Australian Tumbleweeds
This Town is Coming Like a Ghost Town
It’s been a bit of a theme here these last few weeks: where has all the Australian comedy television gone? With the ABC having diverted funding ever-so-slightly from long-running comedy panel shows – which were shit, but were still technically comedy – to long-running shows that just happen to feature comedians, we’ve entered an age where we can now expect long periods of the year to be pretty much comedy free. Those days when The Comedy Company was the highest-rating show on Australian television? Long gone.
And it’s not like there’s an awful lot coming up to get excited about either. Sure, Mad as Hell isn’t far off and thank Azathoth for that because if it wasn’t for Shaun Micallef (and yes, John Clarke & Brian Dawe too but once we bring them in we’ve a): basically summed up the quality end of the Australian Television Comedy Scene and b): they’re all old-ish guys who’ve been in the biz for twenty years or more, which is just a tad depressing) we’d have given this blog over to the real tumbleweeds years ago.
But what else is left to get us excited now that we’ve seen Here Come the Habibs? Of course there’s this:
Get ready to browse ABC TV’s Comedy Showroom
Six brand new comedy pilots…Tell us what you think!
Tuesday, March 29, 2016 — Starting Wednesday 27th April at 9pm, ABC TV’s Comedy Showroom launches six new comedy pilots made by some of Australia’s most exciting comedians, comedy writers, producers and directors. But viewers won’t have to wait each week for the latest pilot to be unleashed, with all of the pilots being made available to watch on ABC iview straight after the Comedy Showroom premiere.
Further to this, and in a network and Australian television first, we want our audience to tell us which pilots they think should come back as full TV series. Simply by clicking through from iview, our audience will have the opportunity to provide their feedback by answering a few quick questions or just by telling us what they like and don’t like.
No other network nurtures and supports Australian comedy like ABC TV.
So which pilots will our audience gravitate to? Which will they laugh at most? And which will they blast with criticism or want to see more of?
Will it be Ronny Chieng sharing his experiences as an International Student; Eddie Perfect’s absurd suburban life in The Future Is Expensive; The Katering Show’s Kate McLennan hitting rock bottom in life and love in her and Kate McCartney’s Bleak; Lawrence Mooney discovering what it takes for a 40-something-year-old man to finally grow up in Moonman; the desperate attempts of a deadbeat weed dealer to win his new neighbour’s affections in hot WA comedy team Mad Kids’ The Legend of Gavin Tanner; or Alison Bell’s struggles as a new mum in an oddball mothers’ group in The Letdown (produced by The Chaser’s Julian Morrow).
Ronny Chieng: International Student – tx: Wednesday April 27th at 9pm
The Letdown – tx: Wednesday May 4th at 9pm
The Legend of Gavin Tanner – tx: Wednesday May 11th at 9pm
The Future is Expensive – tx: Wednesday May 18th at 9pm
Bleak – tx: Wednesday May 25th at 9pm
Moonman – tx: Wednesday June 1st at 9pm
And all pilots are available on iview from Wednesday April 27th from 9.30pm.
All will be revealed when our best and brightest comedians invite you to join them in ABC TV’s Comedy Showroom.
A joint initiative with Screen Australia, made in association with Film Victoria, Screen NSW and ScreenWest. Executive Producer Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski.
But let’s be honest: this is the equivalent of one sitcom series, only every episode is a pilot so you don’t get any of the advantages of doing an actual series-length sitcom. Or the advantages of doing a regular sketch show. But hey, iView! The kids love that.
Let’s break it down: since time began, TV comedy has been largely divided into sketch comedy and sitcoms. If you have a whole lot of one-off jokes, you make a sketch comedy because that’s the best way to showcase those jokes, even if you plan to repeat those jokes in slightly different contexts each week to create reoccurring characters; if you’d rather mine humour from going in deep on a handful of characters, you create a sitcom where once the audience gets to know the characters you can get big laughs simply by placing them in various situations (hence the name “situation comedy”).
