Australian Tumbleweeds
The Vagaries of ABC Scheduling (vale Soul Mates series 2)
So who knew Soul Mates series 2 wrapped last week? Not us, clearly – we bought the DVD when it came out last week and finished up the series by watching that rather than stuffing around with all that old-fashioned television bizzo. Yes, basic maths would have pointed out that a six part series was going to run for six weeks, how observant of you, why don’t you bugger off back to the CSIRO and let regular people get back to counting on their fingers.
To be fair to us – oh right, better wrap up Soul Mates first: does anyone else get the feeling that the Bondi Hipsters (aka Connor Van Vuuren, Christiaan Van Vuuren and Nicholas Boshier), like a lot of other comedy teams of recent vintage, are not really all that great when it comes to coming up with actual stories? Not that they really need to, obviously, but of the four stories this season the two that largely worked for us were the ones making fun of specific things – hipsters with the Bondi Hipsters, and various 80s cultural guff / New Zealand-Australia rivalry with the Kiwi Assassins.
The other two stories – the Egyptian stuff and the cave dudes – held together roughly as well but didn’t really have a strong comedy hook to disguise the fact that they weren’t really holding together all that well. Plus we’re not really talking about subtle and nuanced characters across the board here; when you’re making a six part series built on characters that are basically one-joke characters – and three times out of four you told the joke last season – you better have a joke with multiple angles to it.
The reason why sketch shows of the 80s and 90s had large writing staff is because characters like the ones in Soul Mates just aren’t strong enough to take up seven minutes a week for six weeks. They’re sketch characters, not sitcom characters (ok, the Bondi Hipsters could maybe handle their own sitcom). They’re decent sketch characters – give them half as much air time and they’d be twice as funny – but Soul Mates still ends up spinning its wheels a lot because it really needs something else (more characters, one-off comedy bits, just five minutes of something different scattered throughout to break things up) to really make it a decently funny half hour.
Anyway, the real blame for us failing to notice Soul Mates had finished is not us falling asleep each week trying to make it through Gruen, but the recent wave of ABC comedy (and “comedy“) program announcements. Say what? How could we possibly blame a press release for our forgetful ways?
It’s simple: we looked at the dates for all these releases, saw they were in early October, and figured the ABC would continue its commitment to first-run Australian comedy from now until then. Okay yes fine sure, it’s only mid-September, obviously Soul Mates wasn’t going to pull another three or four episodes out of its arse. But what’s so special about October that the ABC is throwing all their quality comedy releases on at roughly the same time?
The best we can come up with is that there’s some cross-promotion angle they’re trying to work. Why throw away their good programming in dribs and drabs when they can release it all in a rush so for a few weeks it looks like they’ve got more to offer than old episodes of QI? Oh right, because they’re a public broadcaster and their job is to provide programming for the public across the whole entire year, not hoard it for a few weeks to try and make a big splash. How silly of us to have forgotten that.
Next thing you know we’ll be forgetting how many weeks a six-part series runs.
Blurred Lines
You know that feeling when someone makes a joke and it’s completely obvious that it’s a joke and yet even though it’s a joke it’s also kind of revealing of their thought processes in a way that they maybe didn’t realise when they were making the joke? Yeah, that:
Television, for me, is an aspirational medium. At its best, it should make the viewer think, “one day, that could be ME up there on the flat screen.”
Yeah, it was so hard to get into The Wire because we were too busy wondering how we could get a job slinging dope on the streets of Baltimore to actually pay attention to anything taking place on the screen.
Originally we had around 900 words here explaining that a): we understood Pobjie was joking, b): we had no problem with him writing comedy articles based on a persona exaggerated for effect, c): we didn’t really have any problem with him writing serious criticism either, d): our problem was that he’s currently trying to do both in such a way that it’s unclear which views he holds for comedy purposes and which ones are serious, e): especially because he’s got a history of publicly begging for work from television producers in such a way that it seems fairly obvious to all that what Pobjie really wants is a career on television, in which case f): wait, is this meant to be a comedy article?
