Australian Tumbleweeds
That Was Pissweak That Was pt.2
If you’ve ever seriously wondered why television critics in this country are respected by no-one – even as television criticism around the English-speaking world enters some kind of magical golden age of relevancy thanks to the irresistible rise of the recap – may we quote Debi Enker on The Weekly:
“Through four months on air, the show has really started to strut its stuff. The scope of its interest has been broad and its focus sharp.”
The only way you could write this with a straight face is if you had spent the last four months a): not watching The Weekly and also b): completely avoiding the internet. The scope of The Weekly‘s interest has been “what is the internet talking about this week?”; its focus has been “get Pickering to cover a news story then say something smart-arse at the end of every third sentence.”
And then oh dear God there’s this:
“Pickering’s approach has led to criticism that the show is preachy, that he’s taking a finger-wagging tone and lecturing to his audience. Phooey to that. The obvious models here, Jon Stewart and John Oliver, don’t seem to incite comparable objections when they spotlight issues or express persuasively argued opinions. Often, they’re cheered. It’s as though foreigners are allowed that licence, but some of us get stroppy when locals do likewise, as though, heaven forbid, they’ve got tickets on themselves. Surely the criteria should be: is it a significant subject? Has it been capably covered? And, given the satirical bent of the show, has it been presented with some wit?”
Is it a significant subject? What, like that lion the US dentist shot?
Has it been capably covered? Well yeah – considering the coverage consists entirely of running other shows’ news clips.
Has it been presented with some wit? No. C’mon, seriously? No.
There are many reasons behind the problems with The Weekly – the budget, the talent, the need to avoid pissing anyone off – but the end result is that it’s not funny. Compare it to an episode of Mad as Hell, we dare you. It’s lightweight news coverage at best, and at worst it features Tom Gleeson trying to pretend that the “joke” with his segment is that it’s amazingly popular. The only way that joke is an actual joke is if his segment is unpopular. And even then that joke might work once; when you’re making it for three months straight, maybe the reason you’re unpopular is that you aren’t all that funny.
And because it’s lightweight news coverage (that is to say, news coverage that involves no actual original reporting), it’s built around a guy telling us stuff. So why do people say The Weekly is preachy? Because it features Charlie Pickering ACTUALLY PREACHING TO THE AUDIENCE. (We’d use “lecturing” rather than “preaching”, but same difference.) Blaming mentally ill people for gun violence is bad: an extended segment in a comedy show where all you’re doing is pointing out that blaming mentally ill people for gun violence is bad? That’s worse.
Put another way, you know how every other fake news comedy show has had a joke “rant” segment, from Saturday Night Live to The Late Show to CNNNN to Mad as Hell? That’s because the idea of a news reader giving his or her opinion on an issue is funny.
And yet The Weekly was built around doing this comedy idea completely straight. It’s just straight and fairly shallow current affairs coverage with a couple of snarky lines thrown in. And even in 2015 the ABC has an entire news department doing this stuff better.
Meanwhile, Helen Razer tells it like it is for The Saturday Paper:
we cannot blame Pickering entirely for a program whose aims exceed its execution. We must also blame funding, which can only buy analysis reheated from that week’s internet buffet instead of fresh, hot jolts. Working to a tight deadline and budget, writers are forced to let shaky cynicism substitute for knowledge. This program, very clearly derived from John Oliver’s impeccably researched Last Week Tonight, never had its high hopes costed. It aims to bring us informed irreverence. What it actually offers is something more like a vanity newsletter written by an underpaid youth worker.
Razer, being no fan of the trivial – see roughly 80% of her commentary on pop culture and the internet, which can be boiled down to “why are people paying attention to this crap when the real problem of entrenched financial inequality goes ignored” – gives The Weekly the thumbs down in large part because of its dismissive cynicism:
With a few exceptions, notably a timely report on proposed funding cuts to the cost-effective Custody Notification Service, Pickering has led a program that tailors news to a single punchline and conclusion. To wit: it’s all fucked.
Which is a little odd, because the version of The Weekly we were watching was desperately trying to make serious points week in week out. The previously mentioned segment on the way the media demonises the mentally ill wasn’t based around “shaky cynicism” or concluding “it’s all fucked”. True, many of the news jokes being made on the show did come from that easy point-of-view. But the problem wasn’t that it served up a “single punchline and conclusion” – it was that too often it didn’t serve up any punchline at all.
Rather than cynically dismissing issues for the sake of a laugh – which we might have actually enjoyed – time and again segments ended with a straight-faced Pickering looking down the barrel of the camera telling us that the situation he’d just outlined simply wasn’t good enough.
