After a week that saw the arrival of The White Room and Sleuth 101, plus the return of Hungry Beast, one question leaps to the top of every comedy fan’s list: where are the good comedy shows going to come from? Because just quietly, surely Australia’s attempted every possible variation on the comedy game show... Read More »
In August last year Tony Martin (yes, him again) wrote a piece for The Scrivener's Fancy called Just While We're Waiting, in which he listed some rejected ideas for his weekly column, one of which was “Whatever happened to Whatever Happened to That Guy??” It was a funny question, and one I feel worth expanding on, so hopefully Tony won't mind me stealing... Read More »
The Tumblie awards are ticking along nicely at the moment, but we figured we should take time out from putting the nominations together to salute the departure from our television screens of one of the funniest men currently working in Australian... Read More »
WORST NEWCOMER WORST NEW COMEDY WORST ACTOR WORST ACTRESS WORST ENTERTAINMENT PERSONALITY WORST ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMME WORST SITCOM WORST STAND-UP WORST GAME OR PANEL SHOW WORST FILM WORST SKETCH SHOW WORST OVERALL COMEDY WORST OVERALL CHANNEL / NETWORK FOR COMEDY WORST RADIO COMEDY WORST RADIO PERSONALITY WORST PODCAST OR CD WORST BOOK OR ITEM OF SPIN-OFF... Read More »
This weekend Sydney-siders had the chance to attend World's Funniest Island, a two-day, Big Day Out-style festival of comedy on Cockatoo Island. Amongst the acts were Alexei Sayle, The Goodies, Jane Bussman, Merrick & Rosso, the Scared Weird Little Guys and a host of others. The Goodies' show, featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden with Bill Oddie on video (he's currently ill, so couldn't make it) in conversation with The Chaser's Andrew Hanson, is of particular interest as it featured censored footage from The Goodies which was recently discovered in Australia but no longer exists within the BBC Archives. With recent talk about how “political correctness” and media OUTRAGE is, or may be, resulting in the censorship of comedy, it's interesting to examine what was actually censored from comedy almost 40 years... Read More »
Press releases are supposed to be full of over-oxygenated waffle designed to fan the flames of interest in a program that otherwise would barely rate a grunt as your average viewer clicked past it to repeats of Seinfeld... ... Read More »
Pay TV in this country has been churning out sitcoms for well over a decade now, going at least as far back as Bob Franklin’s Introducing Gary... Read More »