But then we gave up.
Ben Pobjie’s latest book, Error Australis, is on sale now. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, it’s “mean and derisive”.
Happy Days Are Here Again
Press release time!
STAN RAMPS UP INVESTMENT
IN ORIGINAL PRODUCTIONS
Stan is ramping up its investment in original productions, announcing today that four new TV series are now in development, with more to follow in the coming months.
The upcoming development slate for Stan Originals showcases a diverse range of local creative talent. It includes Merchants of Misery, a satirical drama set in the world of celebrity agents and gossip magazines, from the team behind No Activity; The Other Guy, a semi-autobiographical comedy from stand-up comedian and radio personality Matt Okine; All Thumbs, created by and starring Damon Herriman (Justified), about three social outcasts looking for love; and Chaperones, created by and starring the popular comedy trio Aunty Donna, who will play deadbeats entrusted with the care of a child star.
The announcement follows the success of the first two Stan Original Series: No Activity, which received three Logie nominations and returns for a second season next month, and Wolf Creek, which recently launched on Fox UK and premieres in October on Pop TV in the US.
Stan’s Chief Content Officer, Nick Forward, said: “This slate demonstrates Stan’s rapidly growing investment in original programming, confirming our standing as a vital, exciting new player in the Australian production landscape.”
“We are working with the best creatives in the country to develop world-class content, with an eye on the international market.”
Merchants of Misery
A young talent agent is left to navigate the world of gossip magazines after she inherits her father’s celebrity management company and a roster of high-profile, hard-luck stories.
From Trent O’Donnell, the creator of Stan Original series No Activity, and journalist Bryce Corbett, Merchants of Misery will also be directed by O’Donnell and produced by Chloe Rickard for Jungle. Development is being financed with the assistance of Screen NSW.
The Other Guy
This hilarious and heartbreaking series follows the story of a successful radio host who finds himself single for the first time in 10 years after discovering his long-term girlfriend has been having an affair with his best friend – and to make things even more complicated, it looks like she’s pregnant.
Created by and starring Matt Okine, the series is being written by Okine, Becky Lucas and Greg Waters. The Other Guy will be produced by Angie Fielder, Polly Staniford and Cecilia Ritchie for Aquarius Films and Executive Produced by Jude Troy for eOne and development is being financed with the assistance of Screen NSW.
All Thumbs
The lives of three social outcasts intersect as they attempt to overcome their various shortcomings and find love.
All Thumbs is created by and stars Damon Herriman (Justified, Flesh & Bone) and will be produced by Jungle, the team behind Stan Original series No Activity.
Chaperones
Three deadbeat nobodies are entrusted with the day-to-day care of a child star.
Created by and starring comedy group Aunty Donna, Chaperones will be produced by Nel Minchin for In Films, with development financing from Screen Australia.
No snark here: this is good news any way you slice it. Okay, it’s mostly good news from the “dear sweet Jesus Australia needs all the commercial comedy programming it can get because the ABC largely seems interested in men’s mental health and Luke McGregor” angle, but that’s still a pretty big angle. And anyone smart enough to give Aunty Donna their own sitcom is definitely doing something right by us.
It’s also interesting that of the four programs announced here, all four are pretty much straight-up comedies. Yes, okay, we know they’re Australian comedies so we’re not going to come right out and say they’ll be funny. But let’s compare this list to the one out of the ABC last week, where out of the seven titles listed three were merely hosted by or featuring comedians and another two were either a quiz show (Hard Quiz) or a lightweight drama (Please Like Me). From this we can deduce two things:
Stan, a streaming service that has to try and bring in viewers otherwise it’ll go out of business, is going ahead with four scripted comedies out of a total of four shows announced.
