Australian Tumbleweeds
Tomorrow, You’re Always a Day Away
This is more of an update to our last post than a stand-alone item, but TV Tonight has picked up on the news that Nine is considering a couple of comedies:
Nine is developing two new comedies: a half-hour and a one-hour show.
Andy Ryan, co-head of drama, recently told Fairfax, “Comedy is back on the table in a way that it wasn’t probably five years ago.”
Which is very good news. These appear to be in addition to Stan’s upcoming improvisation comedy, No Activity featuring Patrick Brammall. It feels like a long time since Nine was burnt by Live from Planet Earth, directing much of its comedy into travel shows such as Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year.
As we said in our last post, we’re not all that excited by this news. That’s because we don’t really think it is news. In much the same way that Seven seemed to be continually developing various late-night talk shows throughout the late 00s without ever putting one to air, comedy is currently the kind of format plenty of people (clearly including David Knox at TV Tonight) would love to see come back to commercial television. But the numbers never quite stack up.
That’s not to say they never will again, but it’s hard to see them doing so any time soon. Comedy only works on commercial networks when they can make fun of a topic everyone (or a close to a million people) knows about. Which rules out pop culture (quick, name five current musicians everyone in Australia knows about), which rules out the kind of comedy most of these articles are angling for: remakes of Fast Forward and The Comedy Company.
Seven’s Kinne is the future of commercial sketch comedy: a cheaply made, tightly focused show aimed at a narrow audience and therefore shown on a speciality channel in an out-of-the-way timeslot. As for mainstream sitcoms, the commercial networks already have them – only they wack in a bunch of drama as well and call them House Husbands or Offspring.
We’d love to see comedy make a big return to commercial television, but some vague promises from Nine and an improv show on Stan aren’t the second coming. Presumably Knox knows this:
More than any other genre, Comedy is about throwing a few darts at the target -some will land close to the bull’s eye.
Now, we just need to live in a world where the commercial networks are willing to gamble consistently on comedy over, say, reality shows where the product placement means the show costs them nothing to make,
Or drama series with just enough comedy mixed in to cover all the bases.
Or… hang on, that’s all that the commercial networks make these days.
Damn.
The State of Play in the World Today
Looks like someone at Fairfax has noticed there isn’t much Australian comedy on the commercial networks these days:
Those of us who remember the halcyon days of TV comedy of the late ’80s and early ’90s will know that shows such as The Comedy Company, Fast Forward and Full Frontal were “appointment” television – wildly popular, they made several contributions to the Australian vernacular (who could forget gum-chewing schoolgirl Kylie Mole’s punchline “she goes, she goes … she just goes”?) and gave an outlet for some of the country’s brightest comedic talent, including Magda (Szubanski), Gina (Riley) and Jane (Turner).
Sadly, those days are long gone, and commercial television has very few comedy programs on offer. In fact, outside of the ABC – which continues to support a range of locally-made comedy – and to a lesser extent SBS, there is very little to laugh about. Instead there is a constant stream of reality TV shows, the demand for which never seems to diminish.
Or put another way, if you can remember the Cold War, you might be able to remember the last time Australian comedy was worthwhile. Uh, what?
The trouble with these kind of articles is that they often – well, this one does at least – come from a place that demands a very specific kind of comedy. Unless Australia is generating a series of pop culture-mocking commercial sketch comedies (like they did when the author was young), it’s in the shitter. Still, at least this one isn’t asking why the commercial networks aren’t making sitcoms.
Where to start with the problems here? Well, for one thing, the commercial networks are making local comedy: Seven has two series of Kinne under their belt, Ten has three series of Have You Been Paying Attention, and Nine is never going to let Hamish & Andy back into the country. It might not be the same as all the kids in the playground talking about how awesome last night’s Fast Forward was, but it’s a lot healthier than the market for other late 80s relics like talk shows or late night news programs.
And then there’s the more subtle mistakes:
Comedy shows, on the other hand, tend to run for half an hour at a time, and even after that investment is made, they can flop spectacularly – Nine’s Ben Elton Live from Planet Earth and Seven’s Let Loose Live are examples of local comedies that had very short runs simply because their ratings tanked.