If only he’d done a report on his own show.
Well, This Is a New Low
Ok @mscott, if you won't let me be on #qanda, how about the Chaser? Put in a good word?
— Ben Pobjie (@benpobjie) September 8, 2015
If you don’t see why this kind of thing coming from a professional television critic is a problem – and it’s a firmly established pattern of behaviour now – then chances are you’re part of the problem.
That Was Pissweak That Was pt.1
It’s easy to forget how charming Mad as Hell is in its refusal to assume it’ll be invited back next year until you hear Charlie Pickering say “Welcome to the final episode of series one of The Weekly“. Series one? Forgive us if we’re wrong, but at the time of writing the ABC hasn’t announced a series two of this slightly less funny version of Behind the News; maybe hold off on announcing your Thousand Year Comedy Reich just a little longer.
If there’s one thing to be grateful to The Weekly for, we’re yet to think of it. Oh wait: remember how we used to have to put up with a steady trickle of dickheads repetitively asking “Why doesn’t Australia have its own version of The Daily Show?” And now we know why: because if we did, it would be The Weekly. And The Weekly was shit.
We’ve covered most of the reasons why it was shit over the last twenty weeks and for a show that ran twenty weeks it was remarkably consistent; remember in the lead-up to the launch we were expected to swallow this:
The Weekly also comes with a flexible format, meaning the structure can feature multiple or single topics.
“That was part of the deal. I said ‘I want a format that I’m allowed to throw out on any given week if the best thing to do is something else.’ The ABC have been very supportive of that. Obviously we have to do a version of the format so that people know what it is, before we start messing with it too much,” he continues.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the “something else” it was best to do was Mad as Hell, so instead we got the exact same show every week for 20 weeks. Did they ever mess with the format? They did a musical number once, guess that probably blew a few minds down at the chuckle hut.
So yeah, The Weekly had problems. It was hosted by a fake newsreader turned real newsreader then back into a fake newsreader so whenever he got on his high horse – which he was contractually obliged to at least once every episode – he had zero moral authority to back his outrage up. Also: not funny.
Its approach to the news was to first make all the obvious news gags, then run longer segments based on the idea that some issues were too serious to make the obvious news gags about. Unfortunately there was often no real difference between the topics worth laughing at and the topics we were meant to take seriously, which left the show looking unpleasantly opportunistic. Also: not funny.
Cheap is often a good thing when it comes to comedy – expensive flashy visuals are never funnier than shoddy cheap ones – but The Weekly felt cheap in all the wrong ways. The format was ripped off from The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, which wasn’t a great start; the cast consisted of a host and two regulars plus some occasional foreign correspondents, which left things way too predictable; much of the half hour involved Pickering talking over news footage, which might not have felt like low budget television if the jokes had been any good; worst of all, Pickering’s material was basic and the targets obvious. He might have “nailed it” according to the kind of yoof websites that like their views parroted back at them, but if you were looking for laughs rather than social media talking points you were shit out of luck. Also: not fucking funny.
The whole show felt like they were cutting corners, only we never got to see where the money they were saving went. Was Pickering himself really that expensive to lure away from commercial television? And this poverty reached all the way down to the targets they chose to go after. Week in week out The Weekly focused on issues that were clearly one-sided and then made sure they came down hard on the side everybody sensible agreed with. You name an issue its audience was on board with, and The Weekly let them know they were 100% right to hold those views.
But hang on a second, what about this:
Merits of the report aside, even running a segment like this in the current political environment is a laudably ballsy move.
No. Halal certification is a dog-whistle issue the government is paying attention to because it’s a soft target to shore up its base. There’s zero overlap between people who give a shit about it and ABC viewers in general, let alone anyone watching The Weekly. It’s the equivalent of The Daily Telegraph running a story “exposing” the sordid truth behind the chai lattes being served in inner-city hipster dens; you do it to rile up people who already agree with you. Which makes The Weekly pretty much the same as those politicians pandering to the people up in arms about halal certification that they mocked.
Imagination, we’re constantly told, is free. If that’s the case, why did The Weekly show so little of it? Pretty much all the media coverage of the show – which we’ll be getting to in part 2 of our Weekly wrap-up – made sure to note it was run on the smell of an oily rag compared to its US equivalents. But the problem wasn’t just that a lot of the jokes being made were obvious and predictable; it was that the targets chosen to make those jokes about were obvious and predictable.