The ABC, a multimedia enterprise that supposedly is also interested in bringing in viewers, is presenting audiences with a mish-mash of concepts only considered “comedy” because some allegedly funny person is hosting.
Much as we’re big fans of the ABC, the fact that Stan, AKA the organisation that actually has to bring in viewers, is going all-out on comedy suggests to us that they think comedy is something people want to see. And that the ABC thinks “comedy’ is something they can add to whatever old crap they want to put to air to try and make it palatable.
Virtual Reality Comedy
We often ponder the future of Australian comedy on this blog, especially screen-based comedy, so it was interesting to read on TV Tonight last week that Screen NSW and the ABC will fund a small number of VR projects, including two new comedies:
Aussie Cops
Genre: Narrative Comedy
Company: Hardy White Pictures
VR Company: Paper Moose
Creatives:
· Writer/cast: Seaton Kay-Smith
· Director/cast: Nick Hunter
· Producer: Michelle Hardy
Synopsis: Aussie Cops is an Ozploitation comedy series about two very fair-dinkum cops investigating a grisly murder. A locked door murder of sorts experienced in 360 degrees from the point of view of an inquisitive new recruit.The Hold Up
Genre: Narrative Comedy
Company: Jungle FTV Pty Ltd
VR Companies: Cutting Edge, Nylon Studios, Panavision Australia
Creatives:
· Executive Producer: Chloe Rickard
· Producer: Sarah Nichols
· Director: Scott Pickett
· Writer: Charlie Garber
Synopsis: A young man’s preference for the ‘real’ over the ‘virtual’ is put to the test when his life is threatened by two ethically conflicted bank robbers.
If some of the names involved in these projects sound familiar, it’s because they are. Aussie Cops’ producer Michelle Hardy has previously worked on Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am and #7Days Later, while writer/cast member Seaton Kay-Smith was also a writer and performer on Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am and The Roast. The Hold Up’s production team are equally experienced; Chloe Rickard’s credits include Soul Mates, Here Come The Habibs! and The Moodys, Scott Pickett was in Review with Myles Barlow, and Charlie Garber was a writer for Miles Holbeck: The Member, Here Come the Habibs! and No Activity.
But even with all that experience of making TV comedy amongst its makers, will Aussie Cops and The Hold Up be any good? VR as a medium for narrative comedy is pretty much uncharted territory and one where the makers will have to think very differently about how they’ll construct the story and set up the gags. In a recent episode of Radio National’s Download This Show, which discussed VR filmmaking, tech journalist Peter Marks raised one fundamental problem with the medium for narrative storytellers:
…it’s a hard way to make a film, because normally when a director makes a movie they get your eye to go somewhere, they can do it by using focus, by using light, by the composition of the frame. In a virtual reality movie, I don’t know how you do it. They [the audience] may not be looking anywhere.
The best-known example of a VR comedy is Interrogation, a 360-degree sketch made by Funny or Die. It puts the viewer in the role of a suspect “getting grilled by the worst detectives in the business”. The website Upload VR reviews it in some detail, but it seems the potential for the audience to look around the room is exploited by the makers…
Without actually giving away the reason for the interrogation, the Funny or Die sketch makes great use of the 360-degree space. Everywhere you look, there are hidden jokes all around… Nearby is a blood splatter with a label that says “Oops!” There is even a moment when another officer comes into the room and in the background a clown can be seen getting arrested. It all flows well together, which is still rare to see in these quickly developing times.
As fans of background gags, this all sounds pretty promising (or at least it will be once we get ourselves some VR headsets). But it’s also clear that there’s potential for the viewer to miss gags delivered by the characters if they spend too long looking at that kind of thing. Either way, we look forward to seeing the results of these experiments…somehow.
Put On A Happy Face
And the press releases keep on coming:
Man Up premieres Tuesday 11 October at 8:30pm (3×60’)
Gus Worland is on a mission to break the silence.