No, they had very short runs because their ratings tanked and they were broadcast live, and so could be openly axed without leaving behind a stockpile of publicly embarrassing episodes to get rid of. Remember the second series of The Wedge, shown late on a Saturday night after it flopped? Remember how Randling just kept on going long after everyone stopped caring?
And how this line got through to the keeper is a mystery:
[Andy] Ryan [Nine Network co-head of drama] also argues that comedy takes a slightly different guise these days, citing the hybrid genre “dramedy” House Husbands, for example.
Clearly he’s referring to comedy taking on the guise of something that’s not funny.
Like all good newspaper features, this firmly avoids coming to any real conclusion and yet still somehow manages to serve one up anyway: sure, Australian comedy (as we narrowly define it) might be dead on the commercial networks right now, but don’t worry – it’s coming back!
Um, no it’s not. Mentioning that the commercial networks have a couple of comedies in the pipeline isn’t cause for a sigh of relief, because they always have a couple of comedies in the pipeline. And they never get out of the pipeline because compared to pretty much anything else local they could be making, they cost too much and promise too little.
We’ve explained a bunch of times in our reviews of The Weekly why the old Full Frontal model of comedy is dead: even in Australia, pop culture is just too fragmented in 2015 to find enough targets everyone knows. Another Downton Abbey sketch? Uh, no thanks.
Without pop culture – and putting aside sport, which has its own comedy ecosystem (even we don’t cover The Footy Show) – all that’s left to laugh at on commercial television is the news and the world of personal relationships. The commercial networks aren’t going to go hard on news, as it might piss off advertisers, plus news is a big ratings winner for them, so a show that points out that much of their product is drivel might not go down well.
As for personal relationships… hey, you’ve already got House Husbands.
P.S. Anyone else notice that this article miscaptioned Fast Forward member Steve Blackburn as “Steve Blackman”. Shows you how much they really loved the old days of Aussie comedy, doesn’t it?
Vale John Pinder
We were sad to hear of the death of legendary comedy producer and co-founder of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival John Pinder. He died of cancer at the age of 70 on Tuesday.
“John Pinder was a great, big, loud, in-your-face force of comedic nature” said comedian and broadcaster Richard Stubbs on his Melbourne radio show, who wasn’t even slightly exaggerating. Most Australian comedians owe Pinder their careers; he discovered or championed many, but more significantly he created the scene in which they now work.
Born in New Zealand, Pinder grew up next to a lot where circus’s would perform. He also loved radio comedies such as The Goon Show, and was a keen fan of music. In the late 1960’s Pinder co-founded a band management company, managing bands such as Daddy Cool, but by 1970 he was organising rock concerts in Melbourne. These concerts required fill-in acts between bands, which sometimes included Max Gillies and fellow satirists from the Australian Performing Group, or a group of young ex-architecture and law students from Melbourne University called The Razzle Dazzle Revue (Rod Quantock, Mary Kenneally, Steve Blackburn, Alan Pentland and Geoff Brooks).
At this time the only venue for live comedy in Melbourne was the rear auditorium of the Pram Factory, home to the Australian Performing Group. The Razzle Dazzle Revue put on a show there (attended one evening by Pinder) but despite its success there was nowhere else for the group to go after the run. Just as they were thinking of disbanding, Pinder opened The Flying Trapeze Café, a live cabaret venue operating on a shoestring budget; the Razzle Dazzle Revue soon took up residence there.
Pinder’s motivation for opening The Flying Trapeze, it is said, was a “desire to create somewhere interesting to spend his evenings”. He certainly succeeded as the venue quickly became popular, with audience members often spilling out of the Café and on to the street straining to get a glimpse of the show. Building on this success Pinder opened The Last Laugh in 1977. Early acts at the Last Laugh included Richard Stubbs, Peter Rowsthorn and Circus Oz.
By the 1980s other live comedy and cabaret venues (including the famous Le Joke, located above the Last Laugh) had begun to open in Melbourne, and the city was home to a vibrant comedy scene. Comedians starting out now had somewhere to play and TV was also interested in the burgeoning scene. Shows such as Australia – You’re Standing In It, The D-Generation, The Comedy Company and The Big Gig featured acts who’d got their first professional experience in Pinder’s venues.
