

 

 

Turning Off the Tap

It’s been a sad weekend for fans of cartooning, as the Antipodes’ greatest exponent of the art recently passed away to a vast outpouring of grief and dismay. We speak, of course, of the death of Murray Ball, creator of Footrot Flats, one of the warmest and funniest newspaper comics of the last thirty years.

Oh yeah, Bill Leak died too. Not a lot that was warm or funny about that guys’ output over the last few years.

Leak only barely comes under our remit here, partly because he was a newspaper cartoonist and partly because he wasn’t funny – well, blaming the poor and underprivileged for their own plight is kind of funny, though only in the sense that you have to laugh at any adult cold-hearted enough to actually believe that shit – but it has been interesting to see the way a lot of people suddenly seem to have firmly held opinions on what is and isn’t funny.

At least when Barry Humphries came out in defense of his friend he was speaking as someone with a passing acquaintance with actual comedy:

Barry Humphries has hailed his late friend Bill Leak as the “best political cartoonist in the world”, as arts figures saluted Leak’s gift for traditional portraiture as well as his courage and independent mind.

Humphries was shocked to learn of Leak’s death yesterday, two days after his character Sir Les Patterson launched Leak’s collection of cartoons, Trigger Warning.

“Bill Leak was the best political cartoonist in the world,” Humphries said. “But, of course, the prophet was not acknowledged in his own country.

“He made the mistake of telling the truth, which is the mark of a great satirist. He was a brilliant cartoonist who used humour to express the truth.”

Yeah, but he was no Mahatma Coat.

The thing about decent comedy whatever the form is that somewhere in there you have to have a bit of compassion – even if it’s just for the people out of frame who have to put up with the idiots you’re mocking. And Leak’s work had that compassion – unfortunately, it was directed towards the wealthy and well-connected in our society who he saw as increasingly forced to deal with previously marginalised groups who no longer knew their place. Rather than “saying the unsayable”, he mostly said in public what gets said a lot in private amongst those who see themselves as the “real” Australians.

So it’s no surprise that various high-profile political types have come out in defense of Leak – and copped a serve in return:

These people live in a bubble insulated by wealth and connections where hateful comments directed at the underprivileged are just “differing viewpoints” that exist mostly as ways to adjust your political brand: no wonder he was seen as “one of us”.

Unfortunately for Leak’s legacy, this outpouring of grief serves mostly as a damning indictment of his skills as a political satirist: if he was actually any good at his job of taking down Australia’s elite, would they have been quite so eager to queue up around the block to pay their respects?

A satirist is best judged by the quality of his enemies, and for Leak we’ve got some bad news: when your enemies aren’t this country’s political power-brokers but are instead various groups whose job it is to stick up for the poor and marginalised, it’s safe to say you’ve missed the mark just a little.

Obviously his friends and supporters don’t see it that way: they’re currently hoping his death will somehow lead to the destruction of the Human Rights Commission, the organisation that obviously “hounded” him to his death.

Are you happy now, Gillian Triggs? And you, Tim Soutphommasane, race pimp and sinecured Labor hack, what are you saying in private about the man you abused with the full weight of the misplaced trust and budget Australians invest in your filthy Human Rights Commission? Bill Leak, the Australian cartoonist and a man worth a hundred of each of you, is dead, carried off by a heart attack at the age of 61.

How do you feel about that, you pair of trough-snouters and gold-plated apparatchiks. Are you suppressing grins? You should be because this is more than you could have expected.

You wanted to silence him, to grind the slashing blade of his humour to a dull edge with your sanctions and harassment and point-blank refusal to recognise truth, even when it bit you on the arse. And Bill bit hard and often, but not so much as you deserved. No wonder you put so much effort into making his final months a misery. Now death has gone you one better.

Personally we suspect there are maybe a few government bodies out there that are slightly more directly responsible for deaths in the community and that everyone’s attention would be better served trying to reform them.

But we don’t write for Quadrant so what would we know?

The two times Tom Gleeson really annoyed us in just one half hour

We knew there were only two ways this story could end. Either Briggs didn’t return to The Weekly this week, turning the show into a laughing stock that couldn’t even accurately predict when core cast members were going to appear, or Briggs showed up and we could all go back to ignoring The Weekly. Almost exactly 15 minutes into this week’s episode Charlie Pickering threw to Briggs, we had our answer, and we returned to our back issues of Viz without a second’s thought.