In Australia, men are traditionally seen as strong, stoic and tough as nails. They laugh in the face of fear. They excel at everything. And when life gets them down, they drink a cup of concrete and harden the f**k up. Or so the saying goes. But hardening up doesn’t seem to be working out too well for our blokes. Research shows Aussie men are lonelier and more disconnected than ever. Common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety go untreated. And suicide is the leading cause of death for men aged 15 to 44 years. So why are men killing themselves? And why isn’t anyone talking about it?
Enter Gus Worland: professional talker. As the star of a Triple M’s radio team in Sydney, Gus has his finger on the pulse of real Aussie blokes. Deeply impacted by the suicide of a dear friend ten years ago, and with a teenage son of his own about to become a man, Gus sets out on a mission to save Aussie men from their biggest killer. Themselves.
THE SOCIAL CAMPAIGN:
Following the airing of the series, the social awareness campaign will continue. We want to start the conversation but we want you to help keep it going. Jump onto the website to check all the facts, extra clips and to join the conversation. It could save a life. #ABCManUp
Man Up was principally financed by the Movember Foundation in association with the University of Melbourne. Produced in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. An Heiress Films Production.
So wait, this is basically an infomercial promoting mens’ mental health checks? Why are we even mentioning it? Oh right, our seemingly endless mission to point out just how reliant the ABC is on outside funding these days. What’s next – Dave Hughes fronting a show on the importance of avoiding stress sponsored by a mattress company?
We know this kind of thing does well for the ABC – remember that mental health week they did a while back? This looks roughly as funny, which is to say not very funny at all. In fact, we’re going to go out on a limb and say the biggest laugh across the three big nights is this line from the press release:
As the star of a Triple M’s radio team in Sydney, Gus has his finger on the pulse of real Aussie blokes
a): Triple M announcers and “real Aussie blokes” have about as much in common as every other form of highly-paid media professional and “real Aussie blokes”. Which is to say, with rare exceptions the only pulse your average Triple M announcer has got their finger on is the one in their dick.
b): “As the star of a Triple M’s radio team in Sydney”? Ooh, you can just see the PR team realising at the last minute that “As the star of Triple M’s radio team in Sydney” was just that little bit too specific to get away with.
Sorry Gus. We know you mean well.
The Future is Uncertain But the End is Always Near
Press release time!
Spring brings a great lineup of comedy, entertainment and true life stories to the ABC
Wednesday, August 31, 2016 — Viewers are set for a treat with the following great new shows on the ABC.
Silvia’s Italian Table premieres on Thursday 6 October at 8:00pm (8×30’)
Silvia’s Italian Table is a unique eight-part cooking and celebrity chat series presented by cook Silvia Colloca. Self-taught cook Silvia leads three personalities around the kitchen bench and dining table as she teaches them to cook an Italian inspired entrée, main and dessert together, all while serving up delicious conversation on a chosen theme. With Silvia’s Italian upbringing revolving around cooking and chatting, this enlightening series sees Silvia visit Italy and includes guests Tom Gleeson, Marta Dusseldorp, Cathy Freeman, Claudia Karvan, Ian Thorpe, Tara Moss and many more.
Man Up premieres Tuesday 11 October at 8:30pm (3×60’)
Gus Worland’s mission to break the silence.
In Australia, men are traditionally seen as strong, stoic and tough as nails. They’re the alpha males of the world. They laugh in the face of fear. They excel at everything. And when life gets them down, they drink a cup of concrete and harden the f**k up. Or so the saying goes. But hardening up doesn’t seem to be working out too well for our blokes. Research shows Aussie men are lonelier and more disconnected than ever. Common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety go untreated. And suicide is the leading cause of death for men aged 15 to 44 years. So why are men killing themselves? And why isn’t anyone talking about it?
Enter Gus Worland: professional talker. As the star of Triple M’s breakfast radio team in Sydney, Gus thinks he has got his finger on the pulse of real Aussie blokes. Deeply impacted by the suicide of a dear friend 10 years ago, and with a teenage son of his own about to become a man, Gus sets out on a mission to save Aussie men from their biggest killer. Themselves.