Comedy Showroom, while having the appeal of being a kind of talent search and we all know how much Aussies love that garbage, is the worst of both worlds: too long to work as a one-off sketch, too short to let us get to know the characters. And considering how most sketch comedy plays out today – the first episode is great, then the second episode rolls around and awww fuck, they’re doing the same jokes all over again because all those great one-off sketches are actually boring-arse reoccurring sketches – being served up the first episode of a sitcom like this is the worst possible guide to what the actual show is going to be like. Either it’s going to be exactly the same thing over and over (see: Utopia) and so one episode is all we’re really ever going to want to see, or it’s going to be completely different when it goes to series (see: every US sitcom ever) and so the pilot was really bugger-all use as a guide.
And what happens if the audience picks a show where all the good jokes went into the first episode? It’s not like the creators have any incentive to hold any quality material back for later in the series when they don’t even know if there’s going to be a series. Traditionally a pilot is part of a long-running process that includes convincing the people holding the purse strings that you actually have a series or two’s worth of ideas; is each episode of Comedy Showroom going to end with “and now here’s our proposed plots for the rest of the season” followed by five minutes of written notes?
(yes, we’re pretending that this series isn’t rigged, even though it seems likely that at least some of these pilots are, for whatever reason, less likely to go to series than others. Hey, whatever happened to the Fresh Blood pilots anyway? Oh right, Fancy Boy and Skit Box got the gig even though Aunty Donna was easily the popular and critical fave.)
And that’s only the first of our increasingly annoying questions. What happens if the audience picks the show the ABC head honchos like the least? What happens if it turns out one pilot is clearly head and shoulders above the rest? What if they’re all great? What if they’re all awful? What if there’s a tie? What if somehow the shit one is the one that gets the green light? Yeah, because that’s never happened at the ABC before.
For us, Comedy Showroom is a great idea – six new pilots to review! But from an audience point of view, it pretty much sucks. If the pilots are good, why are we only getting one episode? And if the pilots are shit, why are we even getting one episode? And if we’re the best judge of which shows are worth going to series, why aren’t we pulling down six figure salaries from the ABC?
Just don’t forget: “No other network nurtures and supports Australian comedy like ABC TV… by turning the commissioning process into a public competition.”
Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
Ok, so tonight The Weekly continued on its merry way being a shithouse news program, but somewhere in there they decided to throw in some coverage of the media’s coverage of Waleed Aly’s Logie nomination. You know, this kind of rubbish:
5. Aly needs to be truly popular to win.
It would be great if Aly was popular, but his show isn’t yet the league of breakfast television juggernauts Today and Sunrise. As prosaic as those shows can be, there’s no arguing with their huge draw with audiences.
“The Logies are an embarrassment. It is a complete joke. What has Waleed ever done? Because he does an editorial slapping someone down every now and then, does that qualify him for a Gold Logie? And is The Project successful? No.”
(we’re guessing the journalist found that particular “well-placed TV insider” inside the Herald-Sun offices, as it’s remarkably similar to opinions publicly held by at least one of their regular TV writers)
And most importantly for the clumsy and ham-fisted point we’re about to make, this:
‘Where is Lisa Wilkinson’s Gold Logie?’ fellow Channel Nine star Ben Fordham inquired during the show, to which Karl eventually responded: ‘Lisa’s too white’.
Clearly there’s enough going on there* for a hard-hitting show like The Weekly to really sink their teeth into. So what jokes did they get around to making?
Well, it seems Charlie Pickering was the one who should be outraged, because he was on The Project for years and never got a nomination. “Was it because I’m white?” Pickering said, “who knows?”
Huh?
Obviously that joke wasn’t the same as the joke made on The Today Show. Totally different. Not at all similar. Not alike. Nup. Sure, The Weekly didn’t actually mention The Today Show‘s clumsy racism, but just because they made the exact same joke doesn’t mean… wait, what?