… and yet, something didn’t seem quite right. Why was Briggs – and remember, Briggs is now a core cast member of the show, featured both in the opening credits and all the press photos – coming to us “live” from his couch? And considering most segments on The Weekly are led by the guest – they come on, they do most of the talking, Pickering just drops in the occasional brilliantly funny line that redefines comedy for a generation – why did this segment feel pretty much exactly like the typical mid-show rant from Pickering with 60 seconds of Briggs cutaways edited in?

Just one big happy family

We’re not joking about the 60 seconds, mind you. Barely 40 seconds into the bit we’re back to the news clips, then there’s a couple of one-liners from Briggs and we’re done. He gets laughs – they’re decent lines and he sells them well – but considering before this season began he was touted as having “joined the cast”, having his first appearance in five weeks be as someone dropping a handful of jokes into the kind of segment the show usually happily does without him hardly makes it seem like he’s a core member of the cast.

Contrast this with comedy pothole Tom Gleeson, who appeared not once but twice this episode – once to do some pointless desk-bound mumble, then again at the show’s rear end for Hard Chat, where Kerri Anne Kennerley “tore him a new one”. Has anyone else noticed how so much of Gleeson’s work increasingly relies on the pleasure the audience feels from seeing him being treated like shit? Yeah, wonder why people enjoy that so much.

And yet this is a show that seems to think what the audience wants is more Tom Gleeson. Why? What possible basis could they have for thinking that? Gleeson is perfectly serviceable as someone performing an act that most people can identify as “comedy”, but Kitty Flanagan is the one actually being funny on this show – and yet here we are, getting two segments with Gleeson, one with Flanagan and a full minute of Briggs. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of what a show trying to be funny would do.

Unless, of course, what we’re really talking about is that Pickering actually seems to get along with Gleeson in person* – something that reflects poorly on both of them – while the one time that Briggs has appeared in the same room as Pickering in 2017 you could have cut the tension with a knife only you probably wouldn’t have wanted to have brought a knife into that particular room. Has Briggs been seen back on set since then? No he has not.

To sum up: Briggs gets around one minute of air time in the middle of someone else’s segment. Tom Gleeson gets two entire segments. Remember the very first sketch of the year? The one where The Weekly made a joke about the show being “too white” but don’t worry, they were going to change all that? Not so funny now, is it?

… oh wait, it wasn’t even funny then. Shit.

 

 

*Pickering’s final line of the night, in case you missed it, was “Thanks Tom Gleeson, everybody else”.

Satire’s hard problem

Clarke & Dawe returned to our screens last week and once again reminded us how satirists should be doing it: it’s about pointing out where things are going wrong.

Satire only achieves what it’s there to do if it leaves the audience laughing, better informed and angry for change. And this is something that’s only going to happen when the politicians being satirised aren’t present.

If John Clarke dressed up as Malcolm Turnbull and did his voice, it’s possible we might start to enjoy the character of Malcolm Turnbull – or even soften towards the actual Malcolm Turnbull. Remember how Julie Bishop’s “Death Stare” appearance on Yes We Canberra changed perceptions towards her? Made her seem like a good sport? Made her seem less hateable?

Remember the 90’s when politicians wouldn’t appear on The Panel because they didn’t want to be made to look foolish? These days, it’s the complete opposite; politicians worry about likability and want to look like a good sport.

This is why a never-ending stream of politicians are prepared to appear on Tom Gleeson’s Hard Chat segment on The Weekly. Sure, they cop a bit of abuse, but mainly they come out of it looking like the victim because the abuse is mostly in the form of cheap shots – satirical points that would make them genuinely uncomfortable or point out their flaws are few and far between.

One clue as to why involving politicians in the joke and/or going soft on them in satire seems to be a popular approach can perhaps be found in the most recent episode of I Love Green Guide Letters, in which Adam Zwar describes how worried the ABC are by anything that comments on the current government.