Upper Middle Bogan Series 3 premieres Wednesday 12 October at 8:30pm (8×30’)
Australia’s best loved and acclaimed family comedy returns, as Bess Denyar continues to try to make a happy union between her adoptive upper middle family and her biological bogan family. Starring Annie Maynard, Robyn Nevin, Michala Banas, Patrick Brammall, Glenn Robbins, Robyn Malcolm, Madeleine Jevic, Rhys Mitchell, Dougie Baldwin, Lara Robinson and Harrison Feldman.
Rosehaven premieres Wednesday 12 October at 9:00pm (8×30’)
Rural Tasmania provides the spectacular backdrop for Rosehaven, a new comedy series created by, and starring, two of Australia’s most loved comic talents: Luke McGregor (Luke Warm Sex, Utopia) and Celia Pacquola (Utopia, The Beautiful Lie). Daniel McCallum (Luke) returns to his rural Tasmanian hometown, Rosehaven, to help his formidable mother in her real estate business. He gets a surprise when his best (city) friend Emma (Celia) turns up on the doorstep, on the run from a marriage that didn’t last the honeymoon.
Hard Quiz premieres Wednesday 19 October at 8:00pm (10×30’)
For two years, The Weekly’s Tom Gleeson has been putting hard questions to the big names in his regular segment, Hard Chat. Now he puts Australia’s armchair experts to the test in his new show Hard Quiz.
A serious quiz show. And seriously hilarious.
Streets of Your Town premieres Tuesday 8 November at 8.30pm (2×60’)
A look at the aesthetics of our suburbs. Tim Ross – comedian, broadcaster and aficionado of the Modernist era – is tour guide for this very personal journey exploring how and why our suburbs look the way they do. Travelling the country gaining unprecedented access to some of our most epic homes, meeting their owners, peeling back their history and revelling in their beauty Tim poses the question: from Modernism to McMansionism – how did we get here?
Please Like Me Series 4 premieres on Wednesday 9 November at 9.30pm (6×30’)
After its recent launch in the UK, where it’s been hailed as “the best original Australian TV comedy ever”, “like Girls directed by Wes Anderson” and “low-key, kooky-cool and warm-hearted”, Please Like Me returns for a fourth season, as Josh and his friends hurtle towards the end of their twenties and try to convince themselves that everything is gonna be OK.
Is it good news that every one of these shows features either a comedian or “comedy”? Let’s go with yes!
Oddly, despite this press release being sent out today, the first (and as of this evening, only) one of these shows Australia’s first and foremost TV blog TV Tonight has chosen to mention is the last one on the list – Please Like Me.
The fourth season will screen for the first time on ABC’s traditional Wednesday comedy night (as suggested by a certain blog!), following Rosehaven with Luke McGregor and Celia Pacquola.
Did anyone else read this and think “oh, Please Like Me will be screening after Rosehaven, that’s a solid lead-in”? And to be fair, it is – only Rosehaven will be up to episode five when Please Like Me starts. Also, just so you know, we’re not the blog who suggested that programming move. Wonder who did?
Anyway, why the delay? Why sit on Please Like Me – you know, that show that was so highly anticipated it debuted in the UK on Amazon Prime – until the start of November when the collapse of US network Pivot means they don’t have to work around the US release and (as far as we know) there’ll be no new local product filling that timeslot before then?
No idea whatsoever.
The Wisdom of Crowds
There’s a whole lot of ways you can try to make a television show funnier. Two of the more popular ones are a live audience and editing out the boring bits. So how is it that Have You Been Paying Attention? seems to know how to use both in a way that actually does result in a funnier show while Gruen uses them to drain the life and energy out of every episode?