So big did the Melbourne comedy scene become that in 1987 John Pinder, along with others, co-founded the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. By the mid-1990’s it rivalled similar festivals in Edinburgh and Montreal, with its success leading to other Australian cities putting on their own comedy festivals to ensure that touring international acts would visit them. Pinder himself helped found or build-up several of these, and today’s circuit of summertime Australian and New Zealand comedy festival owes its existence to him.
Less well known is Pinder’s move in to television in the 1990’s, first as a consultant on Tonight Live with Steve Vizard, and then to Foxtel’s Comedy Channel. According to Wikipedia, it was in this latter role that he discovered Rove McManus.
In the 2000’s Pinder was asked to create a comedy festival at the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta, which became known as The Big Laugh. He ended up reuniting British comedy trio The Goodies in 2005, which led to an Australia and UK tour of their show, and also produced the first live shows of The 3rd Degree, which later transferred to TV as The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. He also helped devise Sydney’s World’s Funniest Island event, which launched in 2009.
There have been many deserved tributes to John Pinder in the last day or so, and there will be many more, but we think one of the best comes from Richard Harris’ 1994 book Punch Lines – Twenty Years of Australian Comedy.
John Pinder’s desire to create somewhere interesting to spend his evenings had unwittingly laid the foundations for a revolution in Australian comedy which would continue for almost two decades.
If Harris was writing that today he’d need change the “two” to a “four”, because there wouldn’t be the sort of comedy scene we have in Australia without John Pinder. Australian comedy owes him its life.
The Weekly Week Six: The End.
This was the week where The Weekly finally decided it was time to stop carving out that rut it’s been so proud of and just settle back into it. No more tinkering with the format: everything we saw this week was old news. More importantly, the tone of the show – which is probably the biggest problem – seems set. If you like Charlie Pickering being astonished, that’s a pit that doesn’t have a bottom.
The trouble with lifting your act wholesale from John Stewart is that John Stewart actually has a point of view. Pickering… not so much. Ending a report on gay marriage with “When an Englishmen, and Irishman and an Aussie walk into a bar, it turns out we’re the punchline” is not just a dumb line – it’s basically the safest possible thing you can say on the topic. You just did a story on how three quarters of Australians support gay marriage: you can afford to go harder on the guys who don’t.
But then there’s Tom Gleeson’s utterly shithouse “Hard Chat” segment, in which he gets the people who run this country and asks them “what would a dick xylophone sound like?” Ouch, sick burn. Looks like once again, the ABC has served up a comedy segment where the point seems to be to make politicians look good. Of course, even a segment where you sat politicians down then smacked them across the back of the head with a chair leg would still make them look good. SO DON’T HAVE THEM ON.
This is the last week we’re going to bother with The Weekly (hurrah!). It seems to be happy with what it’s doing: acting like it’s smarter than it really is and funnier than it really is. And that’s not its fault. Being on the ABC (a network that has to appeal to everyone from old farts and grumpy right-wing nutters to smart-arses who think they know a lot about comedy) trying to do a show designed for US pay TV (where the whole idea is to do something really well that will only appeal to a narrow audience) meant this was never going to work. And lo, it doesn’t.
Yes, it could be a lot better than it is. Maybe try giving Tom Gleeson no air time. Maybe get in another comedian or two to do short self-contained bits so the show doesn’t leave you thinking “how the fuck did that drag on for half an hour?” Maybe either actually make the big “hard-hitting” story actually hard hitting (that is to say, take a swing at some actually controversial issues – and maybe even take a stand on them too), or make it a lot sillier and cut it in half.
But then you’ve still got Charlie Pickering. Others have pointed out that his entire career arc has been from fake television news reader to real television news reader and back to fake, which gives you a pretty solid idea of why he got the job and why he’s not very good at it. The default setting for a host on a “John Oliver-like” show should be righteous indignation: who-gives-a-fuck-smarm is not the same thing.