I would say with the ABC they do always worry about what the government is thinking at the time, so if you’ve got a right-wing government in that’s anti-environmental, it won’t lean as heavily as it should on the anti-environmentalists, i.e. people who just fish the shit out the waters…I know when I had something on the ABC and someone said something anti-Liberal party…one of the Agonys, one of the guests said something negative about Tony Abbott and I got a caution letter [from a senior executive]…saying “Do you really need this in?”. And I said, “Are you asking me this from the perspective that this makes the show worse or are you saying it from a partisan perspective?” No response, because then there’s an e-mail trail that makes it clear that it was a partisan thing.

(To listen to Adam Zwar speaking about the caution letter, start at 38:12)

In the end, Zwar says, he ignored the letter and the negative comments made it into the final cut of the show. They were, he says, Susan Carland saying things he feels were “pretty benign” about the Liberal party. But, he adds, The Agony of… series was not renewed. Guess he learnt what happens if you ignore the warnings.

We were no fans of The Agony of… series, but it’s shocking that the government are so worried about their image that they’re not above bullying the ABC to the extent that it worries about the contents of a lightweight talking heads show. And in this context, it’s a miracle that the genuinely “hard chat” of Clarke & Dawe is still allowed to be broadcast.

Mind you, in much the same way that subscriptions to quality news sources like the New York Times have soared in Trump’s USA, it’s notable that last week’s Clarke & Dawe has already been watched more than 20,000 times on YouTube compared to just over 2,500 for last week’s Hard Chat. Sure, that’s just YouTube (we don’t have access to the free-to-air or timeshifted figures) but it indicates that one section of the public knows what it wants: it wants real satire.

Briggswatch week 5: Concerned Expression

“Hello and welcome to The Weekly – like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or correspond with us by fax, we’re not really that picky”. Has there ever been a more dispiriting introduction to an Australian comedy show? Even Please Like Me gave you the option of reading the title ironically: this is just flat-out begging for social media stats.

Anyway, the big excitement around this week’s episode of The Weekly didn’t come until the end and no, we don’t mean Charlie Pickering saying “Aw, thank you, thank you all, thank you all so much” as the crowd cheered under the end credits because really, if he hadn’t done such a top-notch job of bringing to life the character of “smug prick” in the proceeding 29 minutes and fifty seconds this really would have sealed the deal. Yeah, they’re applauding because they love you, Pickering, they really really do.

No, it came just before that with the line “We got Briggsy next week”. Briggsy? Ok yeah sure whatever: maybe supposed series regular Briggs will make his second appearance this year in episode six, which suggests that actually announcing him as a series regular and adding his face to the opening credits may have been somewhat premature. And still that’s a pretty big maybe, considering the last time his return was announced he did in fact show no signs of returning whatsoever.

But Briggsy? Does anyone who has seen the two of them working together (remember, your only chance this year was five weeks ago) really think that Charlie Pickering has ever called Briggs “Briggsy” to his face? The on-air warmth between the two could have kept cool your average refrigerated truck; pet names and diminutives seem a little way off just yet.

And yet, thinking about this further, maybe we’re being too harsh. Because the Pickering we see on television does occasionally seem like a guy who’d call a work subordinate by a vaguely condescending nickname, perhaps while wearing a “what’re you doing to do about it?” smirk. And while we know absolutely nothing as to why Briggs hasn’t been on the show for weeks, we do know that if there was a way we could avoid working for a guy like that you wouldn’t see us for dust.

 

 

Mychonny, Yourchonny, Everybodychonny!

Does broadcast TV have a future beyond the things that only it can do best: news, live coverage of sport and big budget “event TV”? With Netflix, Amazon, Stan and other streaming services offering drama, documentary, and films to watch anytime you want, should broadcasters like the ABC even bother?

When it comes to comedy, particularly local comedy and topical satire, there’s still a strong case for it. It’s not like Netflix is stepping up and giving us the next The Games. We’re also really struggling to think of a successful sketch comedy or sitcom made by a streaming service. Nothing that could rival the popularity of The Crown, The Man in the High Castle or Making A Murderer, anyway.

So, the ABC’s continued commitment to making comedy about Australians for Australians is a good thing, even if some of it sounds kinda bad. That, and, the more we look into it, the more a sketch show from John Luc (i.e. Mychonny) doesn’t sound like the worst thing ever.

Luc’s Mychonny and Yourchonny channels have been going for eight years, with subscriber numbers and views in the 100’s of thousands, sometimes the millions. That’s pretty impressive for an Aussie teen making low-budget videos at his parents’ house.