When HYBPA? first started up, there was rumblings from various quarters that its editing style somehow made it feel fake. We didn’t feel it ourselves, but those who did made a reasonable case: rather than unfolding naturally like a quiz show watched as it happened, the editing was used to tighten up the question and answer segments, giving the show a pace it couldn’t sustain if it took place live. The problem in some viewers eyes was that the appeal of a quiz show in part comes from the natural back-and-forth between all involved – turn it into a rapid-fire gag-fest and you might as well script the whole thing because you’re cutting out the fun of seeing people think on their feet.
To which we say: watching someone think is a lot less funny than watching someone deliver a funny line. And what’s become rapidly clear over the, what, 100 episodes of HYBPA? that have gone to air is that it’s a show perfectly happy to let people piss-fart about when they’re being funny. If a question doesn’t lead to a funny answer it’s cut down to the bare essentials and then they move on. The editing is in service of the laughs – as a show where the main goal is not to educate but to be funny, everything that isn’t funny hits the floor.
Gruen, on the other hand, is not a show that’s trying to be funny in quite the same way. Will Anderson’s comments are the “jokes”; the rest of the show (especially the panel stuff) largely stands or falls on the work of the panelists. So the goal is to loosen things up a bit more and actually have a more free-flowing back-and-forth taking place, because it’s the overall vibe of the show – not the snappy one-liners – that is meant to make it worthwhile.
But instead of low-key, unobtrusive editing that would foster the illusion of a bunch of mates just having a chat in front of the cameras, Gruen instead manages to cram in a bunch of moments each episode where they clumsily cut away to show the live audience laughing hysterically for a result that couldn’t shout “EDIT!” more loudly than if they hired Dave Hughes in full on “angriiii” mode to proclaim it. There’s a lot less obvious editing going on in Gruen than in HYBPA?, but every big edit really shatters the mood of the show.
The irony is that while the editing in HYBPA? works to make the show funnier – cutting away the fat, remember – the editing on Gruen is clearly there to try and convince the audience at home that they’re watching a funny show. Why else, when you have a four person panel plus a host that you could cut to when you wanted to hide an edit, do they almost always instead cut to a shot of the studio audience laughing merrily away?
Meanwhile HYBPA?, which also has a live audience, only ever shows them when coming back from an ad break. It’s almost as if they know that actually being funny is a much better way to get laughs than trying to tell the viewers that something funny just happened. We hear them laughing often enough; why slow down the pace of the show by showing us them as well?
We’re not saying the Gruen team don’t know what they’re doing – obviously these are distinct stylistic choices that they’ve chosen to make. We’re just not entirely sure why they’ve gone for these choices when all they do is slow the show down and make it feel like they think their viewers are idiots. The whole “cut to audience” thing is usually done on talk shows to signal a live segment is over; it makes sense to make an obvious edit there as when they cut back to the host time will obviously have passed. But on Gruen often they just do it after a joke, cut back to Anderson making a follow-up comment, then the show proceeds as usual. So why do it unless you feel you need to say to your audience “you just saw something funny”?
Obviously we’ve been thinking too much about this stuff. But can you blame us? We’ve got an obscure and largely ignored blog to run and there’s been nothing big happening in Australian comedy for weeks. So considering this seemingly endless post about editing (editing?!) a warning: someone better hurry up and announce some terrible sounding Chris Lilley series or Marieke Hardy solo project, Sam Simmons sitcom or Please Like Me movie, or we’re going to have to go out and buy a copy of Ben Pobjie’s comedy history of Australia and review that. And trust us, nobody wants that.
Brush with Comedy
What is it with comedians getting all cathartic and emotional in their old age on shows like Anh Do’s Brush with Fame?
Arguably, the rot started a decade ago with Enough Rope, where Andrew Denton asked famous people uber researched questions designed to make them cry. Most of them did (although props to Judith Lucy who famously didn’t rise to it).