The Weekly is bland, safe, largely pointless and a constant reminder that the ABC’s favourite kind of satire is the kind that doesn’t actually rock the boat. Fourteen more weeks to go, everyone: hope you brought a pillow.
Spread a Little Too Thin
Initially we thought Open Slather was going to be two shows roughly bolted together. As The Comedy Channel’s high profile return to original Australian comedy, the promos traded hard – very hard – on the idea that this was gathering the titans of local sketch comedy circa 1990: Magda Szubanski, Gina Riley, Jane Turner, Michael Veitch, Glenn Robbins, and Marg Downey, with the slightly more recent Shane Jacobson and Stephen Curry bringing up the rear.
But having been around the block a few times ourselves (and having actually read the various press releases), we noticed there seem to also be an awful lot of lower-profile names involved. So we settled in on Sunday night expecting to see a show with two kinds of sketches: a handful of ones where the big names tossed off a classic comedy character or two, and a whole lot of ones where the big names were nowhere to be found.
And that’s pretty much what we got. Only we got a whole lot more besides. Australian sketch comedy hasn’t exactly been thriving these last few years, but there’s been a slow but steady trickle of it nonetheless. And a lot of those shows have developed, even only vaguely, their own styles. Pretty much all of which were on display in Open Slather.
The sketch about a shirtless guy who danced around outside the weather bureau to figure out what the “feels like” temperature was? Straight out of the Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting handbook: come up with a quirky idea, then just have a character stand there saying “this is stupid” (the joke is that the “this is stupid” character is right, but also shunned!)
The sketch about a guy who lets off a massive fart after his date leaves, only to have her come back to try and get her keys and he won’t let her in? Could have come off an episode of Kinne, what with that show’s focus on relationships (and sometimes farts).
The Fifty Shades of Grey music video? Didn’t Double Take do this kind of thing every week in a desperate attempt to “go viral”?
The Masterchef parody that turned all existential and started going on about “the multiverse”? That was the kind of thing Mad as Hell might have done, only in half the time and with a much stronger punchline.
The Downton Abbey sketch? It’s not a good sign when Wednesday Night Fever got there first. Same with the Clive Palmer impression oh great you’ve put the two of them together.
Actually, the Downton Abbey sketch was a handy reminder of why this kind of sketch show often doesn’t work any more. Back in the Fast Forward days – you know, the reason why anyone remembers the “big names” in this show’s cast – there were four television channels (five if you counted SBS, which no-one did), a bunch of radio stations, a few magazines and that was pretty much it for Australian culture. If you wanted to make fun of something, easy: everyone knew what you were talking about.
These days pop culture is so all over the place that there simply aren’t the kind of mass audience shows Fast Forward used to make fun of. Downton Abbey might have come close three years ago, but that was… well, three years ago. And there’s been nothing since. As for building your sketch show around show parodies and making fun of commercials? Who even watches commercials these days?
So the best stuff here was mostly the stuff that just told a joke. Curry and Jacobson’s priests wondering about dinosaurs was good; Glenn Robbins’ various drug tests for drivers was admirably straightforward and got the hell out each time the joke was told. The character parodies were generally pretty strong, even if the sketches they were in (especially that endless 60 Minutes sketch) weren’t.
(Madga’s “Gina Minehart” sketch on how mining works was exactly the joke we expected: “what’s mine is mine. What’s yours is also mine”. We need never see that character again)
And then there was the end credits bit where complaints from the Domino’s Pizza website were juxtaposed with footage of starving refugees. Huh? Not only was it tonally a full 180 degrees from the rest of the show, but what was the point meant to be? “Stop complaining losers, there are people out there with real problems”? So what, no-one in Australia should complain about anything because people in other countries have it so much worse? You’re going to have to be a shitload funnier to get away with that point.
Still, there were enough decent sketches in Open Slather to make it worth sticking with. There was also a Rake parody called Rack where the only joke was that the lead character kept saying “cunt”. It’s almost impressive the way the show worked so hard to make sure no-one could possibly enjoy every sketch. Here’s hoping they eventually figure out who their audience is meant to be.
