Charlie Pickering delivered a reasonably good rant about rape culture this week on his ABC show The Weekly. His scriptwriter did a nice job skewering stereotypes about how women ‘ask’ to be assaulted by the way they dress and behave. Pickering finished by suggesting that a better approach would be to tell men not to rape (a great point that’s been stated by thousands of feminists before him, none of whom are quoted in this segment). The segment finished with a neat song performed by Geraldine Quinn, Miranda Tapsell and Angie Hart called ‘Don’t Rape’.
Less than 24 hours later, the video had been written about in at least three news sources with comments posted urging for international recognition of the work and talking about how important men like Pickering are (not dissimilar to the reaction he got a few weeks ago when he said what tons of Aboriginal writers and thinkers had already said about Adam Goodes).
Australian Tumbleweeds
Australia's most opinionated blog about comedy.
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.
Struggling Weekly
It’s pretty difficult to find anyone online willing to utter a harsh word against Charlie Pickering and The “nailed it!” Weekly. That’s because The Weekly is happily doing a shitload of their work for them: when The Weekly runs a segment on, say, how people who boo Adam Goodes are racist, or how rape culture is A Bad Thing, all they have to do is take that clip, slap “The Weekly nails sexual harassment!” on it, and hey presto – fresh content.
So thumbs up to Clem Ford over at Daily Life – a site not exactly estranged from the concept of praising Pickering’s work – for pointing out the obvious:
Ford’s point is that women – lots and lots of women – have said exactly the same thing to resounding media silence, while Pickering gets all the praise simply because he’s a dude. It’s a totally valid point, but we’d like to make a slightly different one: Pickering and The Weekly pull this shit on every single topic they cover.
Week in, week out Pickering and The Weekly not only tackle issues with clearly defined “right” and “wrong” sides – what, you expected him to come out and say Rape Culture was ok? – they tackle issues that have already been done to death by smarter, funnier people elsewhere. And by “elsewhere” we mean “elsewhere online”, because The Weekly seems to be put together based on the assumption that every single one of their viewers has spent a sum total of zero time online over the past week.
Pickering is a one-man smug-fest all on his own, but being the frontman on a show built around acting like widely-discussed internet topics are in fact deeply buried social issues they’ve uncovered all on their lonesome doesn’t help one bit. If you’re going to take that approach, it helps to actually be giving audiences something new: one of the numerous ways in which the late, lamented Hamster Wheel shat all over The Weekly is that with The Hamster Wheel The Chaser had a bunch of people actually doing original research into the Australian media. That way, even if the jokes tanked there was a pretty good chance you were being told something you didn’t know.
In contrast, The Weekly has failed to break a single story, failed to highlight an issue not already covered better elsewhere, and failed to create a single moment of comedy that might excuse any of its other many, many sins. It’s a show that hasn’t had an original thought in its life: it seems it’s really easy to nail it each week when you’re just handing out opinions your fans already agree with.
Just to make it perfectly clear, while we fully agree with Ford – and anyone else who’d like to point out that everything The Weekly does has been done better and earlier elsewhere – the biggest sin here as far as we’re concerned is that the show simply isn’t funny. It’s a series of plodding news reports with some strangulated faux-outrage smeared over the top: either be more informative and give up on comedy entirely, or take the time to come up with some real jokes about the state of the world today.
Of course, this is a problem all news comedy shows face. The more obscure the news covered the less funny the show is going to be because of the whole “having to explain what the joke is” problem, while only covering the really big stories means that your show is both dull (everyone having already heard the news) and competing with everyone else for the good jokes. It’s a tricky balancing act, and it’s one that hardly any show gets right all the time.
And yet The Weekly never gets it right. Every week it serves up generic opinions on topics covered more fully and successfully elsewhere, and then it fails to actually wring any humour out of them. Our advice is simple: if you can’t be original, be funny. And if you can’t be funny, presumably The Weekly is still hiring.
Seventeen nine-tee-hee nine reasons to laugh
Umbrella recently released the DVD Studio 9 – The Home of Australian Television, featuring golden moments from Channel 9’s glorious past. As you might expect this includes yet another opportunity to see Graham Kennedy’s set falling over, plus all the other classic Channel 9 clips that get dragged out every time they do one of these retrospectives. And who isn’t prepared to spend $17.99 to watch all them again?