(rumors that we’ll be offering a prize to anyone who can actually tell Charlie Pickering and Karl Stefanovic apart are clearly untrue. We can’t afford to give away prizes)
Basically, if you felt like it’d be nice to have some more evidence around to point out how pissweak The Weekly actually is when it comes to anything remotely resembling a tough issue, then good news! Watching them confront a pretty gosh darn obvious case of entrenched racism in the Australian media and not only being unable to say the word “racism” but instead going with a recycled joke from The Today Show – before deciding that the best angle to take was “ha ha Charlie, Aly was nominated for doing your old job better than you did” – should get the job done pretty nicely.
Not that “ha ha Charlie, Aly was nominated for doing your old job better than you did” isn’t kind of funny.
*what actually seems to be going on is that this year’s Gold Logie’s field is so weak the winner (whoever it is) will be coming from a dud show, which looks bad for the awards and the industry as a whole. It was fine for Carrie Bickmore to win last year because she’s blonde and pretty and there’s the whole tragic dead partner backstory to justify her winning on a show no-one watches, but Aly is a lefty Muslim (and therefore supposedly not on-side to TV Week / News Corp readers) on that same low-rating show so now it’s time for “insiders” to sink the boots in.
You’re Back in A World of Shit
A long time ago one of us read an article that revealed the secret behind stage hypnotism: it’s all fake. Basically, when a stage hypnotist brought someone up out of the audience they’d whisper to them “play along”, then do a whole bunch of hand-waving “hypnotism” that had the grand effect of bugger-all. But because they’d now been given a free pass to act like a dickhead – and didn’t want to be the chump who ruined the night – almost all the participants were happy to act out whatever silly commands they were given.
And that’s just about all the serious thought we’re willing to give the soggy shit-filled bog that was 80-odd minutes of You’re Back in the Room. Who cares if it’s real or not when the result is just a hellish death march slog towards a vision of entertainment that never actually gets any closer like some kind of mirage with the Channel Nine logo in the corner? Just segment after segment featuring the same four people lurching around on the stage pretending to be riding wild horses or staggering though a maze or shitting themselves uncontrollably… oh wait, that was just us daydreaming about a more entertaining way to spend our evening.
Has anyone ever created a game show where all the contestants were stinking drunk? If not, why not? Surely getting hammered out of your skull can’t be any more dangerous than having some sleazebag stranger use his mental powers to turn you into his unwilling zombie slave? At least then with Ahhh What Ya Fukkin’ Lookin’ At: The Great Piss-Up Challenge we’d know the on-stage idiots really were doing shit beyond their conscious command. Plus projectile vomiting, one-punch fights and loss of bladder control are all acceptable reactions to finding yourself sharing a stage with Daryl Somers.
Ah Daryl, AKA the only reason this show even counts as “comedy” because fuck knows his career for the last twenty years sure has been a Daryl “Snowtown” Barrel of laughs. Here’s a tip for next weeks episode, and don’t try to pretend you won’t be tuning in because it’s already the only hit show Nine’s had all year: get up real close and take a good look in Daryl’s eyes every time there’s a close up. See the despair? See the desperation? See the way his eyes dart around as if looking for a way to escape?
If nothing else – and it’s not like a show based entirely on “pretend your testicles are hand grenades and someone’s just pulled the pin” has anything else to offer a sentient lifeform – this has confirmed that Daryl Somers is a one trick pony. Unfortunately for him, the vet shot that pony a few years back when his Hey Hey it’s Saturday revival died in the arse. He just can’t do anything else but host that one particular show, and no-one wants to see him do that any more.
But hey, ratings win! Daryl’s back! Hey Hey is “still on the table“! God is dead! Satan is real!
