Australian comedy in 2014 did pretty much what it was expected to do: not all that much. The days of any local comedy connecting with a mass audience seem to have ended with the mass audience realising Chris Lilley only ever had one idea, while the ABC’s other crowd-pleasing mainstays either tossed off a half-arsed... Read More »
Press release time! Comedy Duo Sammy J and Randy Run Rampant in Ricketts Lane! ABC TV is pleased to announce that filming is underway in Melbourne on the six-part narrative comedy series Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane, written by and starring the Barry award-winning musical comedy duo Sammy J and Randy. With... Read More »
From the ABC’s press release trumpeting their 2015 line-up: Comedian CHARLIE PICKERING returns to ABC to present a news comedy show that promises to be opinionated and outspoken Well, at least they didn’t say “funny”. According to websites much closer to actual news sites than ours: Humorist and self-avowed political junkie Charlie Pickering will host... Read More »
As people who run an awards ceremony of our own – well, the general public vote in the Australian Tumbleweed Awards, but you know what we mean – we have a tiny bit of compassion for the AWGIE awards. Clearly The Australian Writers Guild’s hearts are in the right place: considering how low on the... Read More »
Usually when a television show – especially a comedy – goes off the rails, it’s because those rails were faulty from the start. Remember how Randling filmed every single episode of it’s 27 episode run before a single one went to air? Oh how we laughed – not at the show, but at the foolishness... Read More »
What with there being an election campaign on, politicians are everywhere trying to get us to vote for them. And what with there being a glut of topical comedies on at the moment, any politicians after the “youth vote” are beating down the doors trying to get on those... Read More »
The final line of the second episode of Wednesday Night Fever was “shit happens”. Sometimes it even happens on the ABC. We weren’t part of the group calling for Wednesday Night Fever to be axed after its, um, sub-par debut last week, simply because we didn’t think the mistakes that many saw in the show... Read More »
Back when people cared about such things, there were two schools of thought on how and why the Australian comedy boom of the late 1980s took place. The first school said that, thanks to an expanding culture of live performance both in university revues and dedicated venues, pretty much everyone with an interest in comedy... Read More »
Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – we feel a twinge of sympathy for those ‘real’ journalists who have to cover the world (okay, small planetoid) of Australian television comedy. Because when the best you can do for an opener to your story is this, you know you’ve been given a tough row to hoe:... Read More »
Submitted without comment. Wednesday Night Fever cast set for late night comedy antics Premieres Wednesday July 3 at 9:30pm on ABC1 7×30’ ABC TV today announced that Wednesday Night Fever – its new, late night, weekly comedy series from the makers of controversial hit At Home with Julia – will premiere on... Read More »