Sure, any news satire show has to work with the news at hand. But The Weekly made a big noise about going behind the surface of the news to examine the bigger issues, the ongoing dramas. So why did they just tell us stuff we already knew? C’mon: Racism is bad? Sexism is bad? Mocking the mentally ill is bad? Shooting a lion while on a hunting trip is bad?
We’re not saying they should have tried to argue those things were good – though it might have actually been funny and thought-provoking if they’d tried. We’re saying that a good news satire show should make its audience laugh and if it can’t manage that – seriously, was there a single bit on The Weekly that attracted any attention at all for being funny? Did anyone ever laugh at it, or was its audience entirely made up of people who think the correct response to a great joke is applause? – it should at least make them think.
For shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, that’s easy to do: they’re aimed at a relatively narrow pay TV audience so they’re able to go really hard on the issues – and they get both laughs and fans because of the strength of their convictions. The Weekly, being on a free-to-air network, can’t go that hard for fear of losing viewers. And convictions? Pickering seems too pleased with how things have worked out for himself to go out on a limb for anyone else.
There are ways around this problem: both The Hamster Wheel and Mad as Hell managed it by being smart and funny, but either one of the two would do. Making the obvious jokes about politicians can work as long as the jokes are funny; being authentically insightful about the way Australia works might not be hilarious, but as long as you offer new information it’s going to be interesting. And yet The Weekly decided to do neither. It just played it safe week in week out.
There are plenty of actual tough issues out there in Australia, ones where there really are two (or more) sides to the story and the bad guys just might be the people who watch the ABC. There are plenty of stupid politicians, lying media outlets and shonky business practises ripe for the piss-taking too. It’s not that hard to figure this stuff out and be funny doing it. The ABC has a long and proud tradition of putting to air shows that have managed exactly that.
What the fuck went wrong here?
Down Ricketts Lane
On the surface of things, Sammy J and Randy’s Ricketts Lane looks like the sort of high concept sitcom we get every couple of years. As per the Rebel Wilson-penned Bogan Pride the characters break in to song and dance numbers every so often, and like Frank Woodley’s 2012 solo vehicle Woodley this is a show about failing relationships and disappointing lives in a quirky old school suburb. Hey, look! Curtains from the 70’s. And other retro stuff you used to see ‘round your grandparent’s house. Actually, that could be the house in Please Like Me. Anyway…
Ricketts Lane actually comes out of various live stage shows that Sam McMillan (Sammy J) and puppeteer Heath McIvor (Randy) have been presenting at comedy festivals for more than five years. The material, the schtick and some of the songs are therefore fairly well-honed, and on screen work reasonable well by setting the action in a heightened reality universe of broad brushstroke characters (the bastard boss, the bitchy ex-wife) and odd situations (the bastard boss and the bitchy ex-wife enjoy bondage with each other).
It’s the kind of show you imagine would work well on ABC2, but instead the entire series is premiering on iView. Apparently this is because ABC2 don’t broadcast new shows anymore, and as it’s presumably too niche to just put out on ABC (?) here it all is. Sammy J and Randy’s rusted-on fans, and maybe you dear reader, have watched it all by now. Sadly, we’ve only had time to watch the first episode, which is what we base this review on…
It’s census time! And both girlfriend-less Sammy J and unhappily divorced Randy are desperate to restore some pride by being able to place a tick in the married box on their household’s form. So Randy heads off to try and woo back ex-wife Victoria Vincent (a hard-nosed tabloid TV current affairs host) while Sammy J asks his secretary Wednesday to help him find a wife…and having missed the signs that Wednesday would happily be that wife, Sammy J ends up with a mail order wife called Smilté, an East European bodybuilder with an aggressive teenage son and a pet llama.
With so many ingredients for comedy gold present, this really should be funnier than it is. Many of the songs, which were probably a hoot in the stage shows, fall flat when performed on camera, and the main laughs come from the short interactions between bastard boss Borkman and his subordinate Michael (played by Little Dum Dum Club favourite Dilruk Jayasinha). Adapted for TV some of this may be, but successful on TV it isn’t. Not quite, anyway. Instead it falls in to the classic high concept sitcom trap of letting the high concept dominate. Compare this to something like Utopia, which while not high concept is very much about being a political satire, and it’s notable that getting laughs from gags is at least as important in the writer’s minds as producing satire.
In other words, what Ricketts Lane needs to do is to place more emphasis on getting laughs from dialogue, and writing song and dance sequences which work well on camera. There may be some of this coming up in future episodes (the save the trees plot in episode 2 looks promising) but this may also be one of those series which needs to throw off what’s worked in the past in another medium (stage) and look at how it can work in the medium it’s trying to work in (TV).