Our Annual Post About the Comedy Logies Nominations
In a week when the only comedy on TV has been the try-hard satire of The Weekly, the only-funny-if-you’re-the-sort-of-arsehole-who-laughs-at-the-inadequacy-of-others Luke Warm Sex, the brilliant-but-short Clarke & Dawe and You’re Back In The Room hosted by Daryl Somers, there’s only one way to cap things off: this year’s comedy Logies nominations.
Best Entertainment Program
- Family Feud (Network Ten)
- Gruen (ABC)
- Have You Been Paying Attention? (Network Ten)
- The Voice (Nine Network)
- The X Factor Australia (Channel Seven)
Most Outstanding Entertainment Program
- Gruen (ABC)
- Have You Been Paying Attention? (Network Ten)
- The Voice (Nine Network)
- The Weekly With Charlie Pickering (ABC)
- The X Factor Australia (Channel Seven)
Most Outstanding Comedy Program
- No Activity (Stan)
- Open Slather (Foxtel – The Comedy Channel)
- Please Like Me (ABC)
- Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell (ABC)
- Utopia (ABC)
Could have been worse, we suppose.
Although, just as you realise that at least Gruen probably won’t win because either The Voice or The X Factor will, you also realise that Mad As Hell also probably won’t win because the kind of comedy shows that comedy fans like almost never do. (We’re predicting a win for Utopia in the Most Outstanding Comedy category.)
We do question whether the result of the Logies is something anyone cares about in 2016, though. Once, the teen vote was important to the Logies and teens bought extra copies TV Week so they could get the coupon to vote for their favourite soap stars. Now, teens are absorbed by online media providers like Snapchat and YouTube, and probably don’t know the Logies exists. As for adults, they’re still watching TV but the buzz is around American dramas on streaming services like Netflix. It’s great that the Logies is now recognising locally-made streamed shows (hence the nomination for No Activity) but does anyone care about them, let alone who wins the Logies?
Remember that old gag about network publicity chiefs rigging the Logies results by getting their minions to vote multiple times? Now we’re wondering if they’re the only ones interested in the entire ceremony. That’s the best explanation we can come up with for the nomination for Open Slather.
Katering Show Delivers for iView
Press release time!
ABC iview set to cook up a storm with The Katering Show
Hit series coming to iview.
Friday, April 1, 2016 — ABC iview is thrilled to announce that from Friday April 15th, food intolerant Kate McCartney and her intolerably smug foodie co-host Kate McLennan, launch exclusively on iview with a fresh picked season of The Katering Show.
In this new series, McCartney and McLennan take a Sassy Swipe™ at the over-hyped food trend of Ramen; they take the term “Yummy Mummy” way too literally; they sample a tablet that counteracts lactose intolerance in an episode dubiously cleverly titled It Gets Feta; they subject themselves and a special guest to the latest weight loss torture regimes of Paleo, Raw Food and The 5:2 Diet; and they dedicate an episode to their culinary hero and spirit bosom, Maggie Beer, where they peddle their own noxious version of verjuice.
But The Kates are aiming to give back too; to use their position as attractive celebrity chefs and trained actors to change the world. First, they’ll use their no talent to address the important issue of marriage equality. McLennan will then check her white privilege by generously inviting The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng into the kitchen in an episode that highlights both McLennan’s sunny bigotry and her lack of star power.
And finally The Kates will solve climate change – and the cracks in their relationship – by cooking with kitchen scraps from the series in their celebratory End of Days farewell.
Of course, the entire flirty little series is peppered with references to The Kates’ crumbling personal situations; including, but not limited to, McCartney’s rat piss soaked rental property and McLennan’s endless bouts of ‘in-knicker’ infections.
As The Katering Show has been one of the rare bright spots in Australian comedy over the last few years, this is news we can firmly get behind. It’s nice to be able to laugh at an ABC comedy release instead of just laughing at the idea of an ABC comedy release, that’s for sure.
It’s a Death Row Pardon Two Minutes Late
Here’s a thought: does it mean anything that the Melbourne International Comedy Festival – supposedly one of the world’s greatest live comedy festivals, at least according to their own publicity – is happening at a point in time when there is literally no long-form Australian comedy being shown on mainstream television?