Since then, TV producers have taken the celebrities crying idea and made it more high-concept. We’ve seen them looking into their genealogy and crying over their long-dead ancestors in Who Do You Think You Are? We’ve seen them getting all emotional when Julia Zemiro drives them back to their childhood home in Home Delivery. Now, celebrities are getting their portrait painted by Anh Do while he interviews them about their lives. And they’re crying again. And that’s before they see the painting he’s done!
To be fair, the painting Do did of last night’s guest Magda Szubanski wasn’t bad. She was complementary, anyway. And the big reveal of the portrait was preceded by some interesting chat about Szubanski’s life. Well, interesting if you want to hear about Szubanski’s Polish Resistance family, and her struggle with mental illness and her sexuality, stories which are already well-known if you saw her on Who Do You Think You Are? or read her autobiography Reckoning.
[SIDEBAR: Speaking of Reckoning, was anyone else annoyed that there was very little about Szubanski’s comedy career in there? We learn how she got into comedy and about some of her career highlights, but if you’re after an in-depth behind-the-scenes look at the making of The D-Generation or Fast Forward, or even Kath & Kim, you’ll be disappointed.]
Anyway, what’s most interesting about shows like Brush with Fame – to us – is that their existence suggests that comedians doing comedy really, really isn’t something the general public want to see anymore and/or something broadcasters are happy to broadcast anymore. Famous comedians doing almost anything other than comedy = Ratings hit. Comedians doing what they’re famous for, comedy? = Sorry, we have no money for that.
And while Brush with Fame does what it sets out to do perfectly well, it seems kind of like a missed opportunity. Both Magda Szubanski and Anh Do are pretty funny when they’re on form, imagine what they could do if they were given half an hour of TV and the brief “Just be funny”.
Everything is Awesome
… except for When TV Was Awesome, which is pretty much shit.
But you already knew that, right? We don’t get a whole lot of mail here at Tumbleweeds HQ, and we get even fewer requests because everyone pretty much knows we hate everything (except for when we don’t), but we’ve already had two separate requests to cover (meaning beat up on) this series and trust us, for us that’s a flood.
So we’re kind of torn. We don’t really want to be bullies beating up on the playground loser, but on the other hand – which just happens to be clenched into a fist and is currently pounding away on some loser – When TV Was Awesome is just no damn good at all. Eh, why fight it? At least we can try to explain exactly why we’ve pushed this show to the ground and are now stomping on its genitals.
Since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of television, comedians have dreamt of a television show where they haven’t had to go out and film stuff. After all, there’s a heck of a lot of hilarious radio comedy out there and that doesn’t even have pictures. Sometimes these dreamers go down the “limited animation” path, as seen in the original Beavis & Butthead episodes or those staring competition clips on Big Train. And other times they try to re-voice films or old television shows. It’s a practice that has resulted in a lot of classic comedy, from Woody Allen’s What’s Up Tiger Lilly? to Hercules Returns to those Kevin Rudd clips on Rove to Bargearse and The Olden Days, which presumably you’re already familiar with.
Sometimes these dubbed versions work because the people dubbing them have crazy footage to work with. Sometimes they work because the people doing the dubbing put in the effort to re-edit the original footage to find and create new jokes. And sometimes the people doing the re-dubbing just ramble on with any old shit that comes into their head and you’re stuck watching an old quiz show from 1982 only now it’s about how a contestant says his skill is saying “Jack the Ripper” ten times in a row. Then he screws it up. Then the host lectures him on how he got it wrong and it’s not even a skill and fuck When TV Was Awesome is shit.
Ok, yes, the “Australia’s Got Talent 82” episode is pretty much a low point. At least “Man Boat” is a passable knockoff of one of the weaker installments of The Olden Days if you find lines like “up… your… bums!” hilarious and think much of the comedy in re-dubs comes from adding in annoyed sighs and grunts. Still, the rave joke was decent enough, and these days one decent joke in a six minute clip is a pretty strong result for an Australian comedy. Especially when the rest of the jokes are dubbing new dance music over old dance scenes and someone vomiting.