Things That Make You Go Hmm
So we picked up a copy of Greg Fleet’s latest book These Things Happen pretty much the moment it hit the shops. Why wouldn’t we? Fleet is a comedy titan: a legend of the local stand-up scene, a regular on television for close to twenty years, and always good for a laugh on radio show Get This. Trouble is, this isn’t really a book about that stuff: this is a book about his extensive career as a professional junkie.
So, as comedy fans first and junkie fans last, how does this stack up? This isn’t a full review – the book only came out last week and we’ve barely had time to dig beneath our initial impressions. But we figured those impressions are still worth sharing, even if we reserve the right to bang on about this book in more depth later on. Bring on the bullet points!
*okay, so we all know the book is about drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. Fleet estimates he spent “millions of dollars” on drugs over the years, and considering he estimates at one stage he was pulling in $400,000 a year ($300,000 from radio, $100,000 from stand-up and other performing work), that seems more than plausible. And if you’ve come for a steady stream of stories about horrible drug-fucked behaviour, congrats!
*Far be it for us to suggest that Fleet’s two decades worth of hard core drug use has dented his attention span, but this is a book that wanders all over the place and all over his life, though there is a rough chronology to the overall sweep of things. There are snippets on bad gigs, being paid as a comedy guru, drug-fuelled tour stories and so on, and they’re all good stuff. But they pop up seemingly as they come to mind rather than part of a well-structured story.
*Some chapters, like “Exile on Christmas Street”, are just ramblings – if you ever wanted to get the impression of a book where they threw everything in to hit the word count, here you go. But they do give an insight into Fleet’s “voice” – there’s not much reason for them to be left in, but they do sound a lot like what it might be like to spend time with Fleet.
*While Fleet’s focus might wander, there’s no denying that he’s sharp as a tack when he wants to be. Those of you who remember the Mick Molloy / Tony Martin feud from close to a decade ago might be wondering which side Fleet – who’s worked with both men – is on. On the one hand, Fleet never even mentions it. On the other, an comedy anecdote starts with this:
“The show featured myself, The Empty Pockets (Matt Quatermaine and Matt Parkinson, a successful double act and long time partners of mine), Mick Molloy, and the hardest-working man in showbiz, the greatest comic mind I have ever seen, Tony Martin.”
You get the idea. No superlatives for Mr Molloy.
*Those who remember Get This might remember a catchy little ditty “Pushed off or stabbed off” (sung to the tune of the I Dream of Jeanie theme). Fleet doesn’t: he remembers a version that goes “Stabbed off or fell off”
*Remember Fleet’s previous successful shows about his drug use?
Forget them:
1. They were lies. I was still using when I did them and was desperately trying to convince people that I was clean
2. I changed events to make myself look like a victim, or a better or more rational person than I was. I wanted to have done all of that stuff and still be everyone’s friend. Clearly, that is not going to happen.
*There’s quite a sad chapter where Fleet reminisces about much-loved Get This producer Richard Marsland, but it does feature this bit:
“Something I have never discussed is that I find it impossible to form a picture in my mind of Richard’s last moments. My brain and heart just won’t let me imagine that scene.”
Never discussed until now, you mean. Also, who tries to imagine stuff like that?
*It’s very much a “warts and all” portrait, and not just because of his massive drug use and often appalling behaviour. It’s also very revealing of the kind of guy Fleet is. Which is to say, if you’ve spent much time at all wondering about what kind of person would choose to stand in front of a crowd and try to win them over for a living night after night, this gives you a pretty good idea.
*While his partner is giving birth to their child, he steals $100 from her purse to go score heroin. There’s a lot more of this kind of thing in this book but that’s pretty much all you need to know right there about what being a junkie is about. And for much of this book, Greg Fleet is a junkie.
*Fleet knows all this. He talks about how his bond with Lawrence Mooney is based on a mutual need for approval (while also trying to shock and appal), he talks about how all authors are wankers because they snubbed him at a publishing event – but then he turns that into a joke against himself, which doesn’t exactly hide the fact that his most severe vitriol of the book is directed towards a group of people who didn’t embrace him.
*Comedians are largely named. Fleet’s junkie friends are not. Guess who “The Actor” and “The Movie Star” really are! Here’s a clue: they were junkies around St Kilda during the 90s. Also, if you tell us who they are we promise not to print your answer because we’re not that keen to dig our own grave just yet. Supposedly The Movie Star was really disappointed he didn’t get to join in on a (fake) gay sex session between Fleet and The Actor. Remembering this makes Fleet smile every time he sees The Movie Star playing a tough guy role.