Sure, there are a handful of shows that the ABC brands as comedy, but come on: The Weekly is a news-slash-interview show with sarcasm, Luke Warm Sex is a documentary, Home Delivery is an interview show, The Last Leg isn’t even Australian and The (forthcoming) Checkout is consumer affairs. There isn’t even a shitty panel show on at the moment: sitcoms and sketch comedy are now special treats only doled out a handful of times a year.
And yet Australia has provided comedy fans with “the best comedian in the world“. That would be Sam Simmons:
Last year’s winning show made clear that there is nothing random about Simmons’ comedy. Spaghetti for Breakfast featured much of the kinds of tomfoolery for which he is known, from snorting breakfast cereal to wearing a lettuce leaf as a wig, from delivering thundering tirades against people who don’t remove their bike helmets in shops to singing jingles about Laurence Fishburne. But just when things were approaching peak madcap, Simmons opened a tiny window onto his childhood that left people in tears.
All the best comedians leave their audience in tears, of course.
So what does it say about the level of interest in putting comedy on our televisions when we have “the best comedian in the world“ right here and yet none of our networks can be arsed putting comedy to air? Are they really so out of touch that they’re ignoring the huge mass of talent on their doorstep? Or is television comedy simply something now that only other countries do?
Of course, part of the problem with that argument is that Australian television – well, the ABC – has been extremely supportive of Simmons’ career pretty much from the outset, giving him regular work on both Triple J and jTV before airing his two television series, The Urban Monkey and Problems. Unfortunately, despite this support, Simmons never really caught on with a wider audience here and has spent much of the last few years honing his career overseas… while occasionally mentioning the lack of support he felt he was given in his home country.
But now a man “who works harder than most to eradicate being beige and full of cynicism,” and who had to move overseas to find “an enthusiastic audience for his journeys into bread shoes, taco kits, slap-and-run (the worst game ever) and disco broccoli” (remember: there is nothing random about Simmons comedy) is “the best comedian in the world”. What then does it say about Australia that he couldn’t make a go of a television career here – and that, going by the current television listings, pretty much no-one else can either?
To return to Simmons’ career, he won the awards that made him “the best comedian in the world” for an act that involved him snorting breakfast cereal and wearing a lettuce leaf as a wig: is it possible that his material, while extremely effective in a live setting, may not transfer well to television? And that by being the standard bearer for quality live comedy in this country – hello, he’s “the best comedian in the world” – with a brand of live comedy that has a relatively niche appeal, his supporters are sending out a message to non-comedy buffs that perhaps stand-up comedy isn’t for them?
Simmons isn’t up there with Dave Hughes or Wil Anderson, but he’s hardly an unknown either. He’s been a semi-regular on various panel shows in recent years, especially Dirty Laundry Live; he had his own episode of Home Delivery last year. So when the press says he’s “the best comedian in the world”, its not just heaping praise on him, its telling readers about what comedy actually is. You know that guy you saw getting surreal with Lawrence Mooney? The one who told Julia Zemiro about his troubled childhood? He’s “the best comedian in the world”.
So if you don’t find him funny – if you read an article telling you he became “the best comedian in the world” for balancing a chocolate bar on top of his skull and saying “I’ve got a Bounty on my head” and you think “eh, whatever” – then this kind of praise for Simmons is telling you that, well, you know that comedy thing? Maybe it isn’t for you. What Sam Simmons does is the best comedy in the world; if you don’t find it funny, then maybe comedy is something you’d best avoid.
Clearly this is totally insane. Nobody is going to avoid an entire genre of entertainment simply on the basis of one line in one article printed in a Sunday newspaper. Whether you find him hilariously funny or not, Simmons is just one man: anyone could refute in a second the idea that he symbolises the entirety of Australian comedy, as there’s just so many other different examples of Australian comedy available to watch out there on the… uh… oh yeah, right.