The early videos are kinda what you’d expect from a teenage boy making sketches (the word gay is both a punchline and an insult, girls are either hot or ugly bitches) but more recently the comedy’s become a bit more sophisticated and socially aware. There are some spot-on parodies of various TV shows in LIFE WITHOUT INTERNET…

…and Being An Asian Australian includes a pretty good pisstake of white Aussie bogans:

With bigger production values and a bit more polish, you can imagine these sketches being on an Australian version of Saturday Night Live; Luc’s comedy’s often a lot sharper than The Weekly!

John Luc is also a good performer, who plays most of the parts in his sketches himself. Sure, he’s largely playing comic stereotypes (i.e. Asian parents, annoying sisters) whilst wearing a variety of awful wigs, but he really understands how to keep a sketch moving to avoid losing the fickle YouTube audience. And given that most sketch shows on TV in recent years have been dominated by slow-moving material with about one decent gag per minute (The Bondi Hipsters, The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide To Knife Fighting) hiring someone with a solid commitment to high gag rate material is extremely welcome.

The Herald Sun v Comedy pt CLXVIII

Ever since Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper – it’s like a regular newspaper, only shitter – took over sponsorship of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival we’ve been extremely appreciative of the opportunity to run the exact same story every single year: oh look, they’ve got people who know nothing about comedy reviewing comedy and they’ve stuffed it up. Sheesh, it’s no wonder stand-ups are notoriously hair-trigger haters of all forms of criticism.

So really, the only surprise about this particular car crash is that for once it’s taken place before the Festival has actually begun:

On the surface an article that says “if you like that popular comedian then go see this act at the Festival” isn’t the absolute worst idea ever. What is the worst idea ever is to pair off comedians based on things that aren’t their act – their gender, for example, or their race. Which seems to be what this article by Tianna Nadalin did.

Women! They’re all the same in the dark right guys?

Nope nope nope.

“The original Asian funny man”

That’s right comedy fans – Middle-Eastern people are scary! Sweet Middle-Eastern baby Jesus.

As you’d really really hope but maybe not expect (Trump! Trump! Trump!) in 2017, there was a prompt wave of outrage from various comedians and comedy fans online, and by this afternoon the article was gone:

Which is one of those results that seems like a win until you think about it: sure, now the comedians aren’t being named in a very dodgy article based around the kind of casual racism we all hoped had been expunged from, if not society as a whole, then at least all the parts that aren’t easily avoidable elderly relatives. But now the Herald Sun can pretend it never happened and that their MICF coverage for 2017 is just their usual brand of kak-handed blather rather than stuff that’s actually full-on offensive.

Hopefully if this kind of thing is forced to linger instead of just vanishing into the ether then eventually enough pressure can be brought to bear to effect real change in the way that the Melbourne International Comedy Festival conducts its’ media arrangements because clearly the Herald-Sun is oh who are we trying to fool it’s been shit for the last six years and obviously the people running MICF are willing to put up with all manner of sexist, racist, incompetent coverage for the cash. Comedy: you have to laugh.

Three Minute Warning

Remember when Australian comedy used to appear on networks that weren’t the ABC? The Family Law? Here Come the Habibs? Weren’t they meant to be back on air by now? Eh, they’ll show up eventually: so long as we’ve got the ABC and their rock-solid commitment to Australian television comedy there’s nothing to worry about.

The thinking follows that these generations are growing up without broadcast television, distracted by social media, streaming and gaming, and consequently will be lost to television forever. So all news, drama, entertainment, music, everything has to be digital, ideally edited into chunks no longer than three minutes.

Privately, [ABC managing director Michelle] Guthrie has told television makers that broadcast television is dead, a notion that put producers back on their heels. Publicly, she presaged the ABC needing to “partner with third parties so our journalism and TV are available everywhere. The idea that the customer has to come and find you has been turned on its head”.

Certainly within the ABC, employees say, if you’re not on board the digital train, you have little future there. An ABC executive defends Guthrie, though, noting the managing director’s modus operandi is to be “provocative” by asking “really hard questions” of staff to up-end conventional thinking. “Her job is to make people alive to the challenges,” the executive said.

Oops.