The Weekly Week Five – argle bargle or foofaraw?
Hey, remember this?
Don’t worry if you don’t recall that classic segment from 2013’s This Week Live, as Tom Gleeson kindly brought it back on this week’s episode of The Weekly rebranded as “Hard Chat”. Yep, This Week Live might have been axed due to low ratings and general disinterest, but that doesn’t mean its segments can’t live on and hit the same comedic heights that made it so successful the first time.
Actually, the best way to watch this week’s episode is backwards, so first you get Gleeson recycling his 2013 interview antics and then eventually you get to Pickering’s mock outrage at Bill Shorten saying a bunch of school kids are “making more content than some TV stations”. Yeah, way off beam there, Bill.
What else is there to say? The bit on halal certification was actually pretty good for a segment from Hungry Beast or The Feed, we didn’t spot any coverage of Rebel Wilson’s age so once again all the really big stories were skipped over, and everything else… wait, was there anything else? Oh yeah, Pickering’s big interview was ok. So a 50% strike rate with talking to guests there.
We probably shouldn’t grumble too much about the halal certification story, considering it was – for a segment on The Weekly – actually a decent mix of information and comedy. But when you’re doing an “educational” comedy bit, it seems fair to ask: who exactly are you trying to educate?
On The Checkout, it’s obvious: you tune in for consumer advice, there’s a bit of comedy in there somewhere. On Mad as Hell, there’s no education past the occasional brief bit to set up the context for a news joke. But giving a quarter of your show over to explaining that the nutjobs complaining against halal certification are nutjobs? The people who care either way have already made up their minds and the people who don’t are wondering where the laughs are.
Complaining about halal certification is stupid. We think so, The Weekly thinks so. So why spend eight minutes on a segment educating us on a topic we agree with? Well, clearly some people don’t think it’s stupid and maybe they were watching – perhaps The Weekly thinks they can change peoples minds? Oh wait, this is a show that started with five minutes of jokes about how scary some bikies look. A show that keeps running “Inside the Insiders”. A show that made and put to air a supercut of newsreaders talking about the size of hail.
We’re what, a full quarter of the way through the series and the guys at The Weekly still don’t seem to get how this whole “news satire” thing works. Probably because the thing that makes news satire work – having a firm point of view and using it to hammer at news stories – is the thing the ABC desperately wants to avoid with a federal Liberal government. Explaining a joke kills a joke: when you’re making fun of the issues, you have to be able to assume your audience gets where you’re coming from.
But the ABC is all about balance and making sure they don’t come off as leaning too heavily to one side or the other. So presumably, that means when The Weekly wants to go hard on a right-wing issue, they really have to make sure they back it up by explaining their case. Which kills whatever jokes they were trying to make.
Depressing stuff. Good thing all their non-political comedy is lame too, hey?
The Agony of Vale
The present series of The Agony of… ended this evening, but don’t expect an exciting new series to replace it next week. Oh no. Next week the ABC will be filling the Wednesday 9pm timeslot with a repeat of an old Agony episode. And the following week? It’s the start of an all new series of Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery.
We make two observations at this point: 1) So, the ABC couldn’t afford to produce just one more episode of what must be the cheapest show in the world to make? And 2) Looks like the ABC has decided that 9pm on Wednesdays is the “Slightly amusing” timeslot. FFS.
You know what we’re going to say now: we like actual comedy, you know, that increasingly old-fashioned style of laugh-getting that involves writers coming up with a funny script and talented character actors performing it. We don’t want to watch “sub-Q&A public affairs in talking heads form” or “moving interview with famous person”, especially when some of the talking heads or famous people involved could provide us with good solid laughs if given half a chance.
So, why aren’t they given half a chance? Did all those times the Murdoch press expressed OUTRAGE at The Chaser spook ABC management? And is that why we rarely see members of The Chaser in anything that isn’t an internet-era homage to The Investigators.