Shit.
Oh dear God is The Weekly still on the air?
Yes. Yes it is.
So we figured we’d give The Weekly yet another shot on the off chance that it had somehow improved.
It has not. Oh, how it has not.
Ok, that last bit about thinking The Weekly might have improved was bullshit: we knew it hadn’t improved because it’s been going for what, close to thirty episodes now – that’s roughly as long as Shaun Micallef’s Newstopia, AKA the best Australian news satire of the 21st century until Mad as Hell started up – and it’s been exactly the same level of meh since day one. What we didn’t expect was that it would have somehow figured out a way to get worse.
To wit: this week Kitty Flanagan did a consumer watch segment about product placement and awww shit shots fired ’cause The Checkout is back in a few weeks and they don’t like people stepping on their turf so it’s on like Donkey Kong hitting a bong while playing pong. As part of this bit, she cracked one of her typically above par for The Weekly jokes and they cut to Charlie Pickering. Laughing at it.
Now yes, it’s true that Pickering’s entire career since at least Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation has largely been based on his ability to laugh at other people’s jokes. We’re sure that in the eyes of many television production executives, this ability is something to be prized and nurtured. But for fucks sake: it’s bad enough when Gruen cuts away to the audience seemingly enjoying a shitty joke when for all we know they’re laughing at something entirely different that happened two hours earlier. When you have to cut away to your host laughing at a joke – and not a surprising joke from a guest mind you, because spontaneous laughter actually is charming and fun to see, but one from a fellow cast member where presumably the joke’s at least been through rehearsals – you are making a bad show.
Blah blah blah covering up an edit blah blah. Pickering’s got one of the fakest laughs on Australian television: do you really want to deploy that to make your show look like a bunch of people amusing themselves? Do you really think that’s going to result in a funnier, more entertaining show?
Oh wait, this is The Weekly we’re talking about. Forget we even mentioned it.
Bye, bye the Habibs
No one expected the first sitcom from Channel 9 for a billion years to be amazing, which Here Come the Habibs duly wasn’t. But it wasn’t totally awful either and perhaps we should feel grateful for that? It’s arguable that the show deserves a second series, but, for the most part, it was just… competent? The characters were somewhat consistent, the plotlines weren’t complete rubbish, the cameras were pointing at the action and the microphones were turned on. Maybe that last one wasn’t a plus.
This blog post is supposed to be a vale for the first series of the Habibs, but it’s more a deep sigh. Why can’t we make decent TV sitcoms in this country? What’s our problem?
Televised Revolution make a good point when they argue that it’s not a healthy sign that it’s always the same production companies who get to make local comedy shows, but we can’t help but return to our blog of last Sunday and argue that it’s the fact that it’s always the same writers writing these programs that’s the bigger problem. Go through the credits of the past couple of decades of Australian TV comedies and you’ll see the same writers turn up in the credits for all sorts of shows, made by all sorts of companies. Writers who churn out scripts that are competent but not outstanding, wherever they go.
In the case of Here Come the Habibs, many of the writers are the sort of well-established folk you’d expect to find writing episodes of a sitcom, having worked on middling comedy shows such as The Nation, Wednesday Night Fever, Randling, Balls of Steel Australia, Housos, Pizza, Good News Week, The Moodys, Chandon Pictures, The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide To Knife Fighting, The Hamster Wheel and Upper Middle Bogan.
Less excitingly, Habibs writers’ credits also included Home and Away, Neighbours, All Saints and Kitchen Cabinet. We don’t mind the idea that these writers have worked on a few less-than-successful comedy programs, but soap operas and lightweight politics shows? Er, no.
It’s understandable – just – that television production companies in this country want to call on writers who have written television before. But what we need is writers who’ve a): written comedy before, and way more importantly otherwise you just get Dave O’Neil in the credits of everything, b): done a good job of it. In the past it was usually the case that good sitcoms came from good writers who were writing more or less for themselves (Frontline, The Games). Can it really be the case that no-one in Australia has had a good sitcom idea since then? That the only people coming up with sitcoms are people who already work at production companies and have already written hours of generic, forgettable television product?