To put this in a little context, the golden moments package is actually a program from 2004 called Inside Studio 9, a celebration of live TV broadcast from the famous GTV-9 studio where shows such as In Melbourne Tonight (both versions), The Don Lane Show and The Footy Show were made. Hosted by Don Lane, it does (mercifully) include many, many clips you probably haven’t seen before, including performances from well-known local and international acts, talent show contestants making dicks of themselves, live ads going wrong, and some really quite dodgy clips of Sam Newman and his footy-loving co-panellists doing their thing*.
If the latter turns you off, at least most of the clips last less than 20 seconds. On the other hand, if you want any sort of context for the clips forget it – one joke from a comedian, or one chorus from a singer, or one short anecdote from a chat show guest are all you’re gunna get. As clip show packages of this ilk go it’s pretty good, although what with all the incredibly short clips and with Lane’s links being so short as to barely be worthwhile, you wonder if the producers were on speed when they put this together.
Also on this disc is the notorious Don Lane Celebrity Roast from 1978. Inspired by The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, this is Channel 9’s first attempt at the genre – and as Roastmaster Bert Newton jokes “If this doesn’t rate there’ll be another roast next week…in Kerry Packer’s office!”
Helping Bert to roast Don in the studio are Paul Hogan, David Frost, Whitlam-era Minister Fred Daly and Don Lane Show writer Tim Evans, plus (on film) Sammy Davis Jr, Frank Thring and Toni Lamond. As roasts go this is a fairly gentle affair, with Frank Thring’s section, in which he reads out telegrams from various notables who couldn’t attend, being the only point at which things get truly vicious.
Hoges, Bert and Evans have some pretty funny things to say about Don’s history, professional achievements and personal life, and Sammy Davis Jr and Toni Lamond do their best to be funny in their pre-filmed segments.
David Frost’s appearance is quite interesting, particularly as he spends much of it barely trying not to look as if he has somewhere better to be. A reasonably large proportion of his speech about Don consists of jokes about himself, and when it concludes and Bert holds up a copy of Frost’s (then new) book about his famous interviews with Richard Nixon, it’s hard not wonder if Frost was treating this like a chat show appearance. Or wonder if he’d ever met Don at all!
But despite Frost and the politician-trying-to-be-funny stylings of Fred Daly, this is well worth setting aside 45 minutes to watch. And coupled with the Studio 9 clip fest, it’s several hours-worth of (almost) consistent laughs – and who isn’t prepared to pay $17.99 for that?
* Speaking of dodgy, there are also two clips featuring Rolf Harris in Inside Studio 9.
Cliff 2 Hanger
The last episode of Ryan Shelton’s latest Instagram series Cliff 2 (the sequel to his previous Instagram series Cliff) will be uploaded today to his Instagram account. What will happen? Has Rebrecca killed Cliff? And is there a future in this kind of thing?
Before we vaguely answer at least one of those questions, just a reminder that Instagram only allows you to upload between 3 and 15 seconds of video. And when someone starts to play it, it plays on mute (the user has to tap again to hear the sound). And as soon as the video ends it starts playing again, and will keep playing on a loop unless the viewer taps to stop it or scrolls away. As if less than 15 seconds isn’t restrictive enough for a sitcom episode, in Cliff Shelton can’t have anything important going on sound-wise for the first 1-2 seconds because many people won’t hear it, and he’s got to create a clear endpoint or deliberately structure the ending so he can use the loop back to the start to his advantage.
That’s a lot to think about in a short video, but those restrictions lend themselves to comedy pretty well. Comedy works best when its pacey and loaded with gags, and here Shelton has no choice but to tell his story quickly and to look for any opportunity to insert humour. In Cliff 2 the characters are deliberately odd, with stupid wigs and outfits, who talk in bizarre language and suddenly do strange things – plenty of funny there!
This isn’t necessarily a fair comparison, but it’s a welcome contrast from the sketch shows which stretch out one weak gag over multiple weak sketches (Open Slather) or the sitcoms which waste time on half-arsed, waffly dramatic sub-plots (Please Like Me returns soon!). Perhaps the people with social media-era attention spans have the right idea about comedy after all – get to the gag as soon as possible!
And in the spirit of Cliff 2 we’ll keep this review brief and end it here… Or will we? (Yes – Ed.)
Nailed It Shut
Time was, the idea of having a long-running show was that you’d be able to tweak the format to improve things. Not on the ABC: after last weeks shock discovery that everyone there seems to think that How Not to Behave was a show that reached perfection with episode one, we turned our attention to The Weekly. Surprise surprise: it’s (long-running) business as usual there as well. We know the ABC’s not supposed to be concerned with ratings (and yet…), but we had hoped that attempting to improve their on-air programming was still on their shopping list.