*It’s also a very patchy book, with lots of chapters starting off with stuff like “I’m writing this in Adelaide 2012”, which doesn’t really add much to proceedings apart from the feeling that this could have done with a really rigorous edit. Then again, a rigorous edit might have involved pointing out that at least some of this gear is old rope for long-time Fleet fans.
Although Fleet has been claiming to be newly clean in every interview he’s done in the past decade…
Oh wait, we meant to quote this bit:
He’s strip-mined his own life for material, writing shows about his relationship breakdowns, his disastrous holiday in Thailand (the basis for his book Thai Die), and the story of his deadbeat American father, who abandoned the family when Fleet was small.
Anything he does, and every person he comes in contact with, is scrutinised for potential comedic fodder. His life, it seems, is set permanently on a track of “Can I use it or not?”. His shows and stand-up routines are not so much written as born out of verbal sparring with fellow comedians.
*At our first glance the most interesting comedy bit is where he explains his use of the phrase “they look good, like a faggot in a ditch”. Basically, it’s an inside joke – he and Mooney were trying to horrify each other and the phrase stuck. Then Fleet tries to explain how this particular inside joke works, which is interesting because “Inside joke” or “you had to be there” is usually all most of us need to understand that a): something was hilarious for b): reasons that can’t easily be explained. But explain Fleet tries:
It seems what makes the joke work is the tension between the horrible things being said and the actual moral views of the person saying them. A random stranger saying something awful is awful; someone that you know is kind-hearted and generous saying something awful about poor people can be funny. It’s not an amazingly profound insight, but the fact he works hard to explain it goes some way towards showing how devoted Fleet is to comedy, even in a book largely sold on his scary tales of drug excess.
*So is it worth it from a comedy point of view? For sure: Fleet has been there and done that and what he’s got to say is always worth a read. And while we’d have much preferred a more focused book looking at his comedy career, it’s the horrific tales of junkie-dom that have been getting this particular book all the attention. And some of those stories are pretty funny too.
Long story short: We paid recommended retail for These Things Happen, and we haven’t regretted it yet.
Australian Story: Cry Me A River
It’s hard to know what to think when the ABC’s Australian Story decides to focus on a comedian. Once side of the coin is that Australian Story is a massively popular series with a huge reach: putting on a comedian is a great way to remind people that Australia actually does have professional funny people out there.
The other side is that Australian Story is pretty much 100% focused on horrifically grim tales of suffering with only the occasional ray of sunshine. If you’re a comedian and you’re on Australian Story, your tale might as well be titled “Tears of a Clown”.
And so it proved to be this week, as Corey White – winner of the Best Newcomer Award at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival – decides to team up with his sister and revisit the family haunts while recalling their mother’s massive drug abuse and their dad’s violent assholery. Yep, that’s what comedy’s all about in this country. Apropos of nothing, anyone grabbed a copy of Greg Fleet’s new book yet?
In 2003, as a member of the 2Day FM breakfast radio team, Fleet and his family, along with his co-hosts and a bunch of radio listeners, were flown to the Gold Coast to experience the different theme parks. But Fleet became desperate for a hit: “I told my wife and child that I was going out to get cigarettes from a nearby shop. I then kissed them both goodbye, walked out of the hotel, got a cab to the airport, flew to Sydney, scored heroin and made it back to the hotel about ten hours later.”
Side-splitting stuff.
To be fair, Corey’s grim childhood is the actual subject matter of his successful comedy act, thus making it slightly more appropriate for the Australian Story treatment. To be unfair, the first we ever heard of Corey White was this article, which seemed to go out of its way to make him seem less than hilarious:
All of my stand-up has a moral point. Ethical question are the only things I’m truly passionate talking about in stand-up. I’m not Seinfeld, I don’t care about socks going missing, I care about suffering and pain and our obligations to one another as human beings. I’m interested in injustice, my hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of broader society, the gap between lovely words and the horrible world. I’ve always liked that old saying, “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That’s always resonated with my anal chakra.
Don’t worry if that sounds too confronting, because Australian Story‘s brought in knockabout larrkin Tom Gleeson to present this hard-hitting ep:
TOM GLEESON, PRESENTER: Hi. I’m Tom Gleeson.
The first time I saw this guy was at a comedy gig in Bendigo. We were on the same bill together and he charmed the audiences with tales of his harrowing childhood.
He got comedy out of nowhere.
This is Corey White’s story.
If you feel like taking a day off work sick tomorrow, ponder just how much Gleeson was paid for saying those four sentences. Even if he did it for free, it’s too much. Sure, he turns up later on as well, but there he’s part of the story – a co-worker in comedy, if you will. Up front, he’s Tom Gleeson, Presenter. Four sentences. The last two are more like sentence fragments.