If we want to get good at sitcoms in this country, we need to be able to call on writers who’ve got lots of experience of writing sitcoms. Production companies who’ve got lots of experience of making sitcoms would be very useful too, but it’s getting the scripts right we need to concentrate on. Because if we were to isolate the major problem with the Habibs, it would be that it didn’t contain a lot of laughs or good plotting, more broad slapstick and obvious-as-hell set-ups.
SEX! Now that we have your attention… sex?
Look on your works, ABC budget cuts, and despair. That’s our big take away from Luke Warm Sex, the ABC’s latest effort at conjuring television out of thin air using nothing but the idea that if it happens in front of a camera then it’s worth broadcasting to the nation. Yeah, as they say, nah.
Forget all the talk about its brave examination of an edgy topic: all we could see was a show where a host and a camera crew (two people? one?) wandered around doing a bunch of interviews where only the guy asking the questions was getting paid. How much further can the ABC distill down the idea of a television show before there’s literally nothing left to show? How much longer until their “comedy” line-up is just a picture of the cover of a VHS copy of Mother & Son?
The formula for this kind of show is firmly established, cheap as chips and as dull as fuck: our comedian host, wearing a hat that reads “I’M BEING SERIOUS YOU GUYS” sets out to explore via endless interviews a topic that has some tenuous link to their personal life. John Safran checked out religion in John Safran vs God; Judith Lucy checked out religion in Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey; now Luke McGregor checks out religion in Luke Warm Sex. Oh wait.
The first two shows on that list worked well; why doesn’t this one? For starters, both those shows came from a place of (mild) cynicism: their smart-alec leads wanted to explore a topic they were drawn to but skeptical about. The result: comedy as they recoiled from / mocked the extremes of their subject, while still treating it seriously enough for them to avoid coming off as dickheads just stirring up shit for a laugh.
Luke Warm Sex, on the other hand, often veers pretty darn close to Luke McGregor’s Personal Sex Therapy Half-Hour. McGregor is not skeptical about sex, nor is he confident about it; he is not in a position to laugh at it and walk away. This is a show about a likable but generally unsettled guy hanging around a bunch of more confident people going through a series of mildly interesting approaches to getting a handle on this whole sex thing. It seems to be doing him some good. Good for him.
We all know the angle here and the angle here is the only reason this show was made: a comedian who’s built his career around getting laughs from being awkward explores the extremely awkward topic of sex. That’s the hook. That’s the selling point. That’s the deal. That’s why we’re all here. If they wanted to inform people, they’d have the sexperts explaining things to a regular host. If they wanted to entertain people, they’d have made a completely different show.
McGregor can’t make comedy out of the extremes of what’s being served up to him because the whole point of the show is that he doesn’t know what the extremes are – and even if he did have firm boundaries that he’d set for himself, who’s to say many (or any) of his viewers would agree with them, what with sexuality generally being considered in 2016 to be “hey, whatever works for you”.
Obviously sex is totally hilarious. But it’s hilarious because of how it makes individuals act – it’s not funny in and of itself (unless, you know, you want to laugh about people putting stuff in their butts or that kind of thing, and this isn’t that kind of show). Luke McGregor, nervous neophyte, is not Alvin Purple having wacky sex adventures; we’re supposed to take his quest for sex knowledge seriously. The comedy is meant to be coming from the fact that it’s Luke McGregor, professional awkward guy, dealing with sex. And sex is awkward! He’s awkward! This is going to be awkward!