What this series does really hammer home is just how much thought went into The Late Show‘s redub clips. That classic gag from Bargearse where the train just keeps on going and going at a crossing is a really funny bit that’s also the kind of thing that you could do with any show featuring similar footage. It’s a joke that requires thought and editing to come up with – it’s not just “ha, that clip could look like something else with a new voiceover”, which is about as sophisticated as When TV Was Awesome ever gets.
So what happens here is that the show falls between two stools. There’s clearly been some thought put into it, but nowhere near enough thought – or time and effort – to turn this old footage into comedy that stands on its own. Clips are mostly just re-voiced rather than re-edited, and what edits there are seem largely to either be cutting out moments to jump ahead or repeating the same footage to lengthen a scene – it definitely doesn’t often feel like they’ve watched and rewatched the clips to find parts where two separate scenes can be edited together to get a laugh.
All that’s fine, mind you: it seems unlikely that this kind of project would have had the budget for a massive re-editing job. But if you’re going to base your comedy largely around people just saying dumb shit over old footage, then you really need to double down on the dumb shit. It’s just not enough to have the people on-screen say things they normally wouldn’t (well, after the first minute or so of cheap laughs it isn’t) – the lines have to be funny in their own right.
(and by that we also mean “lines that are funny because they work with the old footage in surprising or skillful new ways”)
What’s left is a show where much of the humour is meant to be coming from the idea of “hey look, old footage with new dumb stuff dubbed in!” Only the old footage is dull and the new dumb stuff isn’t all that funny. It’s just more utterly disposable comedy that was never going to work without a lot more resources put in – and at today’s ABC, resources and comedy are two things that definitely don’t go together.
Soul Mates II: Half Time Analysis
One of the advantages sketch comedy has over comedy serials is that producers can re-order them easily. Got lots of funny sketches in episode 2 but less in episode 5? Move some of the strong material from episode 2 to episode 5! Sure, it doesn’t make the series funnier overall, but it at least it ensures there’s a consistent level of funny.
The makers of Soul Mates have no such luxury. If there’s a laugh lull in one of their sketch serials, they’re buggered. What’s that you say? They could make their serials consistently funnier in the first place? True. But given that we’re halfway through the second series of Soul Mates we think it’s fair to make the following call: the makers of Soul Mates are happy with the level they’re on. They haven’t learnt from the mistakes they made in series 1, they’ve just given us more of the same:
Hipsters are funny because they have beards and stupid clothes, and come up with stupid ideas for shops, and have rich parents who keep funding their bound-to-fail schemes. 1980s secret agents from New Zealand are funny because they have stupid accents and moustaches, and they’re going to a ridiculous amount of effort to get back their national pride. And cave people are funny because… oh, you get the idea.
The comic premise behind Soul Mates is that it’s funny if you take some pop-culture stereotypes and put them into a hyperreal context. And that’s it. You don’t need to write funny lines for the characters, you just need to get them to behave as they’d behave and it’s automatically funny.
Or, in other words, it’s taking the theory of how to write drama – that you create some characters and put them into a situation and the drama comes from the characters interacting with each other in the context of the circumstances they’re in – and applying that to comedy. Problem is, you don’t get big laughs that way. In comedy, characters don’t need to be well-defined – in fact, it helps if they’re not. And in comedy, it’s acceptable to be a little flexible with your characters if it allows them to deliver a killer line to gets laughs.
The makers of Soul Mates don’t even have the dramedy excuse to fall back on (you know the one, it’s where half an hour of television comedy with no laughs in it gets away with it because it’s not all about the laughs, there’s actually a dramatic subtext to this, yeah?), they’ve just produced something that isn’t particularly hilarious.
There are three more episodes of Soul Mates to go. And given there’s US money behind it, probably a whole bunch more to come. Great. We really, really hope you enjoy them, coz we sure ain’t!