And for those of you who thought we were slandering Australian Story by suggesting it was only interested in the grim and ghastly when it comes to choosing which “Australian Stories” to tell, this is the second line Corey says in this episode:
COREY WHITE (voiceover): I thought I’d be dead by now.
Still, we do get to see some of Corey’s award-winning stand-up material, so it’s not a complete loss.
COREY WHITE: I think the hardest thing about growing up in foster care is, as an adult, trying to relate to the childhood difficulties of middle-class people. “Oh, your parents divorced when you were 17. That must have been tough. ‘Cause, ah, when I was six my Mum tried to set my Dad on fire.”
Actually we’re just assuming that’s his material, because his non-comedy material is pretty much along the same lines.
COREY WHITE (voiceover): I only have one good childhood memory. There was a man walking his dog down the street. The man fell over and he just squealed as he fell. That was my first memory and that’s a happy memory.
The second memory is walking in on my Dad raping my mother. I heard Mum crying and I opened the door and I saw.
It’s repeated tomorrow (Thursday) morning at 10am on ABC1, and then again on ABC24 on Sunday at 6.30pm. Or any time you like on iView. Or read the transcript here.
Next week’s Australian Story is about dressmaker Collette Dinnigan. She must have lost her hands in a pinking shears accident or something.
Rolling through Kalangadoo
Somewhere along the highway between Penola and Mt Gambier, not far from the Coonawarra wine region and the South Australia/Victoria border, is a sign pointing towards the small town of Kalangadoo. It’s a place which almost no one would have heard of were it not for its famous fictional resident Roly Parks, whose letters have been a fixture on ABC radio for the past couple of decades. A collection of these Letters from Kalangadoo has now been released by University of Western Australia Publishing.
Written (and performed on radio) by satirist Bryan Dawe, the letters are addressed to Gene, Parks’ son, who lives in London with his partner Ahmed, a Moroccan dancer formerly with the Royal Ballet. Roly himself also has an entertainment background, and once toured in variety-type shows with his wife Sonia. Now retired and separated from Sonia, his letters to Gene give news of the family and various characters from the local area, and hint at the pain he feels about the break-up of his marriage and some of the frustrations of getting old.
It’s probably best to describe these letters (actually monologues, written to be performed) as bittersweet, rather like a rural version of Barry Humphries’ character Sandy Stone, revelling in the minutiae of dull, ordinary life one minute and full of barely expressed emotional anguish the next. Roly’s description of a relationship counselling session with Sonia shows him to be the classic Aussie bloke who finds it hard to talk about emotional matters, a fact which comes out clearly when towards the end of this collection Roly takes a fancy to a friend’s sister but then coyly explains to Gene that they’re just friends and that’s that. Sure they are.
As far as the comic side of Parks’ letters goes, Kalangadoo is your classic country town, full of weird and wonderful folks who gossip, get pissed and come up with crazy schemes (why not plan your visit to Kalangadoo to coincide with their Carrot Festival, which Roly assures us is a huge event and one of the highlights of the year). Yet taking the piss out of struggling country towns and local “hick” characters isn’t really what these letters are all about. They poke gentler fun at rural Australia and do it with a lot of affection, with most of the comedy coming from the characters and the language. It’s the kind of comedy that only really works in radio or print, where character and language are pretty much all you have, and it’s very much a rarity in 2015.
To get anything interesting or affectionately funny out of a lead character who’s as emotionally stiff and dull as Roly Parks is impressive, yet because he’s such an accurate reflection of so many men of his era he’s instantly recognisable. And sometimes hanging a comedy on a familiar character is an approach that really works – more than 20 years on ABC radio is testament to that.
A Fresh Start for Utopia means more of the same
In the first episode of the new series of Utopia the team at the Nation Building Authority are back after the holidays…and nothing much has changed. In between, er, something about infrastructure, Tony (Rob Sitch) et al have to deal with new swipe cards which don’t work, a new e-mail system which also doesn’t work, and new Health and Safety rules which make it almost impossible to work. Meanwhile Katie (Emma-Louise Wilson) is selling raffle tickets and a 50 Shades of Grey-inspired calendar to raise money to repair the swimming pool in her small hometown in the Mallee.