But hey, if you’re not already ignoring a sense of impending doom you’re not paying attention in 2017, so let’s focus on the good news: a week or so ago the ABC put out a series of big announcements about their line-up for 2017. Probably the biggest news – so big it was covered as an actual news item on various pop culture sites which trust us, is not a regular occurrence when it comes to Australian television comedy – was that The Katering Show Kates have a new show:

Having conquered the cut throat world of satirical online cooking shows, The Kates (McLennan and McCartney) are ready to take their trademark sassy swipe at breakfast TV with Get Krack!n’.

With no sense of on-camera technique, the Kate’s will shuffle through a roster of unsafe demonstrations, surly guests, underprepared experts and the over-lit decomposition of the duo’s already rocky relationship. Like any televisual format that The Kates put their rough, manly hands to, things on Get Krack!n’ will go downhill fast. Frankly, whatever the hour, an audience deserves better.

But that wasn’t the only show the ABC announced… though it was pretty much the only show we hadn’t already known was coming for at least six months. Finally, almost a year after Shaun Micallef confirmed it in an interview, a second season of The Ex-PM is official!

After the surprising success of his autobiography, Ex-PM Andrew Dugdale (Shaun Micallef) answers his party’s call to stand for election in a marginal Murray Darling electorate. They tell him they want a ‘sure thing’ in the contest.
With his entire household in tow, all of them working on his campaign, Dugdale sets up house at the local sewage farm and begins engaging with the local community, particularly over a contentious plan to expand a national park that will wipe out the local Nandos.

Amongst Dugdale’s campaign team are his best friend and campaign director Henry (John Clarke), his speech writer Ellen (Lucy Honigman), his PR manager and daughter Carol (Kate Jenkinson), his right-hand man Sonny (Nicholas Bell), his steel-capped bus driver Curtis (Francis Greenslade) and of course his First Lady, Catherine (Nicki Wendt).

Although his team are desperate for him to avoid saying anything substantive in the campaign, will Dugdale be able to stay silent when he discovers the park expansion is being funded by an eccentric local billionaire and the race is a hotbed of corruption?

And if you thought Utopia was running out of ideas by its second season then the announcement of a third season won’t exactly fill you with confidence:

Tasked with overseeing and implementing our nation’s infrastructure needs, The Nation Building Authority team return with a third series of uncosted, inadequately planned and fundamentally flawed schemes – and passing them off as “Nation Building”. One white elephant at a time…

There’s also a bunch of shows listed under “short and snappy”, which universally look shit. Which is weird, because as far as the ABC’s concerned they’re all aboard the digital train and we all know what successful short-form digital comedy looks like. Yes, it also pretty much looks like shit, but it’s noisy dickheads shouting about politics or mocking hipsters or re-enforcing racial stereotypes: if you want to be successful with online comedy and that’s the kind of stuff that works, does this sound the way to go?

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, personal reflection, and uninhibited drunkenness combine – the final five minutes of New Year’s Eve.

Or this?

Harry (Brendan Williams) is a friendly Uber driver. Too friendly. In fact, he’s convinced that every passenger will be his next best friend. Harry is also on the autism spectrum.

Or this?

What happened on the edge of the bush? Something so powerful it will bring the Watts Family calisthenics dynasty to its knees… Created, written by and starring award-winning comedian Anne Edmonds (Have You Been Paying Attention?), get ready for a comedy series like nothing you’ve seen before. Suspenseful and Scandi-noir-inflected, with Anne – in the tradition of Catherine Tate – playing four members of the Watts family: Karen, Dusty, young Rebecca and their very old dad / grandad John.

Wow, it’s almost as if the ABC’s vision of itself as a venue for alternative voices in the Australian media is colliding head-on with management’s push to come up with successful online content right in front of our very eyes. But at least they’ve hired someone who has been successful online:

John Luc’s The Chinaboy Show is the first ABC sketch comedy written from the perspective of a Vietnamese–Chinese Australian. Front and centre of this series is online sensation John Luc (AKA Mychonny), whose content has enjoyed more than 300 million views, easily making him one of Australia’s most loved YouTube stars.

There’s a book to be written on the way that last sentence somehow makes the leap from “content” to “most-loved” (and how does content enjoy anything, let alone views?). Colour us disinterested beige, especially as we’re still waiting for the first ABC sketch comedy written from the perspective of someone who’s funny.