(whoops, awkward stopped being funny around 2012. Unless you have an actual sense of humour, then it was never all that funny in the first place outside a handful of shows. Curb Your Enthusiasm, this is not)
Crazy religious nutters are funny because we as a society have a generally agreed view of what is and isn’t acceptable religious behaviour. Cults: if you join one, you’re going to get laughed at. They’re also worth mocking because religious nutters often have an outsized role in the power structures of our society – just look at the Federal Senate. Put it together, you’ve got ripe territory for comedy, which is why both Safran’s and Lucy’s shows worked. But sex nutters? What’s funny about what two or more people do in the privacy of their own dungeon?
You can’t make fun of sex in 2016 because only uncool creeps have hang-ups about sex. In fact, the entire point of this show is meant to be that McGregor wants to get rid of his hang-ups about sex; if they’d made this show with an unrepentant prude as the host then all the comedy would come from sexperts mocking his or her foolish inhibitions. And you can’t make fun of a guy wanting to educate himself about sex because that would just be straight-up cruel. So the only possible source of comedy here comes from having an awkward guy put in an awkward situation and then realising he’s got nothing to be awkward about. Awww. Wait, this goes for three hours?
This isn’t a show about exploring sex; this is a show about one man exploring what sex means to him. And last time we checked, exploring sex on your own was a bit of a wank.
A Phoenix Rises from the Slather
It’s unusual to hear a TV executive say anything like what we’ve been saying about Australian comedy for years, so we wanted to note this interview for TV Tonight with Foxtel’s Brian Walsh:
Last year Foxtel rolled a big gamble on its sketch comedy series Open Slather produced by Laura Waters and Rick McKenna.
Despite an impressive launch the show nosedived in the ratings with disappointing reviews. Over its 20 episodes the show never managed to find a sustained audience.
TV Tonight recently asked Foxtel Director of Brian Walsh what he felt was the show’s key problem?
“The writing,” he admitted.
“They had a lot of issues with the writers room and changes in personnel.
“On paper it was all there. You had all the big names, with Laura and Rick. We gave it our all. But in the end the audiences just weren’t there for it.”
“Audiences just weren’t there for it”? Oh, Brian. You were doing so well with all that reflecting on how the poor writing had been the problem, and now you turn it around and blame the audience? Why the hell should be audiences “there for it” if the writing’s bad?
The interview continues…
Open Slather was Foxtel’s biggest investment in local comedy in years. But it is in discussions on new projects.
“My take on it is that Drama in this country has evolved and developed because we keep investing in writing,” he continued.
“All of the networks have been heavily committed to Drama. But Comedy has been very hit and miss.
“It’s very hard to build an industry of Comedy writers if the commissions are few and far between.”
Hard to argue with Brian, there.* We’ve long argued that under-investment in TV comedy has made it harder and harder for new local programs to be any good. Writers, producers and production teams make good shows when they’ve tried and failed and learnt what works a few times, not when they’re chucked into a writer’s room after a six-month stand-up career.
But, it looks like that experience those up-and-comers need is just around the corner…
“But we uncovered some great comedic talent. We said to Princess and Rick McKenna, ‘Let’s not lost the talent we’ve invested in.’ So many of the cast of Open Slather are involved in the new pilots that we’ve been funding.”
In addition to new projects in development Foxtel has animated comedy Pacific Heat from Working Dog and Whose Line Is It Anyway Australia from Roving Enterprises both due this year.
“I’m confident we’ll continue our commitment to Australian Comedy and we’re exploring fresh ideas,” he added,
“Open Slather was a risk, as all Comedy is. We’ve just got to keep working at it.”
And as much as we’re skeptical that any of the above will actually be worth watching, we’re happy to hear that Foxtel is investing in new comedy. Even if a lot of the money seems to be going to established production companies (who in one case, are making a local version of a program which first aired on UK radio 28 years ago).
But, any new comedy that gives new or relatively inexperienced people opportunities is a good thing. As is a TV executive reflecting on where something’s gone wrong. It would just help if the audience didn’t get blamed in the process.
* Unless you want us to start blogging about where Australian TV drama’s going wrong.