TV ratings for Wednesday June 9th, as taken from Throng: Hey Hey falls below a million Which you’d think would be good news – people seem to be figuring out that not only is Hey Hey it’s Saturday the exact same show week in week out, but it’s also the exact same show that was... Read More »
Ah, yes, the Logies...Australian television's night of nights, where the show itself is often as good as the programmes it's awarding. But despite that, there's always one good reason to tune in: when you bring together a large number of this country's most high profile ego manics and show-offs, and allow them to get as pissed as they like, there's a strong probability that at least one of them will make an idiot of themselves. On live... Read More »
There’s two ways to look at the 20-episode return of Hey Hey it’s Saturday: either it’s a soul-crushing reminder of just how low television can sink in this country, or it’s a great opportunity to kick Daryl Somers in the... Read More »
With a call for nominations for the 2009 Australian Tumbleweed Awards set to go out any day now – remember, Daryl Somers can’t win every... Read More »
Maybe it's because to my generation Don Lane was a guy who'd clearly been famous once, but for what we weren't sure. His appearance on The Late Show was fun, and he presented American football on the ABC and turned up in the odd special, but that was it: he was just some old has-been in embarrassing trousers. So why am I about to launch into a heartfelt tribute to the Lanky Yank? Because, to paraphrase his theme song, he made it so... Read More »
Watching tonight’s episode of Rove – in which he attempted to interview 60 guests in an hour - was always going to be worth a look for comedy... Read More »
Sam Simmons must be kicking himself. If only he’d done The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote in blackface, people might be actually talking about it... Read More »
This week's Hungry Beast proved to be more of the same: unfunny sketches and stuff we already knew. (Snack bars for kids are packed full of sugar, apparently. What next? They tell us the world's round?!) But at least that netball group sex scandal sketch turned out to be a joke (and I don't say that because I agree with The Daily Telegraph that the sketch was an “outrage” and “poor taste humour” that “raise[s] new questions about the judgement of senior ABC staff” - the only outrage and misjudgements here are that a sketch so unfunny could make it to air), and anyway, as the Hungry Beast team gleefully informed us during the opening to episode 2, the real joke wasn't that netballers would get themselves caught in such a scandal, it was on us. Ha ha – fooled you! You thought we'd actually do a longer version next week! You idiot!... Read More »
Here’s a question: what makes the Hey Hey it’s Saturday blackface controversy different from the controversy over The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch, or Hungry Beast’s promo for a fake story about netball rape,... Read More »
There’s a long tradition in post-apocalyptic film and literature where the shattered survivors of a world after some unimaginable holocaust desperately attempt to escape into the... Read More »