But let’s end on a high note: there will be twelve episodes of the Tumblie-award-winning Mad as Hell in 2017!  There will also be twenty weeks of the increasingly erratic The Weekly.

Whoops, guess we ended on a brown note by mistake.

Where’s Briggs?

Hey, did you see this week’s episode of The Weekly? We’re loving that big shake-up where they ditched the opening credits and now Charlie Pickering stands around at the start – the show somehow seems more energetic and vital now, right? And is the lighting just that little bit different too? It makes the whole show seem more edgy, almost dangerous, as if no subject is off the table and no opinion is too controversial.

And then Charlie Pickering opens his mouth and it’s just the same old crap. “If God didn’t want us to be fat, he wouldn’t have invented the cronut”. Seriously, that’s your first gag of the show? We almost turned off then and there – which would have been a mistake, because then we would have missed out on the biggest TV mystery since “who killed Laura Palmer”: Where’s Briggs?

It’s always impressive when The Weekly finds a new way to be garbage, and this year’s innovation – changing up the supporting presenters – might not have automatically been a shit move if it had led to getting rid of Tom Gleeson 75% of the time. But no: in four episodes all four have featured Gleeson (presumably because he’s the only one with even the slightest chemistry with Pickering), three have featured Kitty Flanagan, AKA easily the best thing about the show and the only person who should be there every week, one featured some “armchair expert” who we zoned out on because sports, and one – one – has featured Briggs.

So maybe he’s been sick, or has family issues, or touring commitments, or some other perfectly reasonable excuse? And yet Briggs was announced late last year as being a new regular no-joke permanent cast member; seems “regular” means “vanished after episode one”. And slightly more damning, Pickering ended last week’s promotion of this week’s episode by shouting “and Briggs is back”. Guess he didn’t specify where – maybe Briggs was back in the studio recording a new album because he sure as fuck wasn’t back on The Weekly.

(Snark aside, shouting “Briggs is back!” suggests you both know where he’s been and that what kept him from the show is over: a no-show after that has got to raise at least one eyebrow, even for a show as increasingly erratic as The Weekly)

So, to recap:

*The Weekly announced that Briggs would be a regular on the show in 2017.

*The Weekly made a big deal of having him on board in their first episode, making him the punchline of their opening skit.

*The Weekly had Briggs on in episode one, where he and Pickering got along like a house on fire – by which it we mean it felt like they’d rather be trapped in a burning house than be sitting across from one another.

*The Weekly announced that after a two week absence – in which the other two series regulars appeared in both episodes – that “Briggs is back” in episode four.

*Briggs was nowhere to be seen in episode four.

Anyone know anything more?

 

 

Keeping it local, Behave Yourself!

It’s press release time!

A major investment in locally produced, prime-time programming.

(20 February 2017) Channel Seven will begin work on three locally produced programs, two of which are original formats.

“The quality of the work coming out of our development team is exceptional,” says Seven’s Director of Network Programming Angus Ross. “The three commissions we are announcing today include two original formats. Australian audiences love Australian produced content, making this investment in local shows very straightforward.

Sure, whatever… here’s the bit that interests us:

Rounding out Seven’s new entertainment productions is Behave Yourself!, a comedy panel program featuring Australia’s best-loved comedians and celebrities competing in fun physical games that reveal the hilarious, shocking and fascinating facts behind why we do the things we do.

Co-developed by Seven and Eureka Productions and produced by Eureka Productions, Behave Yourself! is hosted by Darren McMullen and based on the experiments of world renowned behavioural expert and New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely.

Given that this is a panel show based on the legit academic work of an actual professor, it’s astounding that this isn’t being made by Andrew Denton. Also, is this the most intellectual-sounding Seven show since their 90’s reboot of Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals? A show which also involved Australia’s best-loved comedians and celebrities (well, Lisa McCune) but didn’t involve Geoffrey getting them to run obstacle courses. Which is possibly what will happen in Behave Yourself! Maybe they can buy whatever it was that made the set tip in that show where the set tipped. Everyone remembers that show, right?

Either way, behavioural experiments plus, we dunno, swimming pools full of goo, plus celebrities of the calibre of, we dunno…Akmal Saleh, doesn’t feel like a must-watch. Still, nice of Seven to give something that isn’t reality a try. Real nice.

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