[here’s an interesting tidbit: according to those in the know, the admittedly tiny world of torrenting Australian television shows has given up on torrenting The Weekly. Either ex-pats and TV hoarders aren’t big Charlie Pickering fans, or they figure you can see all the worthwhile bits scattered across the internet captioned “THE WEEKLY NAILED IT AGAIN”]
Then again, considering the format was lifted wholesale from The Daily Show – and you’d have to think recent US comedian guests Bill Hader and Amy Schumer would have raised at least an eyebrow there – why mess with success? And so, aside from shifting around the segments of Kitty Flanagan and Tom Gleeson, there remains little to update when it comes to the basic structure of the show.
Likewise, the content remains filed firmly under “more of the same”. Sure, politicians’ entitlements have been in the news, and then shifting the focus of the segment to target fund-raisers was smart. But what we actually got from all this was a basic political primer – “what’s that? Political campaigns are all about advertising and advertising costs money?” – that didn’t really go anywhere funny. It’s painfully clear that topics and not jokes are the starting point here, which would be fine if the writers were good enough to make any topic funny. They’re not.
Also, forgive us for having no idea whatsoever how television comedy works, but last time we checked there were two main components to creating topical jokes: topical stuff and funny stuff. The previous paragraph pointed out this is a show that hasn’t been great on the funny stuff, and when there’s five minutes on “drugs in sport” it’s not doing so well on the topical side either. You can find an excuse to do drugs in sports jokes every single week. That means that whenever you do decide to do them, it looks like you’ve got nothing better to do.
And if you were taking bets on what big issue would be the centrepiece of The Weekly this week you’re out of luck, because “that lion that dentist shot” was so obviously going to be the frontrunner the bookies shut up shop five minutes after it happened. An internet furore, you say? A hot topic with a clear right side? An issue that has zero effect on how Australians go about their daily lives? Nailed it. We wouldn’t be surprised if The Weekly brought it back next week as a regular segment.
But The Weekly‘s general gutlessness is nothing new. Which is the real problem here: there’s nothing new about any of this. Here’s a scary thought – what if this is the new way that television works? With it becoming accepted wisdom that you’ll never pull a bigger audience than you do on opening night, where’s the incentive to actually work on a show week after week to make it better?
It increasingly seems as if we’re in the worse of all possible worlds, one where long-running comedy series are the norm but they never try to get any better. Why should they? The only people watching by week four are the people who thought weeks one to three were good enough. Improving things might just put them off – and if they leave, there’ll be nobody left watching.
You’d think Australian comedy would be used to that by now.
Bloodbath Aftermath: Why Open Slather still sucks
Is it just us still watching Open Slather? Assuming so, we can report the following: despite the fact that they’ve sacked a large proportion of their original writing team, and that there are now a lot less Downton Abbey sketches…it’s still crap. This isn’t such a surprise as shows like this are like big ships – hard to turn around – and any changes made behind the scenes aren’t going to be obvious to audiences quickly. They also seem to have a whole stack of those RBT sketches to get through, so pre-writers cull material is still going to air.
Maybe the show will have improved by the end of its run, maybe not. Our guess is not, because the central problem with Open Slather remains: ensemble sketches shows written and performed by a bunch of people who’ve never worked together always suck. And as for the possibility that one part of the team might manage to break out with something fresh and funny from beneath the piles of TV parodies and half-arsed running gags…that seems unlikely.
Open Slather has the look and feel of a show which needs to fill air time, where sketches are written and made quickly, and in bulk. The kind of comedy that people laugh very hard at, share with friends and remember years later tends to come from a different place: it comes from like-minded people who know each, getting together to produce something they find funny and believe in. And judging from the end products on display in Open Slather, our guess is that the only thing its writers and cast believe in is whatever money they can get for it doing it.
Whoever pitched this series grossly underestimated the ability of this team to produce a watchable 45 minutes of sketch comedy every week for 20 weeks. And watching Open Slather has become a bit like watching late-noughties phone-in quiz show The Mint: the only thing even slightly compelling about it is that the makers succeed in filling airtime with something vaguely resembling entertainment.
And in a world where the eyeballs of target demographics are glued to clickbait, cat videos and other pointless internet memes, Open Slather is kind of on-trend: it’s creating content to fill in space, rather than content that deserves to exist. Yet, as it’s content that’s not as entertaining or resonant as even a half-arsed cat video, it’s content that really really doesn’t deserve to exist. Sure, this series will limp over the episode 20 line, but that’ll be the end of it. And within a week, no one will remember it was even there.