One theory that has crossed our mind is that the ABC’s “edgy” comedy ambitions (and they do exist) don’t align with the comedic tastes of their primary audience: the over 60’s. And with the policy seemingly being that all the budget should go to programs that will air in prime time, there’s no way the ABC can do what they used to – make “edgy” comedy programs for younger audiences which will air in late night timeslots, and keep the oldies satisfied with more mainstream fare during prime time. Hence show after show which won’t upset the Boomers, and a smattering of edgier shows for the younger folk (Mad As Hell, Dirty Laundry Live).
Don’t get us wrong, we’re more than happy to watch comedians giving funny opinions on things, or to see how the environment in which a famous person grew up influenced their later career, but can anyone claim that The Agony of… or Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery are doing either of those things well?
Untitled Rebel Wilson Project (date to be confirmed)
Hey, remember when we wrote this back in September 2013?
Hmm. Either she was actually born in 1980 and she’s shaved around six years off her age, or she made Bogan Pride aged 22 and Fairfax totally stuffed it up. Who profits from having Rebel Wilson lose six years in age between 2008 and 2013? We’re going to go with “Rebel Wilson”.
Looks like Mamamia’s only just now getting caught up:
Rebel Wilson celebrated her 29th birthday this year.
Which is interesting, because Rebel is actually a 36-year-old called Melanie Elisabeth Bowndes who graduated from Parramatta’s Tara Anglican School in 1997
What took them so long? Seriously, even a not-that-recent story about her in the Fairfax press made sure to mention her stated age was questionable – plus Mamamia reported the exact same story back at the start of February:
Aussie actress Rebel Wilson has just turned 29. Apparently.
I say ‘apparently’, not because I think she looks or acts any older or younger than that but because the world seems confused about Rebel’s exact age.
At least when we broke the story – okay, when we did some basic maths and fact-checking, which seems to put us ahead of 80% of the Australian media – we had a reason:
This article spends most of its time hailing Wilson for being brave and authentic and in-your-face regarding her size – because there’s never been a funny fat person before, right everybody? – while blatantly tip-toeing around another area where that assessment of her character doesn’t really seem to apply.
And as the years have passed that assessment of Ms Wilson’s character – that she’s someone willing to be authentic when that helps her career, and then full of shit when she thinks that’ll help her out – seems to have been born out:
“In Australia there’s this bizarre culture where they celebrate the mediocre people.” – Rebel Wilson
That’s the kind of thing people should be calling Wilson out on, not her age. Actors (and people in loads of other professions too) lie about their age all the time to get work – it’s not ideal, but neither is a society that values youth to an irrational extent. Moving overseas then claiming you had to leave the country because your homeland doesn’t value talented people? Yeah, you’re a dickhead.
Or maybe, and it’s a crazy thought we know, if the media’s looking to be critical they could take a look at the actual comedy Ms Wilson’s been doing? Her entire act for the last decade or so has consisted entirely of her making fat jokes about herself (her most successful character to date is actually listed in the credits as “Fat Amy”) and saying “shocking” things as quick comedy relief. That’s fine as far as it goes: every single time she’s tried to take it any further (Bogan Pride, Super Fun Night) she’s fallen flat on her arse.
Unfortunately, with the current box office success of Pitch Perfect 2 – yes we’ve seen it, yes Wilson has a slightly larger role this time around, yes it’s just more of the same from her, no, she can’t really sing all that well – it seems likely that we’ll have to put up with a few more years of the media lapping up Wilson’s claims that there were no funny fat people or funny Australians or funny women before she burst on the scene.
And then she’ll be forty.
The Weekly Week Four: Yeah, We’re Not Going To Do This Every Week
This was the week it took the ABC’s top topical news satire program less than two minutes before breaking out the Mark “Jacko” Jackson jokes. You remember, that guy from before Charlie Pickering hit puberty? C’mon, we know the average age of an Australian comedy writer is “I used to work for Max Gillies”, but this is ridiculous. Especially when only seconds ago there were jokes about how messy teenagers rooms are. What’s next, a “get off my lawn” gag?
But at least – and we’re saying “at least” in the heaviest sigh you can imagine – The Weekly was kind of sort of nearly almost talking about how over-the-top the current round of “shit, teenagers are making pipe bombs” terrorism alarmism is. And then they made some actual decent points about how “droughts and flooding rains” have actually gotten measurably worse since that “droughts and flooding rains” poem was written. Pow! Bam! Getting shit done y’all!