But as colleagues lay down their cash for the raffle tickets (the calendar featuring middle-aged rural women in bondage gear proves less popular), Nat (Celia Paquola) has a brainwave: what about a new government fund to help rural communities maintain local sporting facilities. Tony likes it and gives her the greenlight, but suddenly this simple idea takes on a life of its own as Head Department Secretary Jim (Anthony “Lehmo” Lehmann) and PR lady Rhonda (Kitty Flannigan) realise how well it will play externally. Cue a meeting room crammed full of Canberra’s finest all enthusing about the scheme…if a few changes are made, and a promotional video featuring happy, smiling people enjoying sporting facilities in the bush.
In the end, like all good ideas proposed in workplaces, this simple plan to fix one small thing becomes a bloated, PR-led extravaganza so far away from its original intent as to be barely recognisable. Oh, and Katie’s hometown can’t apply for the scheme in the end because it’s suddenly just for new projects. It seems selling raffle tickets to get the pool repaired wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Anyone who’s worked just about anywhere can laugh bitterly at this. Yet it’s the sub-plots and the asides which raise the big laughs in Utopia, including Tony’s cycling outfit (putting Rob Sitch in something tight, colourful and sporty always equals comedy gold), the over-zealous security guard (Jamie Robertson) who questions Tony about his swipe card, the Health & Safety training session (led by Louise Siversen as trainer Linda) and Amy (Michelle Lim Davidson) and Scott’s (Dave Lawson) disastrous interpretations of it.
As first episodes go “A Fresh Start” is a good, solid one, and with any luck there’ll be more like this to come. As we’ve pointed out before Utopia is formulaic, but as it’s a formula that works that’s fine with us.
All the News that Shits
Press release time! Twice!
ABC announces plan to replace The Chaser’s Media Circus with cat videos
From Thursday 10 September at 8pm on ABC
Tuesday, August 18, 2015 — ABC TV management has confirmed it hopes to replace the second series of The Chaser’s Media Circus with cat videos.
“As soon as we can find enough left wing cats who instinctively hate Australia, they’ll be replaced,” said an ABC representative.
Media Circus – the game show about the news game hosted by Craig Reucassel with Fake Fact Checker Chas Licciardello – returns to ABC on Thursday 10 September at 8pm. It is produced by the creative team behind The Chaser and The Checkout, including Ben Jenkins, Zoë Norton Lodge, Scott Abbot, Andrew Hansen and Julian Morrow.
ABC management confirmed that for the second series the show has been moved out of the news division to allow it to be more biased and have less rigorous vetting of the studio audience.
Filmed in front of a live audience each week shortly before broadcast, The Chaser’s Media Circus brings together journalists and comedians to dissect the week’s news through a time-honoured technique of media criticism: the trivia quiz.
Last year’s guests included George Negus, Senator Nick Xenophon, Lenore Taylor, Chris Kenny, Ellen Fanning, Tracey Spicer, Hugh Riminton, Peter Berner, Dave Hughes and Tom Gleeson, a number of whom have not yet refused to return for Series Two. The new series will also feature Media Circus first timers including Peter Greste and John Safran.
Prime Minister Abbott has confirmed he will allow government front benchers to appear on the show. But the producers are lobbying him to have this decision reversed.
The Chaser’s Media Circus is produced by Giant Dwarf wasting taxpayers’ money.
And slightly less news-ish, this from a day or so ago:
GRUEN: We’re back. Spin Free.
Returns Wednesday September 9 at 8.30pm
Monday, August 17, 2015 — The Rose d’Or winning series returns for its 12th incarnation: Gruen.
Back when we debuted in 2008, Blockbuster and Borders were flourishing and Australia still manufactured cars. Needless to say, stuff has changed.
We’re still the show that analyses what most other shows are there to sell: advertising. But we’re also the show that knows you can’t click on a link without surrendering all your personal data to a corporation trying to sell you shampoo. Gruen will run an X-Ray over advertising, spin, branding, positioning and image control, wherever they are found.
The selling of ideas and products will always amuse, bewilder, and irrationally annoys us – but now it’s more sophisticated, targeted and occasionally downright creepy. Mostly it just understands you better, so we’re here to provide you with the tools to understand it.
Wil Anderson will continue as host, and Australia’s favourite advertising execs – Todd Sampson and Russell Howcroft will remain. But we will be seeking other new panelists from spin doctors and marketing gurus both in Australia and visiting.
Zapruder’s have delivered The Gruen Transfer and Gruen Nation, which broke the mould and enjoyed the dedication of a wide audience that’s thirsty for that creative edge and great entertainment.
Each week we will be dissecting the spin of a topical story that has made headlines either in Australia or overseas. Classic segments will return, such as ‘The Pitch’, where some of Australia’s most creative agencies attempt to complete an impossible brief.