Don’t worry though, soon they were back on track and making sure that clip of Joe Hockey having a selfie taken with a female fan got an airing. You know how we’re constantly banging on about how any halfway decent comedy show shouldn’t have politicians on because no-matter what the show does to them, simply by getting involved the politicians come out looking better than when they go in? It also applies to every “ha ha, look a crazy person likes a politician” clip ever. Someone wants a photo with a politician? How is that news?
And while it wasn’t exactly all downhill from there, that fake Budget trailer really, really stunk. It’s week four now, so we all know the drill: the first five minutes or so have all the rapid-fire “that was the week that was” gags, then here comes Tom Gleeson doing what he does. On the up side this week that did involve him pointing out that “surpluses are overrated”, which in Australia 2015 is basically like waving around a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book.
The frustrating thing about this show is that it gets close to being smart just often enough to make it seem like something smart and funny is just around a corner that never quite arrives. It’s afraid to go deep – yes, this is the fourth week we’ve said that – but it does occasionally drop a hint or two that it knows what “deep” is. You’re not making a wacky morning zoo radio show here, this is oh wait a whole bunch of jokes about Kim Jong-un, scourge of morning television shows looking for lightweight news to pad out the news segment because both hosts need a full three minutes to neck the required amount of gin to get through the next half hour.
“But Grumbleweeds,” you sigh, “they did point out that North Korea commits massive human rights abuses! And then they said that stuff isn’t funny!” Sure they did. But the idea isn’t to make a bunch of lightweight jokes then pull a grim face and say “but seriously…” The idea is to take the serious stuff, think about the ways that it’s funny that aren’t “fat guys like food!” and “ha ha, in some primitive parts of the world they still smoke cigarettes!, and then make those jokes so we get that an issue is both serious and ridiculous at the same time.
“Is it because the horror is simply too much to bear,” Pickering says, like the mish-mash of a segment he’s just led us through actually meant anything more than a bunch of wild swings between “MethDonalds” jokes and wanting us to be scared that North Korea’s nuclear missiles could possibly reach Australia. “The horror”? So wait, this was a segment that was arguing that we shouldn’t make fun of North Korea because it’s actually a horrible place? Then… what was with all the jokes making fun of North Korea?
And it got even better. “Maybe it’s worth remembering that story,” Pickering says after announcing that the footage we just saw (where he said Kim Jong-un looked like “a fat baby”) was actually illustrating a report of Kim having fifteen people killed, “the next time some knob on television tries to use Kim Jong-un as a punchline”. AND HE WASN’T TALKING ABOUT THE LAST FIVE MINUTES OF HIS OWN SHOW.
(yes, he was talking about himself on The Project. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t just doing the exact same thing on The Weekly)
And again, the frustration comes from the way The Weekly almost gets it right. A segment about how the media uses North Korea as light and silly news when it’s actually a nightmare run by horrible people is a good idea. But this just wandered all over the place – it made its point, then went back to jokes, then made the same point again, then more jokes. If it was a high school essay you’d make the kid do it over again.
Also, is it possible that no-one realised that shaking your head sadly over North Korea’s addiction to notorious stimulant crystal meth then following it up with a wacky comedy segment about notorious stimulant coffee was slightly inconsistent? No, they’re not the same thing, but from a distance – the kind of distance a comedy show is meant to cultivate – they’re both stimulants people take to rev themselves up to stay awake during the soul-destroying work that absorbs so many of their waking hours they don’t get enough sleep to properly function. You know what’s funny? The idea that the poor working slobs of North Korea are all that different from us chumps.
The interview segment was fine as far as these things go, which is to say it was painful but not crippling, and then oh look a bit on a wacky game show, we’d make a Clive James reference but the fact we remember when Clive James used to host a show making fun of wacky overseas game shows just makes us look like massive hypocrites after that crack about Mark “Jacko” Jackson at the start of this review. Let’s all just move on with our lives, okay? Let’s all just pretend this never happened.