“After the show took a well-earned break in 2014, we’re seriously excited to have Wil and Gruen back, lifting the lid on advertising, spin and marketing, examining how we are sold to, and how we are sold.”
Jon Casimir, ABC TV Head of Entertainment.
“I couldn’t be more excited to be working with the amazing team at CJZ on a new
series of Gruen. And I’m even more grateful they didn’t replace me with Adam Hills.”
Wil Anderson, Host & Executive ProducerWe’ll revisit the backbones of branding like beauty and beverages, and spend time in the nervous system of 21st century life, giving online marketing, celebrities, sportspeople, and world leaders the full Gruen treatment.
Gruen: the show that knows nearly as much about advertising as advertisers know about you airs at 8.30pm, September 9th on ABC TV.
Jesus, just when you think you’ve hit peak smug that hits your inbox. “Broke the mould”, they say. “Combined Worlds Funniest Commercials with a panel show and have acted like they fucking cured cancer ever since”, we say.
And then there’s this: “We’re still the show that analyses what most other shows are there to sell: advertising”. Say what? Technically that’s kind of right – you come for the show, stay for the advertising – but who really thinks, say, The Block is “selling” advertising? They’re selling products via advertising on the show… and if we can figure this out but a press release for a show ABOUT ADVERTISING can’t get it right, how shit must the show… oh wait, it’s Gruen, we don’t need to guess how shit it’ll be.
Not that another go round with the half-baked Media Circus seems any more appealing. It’s really not the best sign in the world when your press release is packed with self-deprecation. mostly because it feels just a little bit like you’re trying to get in first before anyone else can point out your flaws. Here’s an alternative: if you know your flaws, why not try to fix them? If your press release points out that news trivia quizzes are kind of lame… maybe don’t make one?
But let’s be honest here: this is all good news for the ABC. Everything new they’ve tried in comedy this year – and it’s only been a handful of shows – has either flopped or stunk. We pretty much expected that from the panel side of things and The Weekly, but what happened to scripted comedy? Remember when the ABC used to make that stuff? Now Please Like Me is bought and paid for by a US cable network and they can’t even get Sammy J and Randy’s show onto a free-to-air channel.
So being able to remind people of that magical time when audiences actually looked forward to the ABC’s comedy output is a big win for them. Not for viewers, mind you: both these series are clapped out beaters dragging themselves around the paddock to give everyone a chance to see what “collecting a paycheck” looks like. But if they can bring back enough of their old fans one more time, the ratings might be enough to stave off disaster in 2015.
2016, on the other hand, is not something any of us should be looking forward to.
Vale Dirty Laundry Live
So Dirty Laundry Live wrapped up for 2015 last week, and the fact it’s taken us until now to mention it should give you some idea of how difficult we found it to have anything of note to say on the subject. And just because we’re saying something now, don’t think for a second we solved that problem.
To get the positive stuff out of the way first, it’s easily the best Australian panel show on the ABC at the… oh, it’s the only panel show on the ABC at the moment? Well, it’s still pretty good. It’s a weird fit for the ABC circa 2015, where pretty much all comedy programming aspires towards the bland, but that’s a plus for those of us who like their comedy to contain actual comedy.
It’s still too long, mind you, and while the panel banter remains more hit than miss thanks to a rock-solid core that work well together, a lot of the segments are increasingly chummy in a way that suggests new viewers aren’t all that welcome. But it’s at that stage of its lifespan where new viewers probably aren’t much of a possibility, so why not go for in-jokes and mates laughing at each other because they’re mates? And there’s still outside guests joining them on the panel often enough to bring people in that way.
Really, the only thing we’d add from our review at the start of the series is that it seems even more obvious now that it’s topped out as far as any kind of wider appeal goes. The quirky throwaway comedy on ABC2 has failed to become the next Spicks and Specks or Glasshouse on ABC1. No-one’s embedding DLL clips on their website saying “The Dirty Laundry Live crew just nailed it!”
Sure, that was obviously never their intention (and never all that likely either) but no doubt there’s a few people at the ABC who wouldn’t have minded in the slightest if that had somehow magically happened with the shift to the main network. It’s not like any of their other comedy panel shows have made any kind of impression on the nation since 2008.
The question now becomes: is there still space for a show like Dirty Laundry Live at the ABC, or will it be bumped for some sack of crap with “wider appeal”? Is being a funny panel show good enough these days, or is there only money in the kitty for shows that are (or have the potential to be in the eyes of the ABC) big hits? Guess that depends on what value ABC management puts on being funny over being popular.
Good luck with that.