Not long after voting opened for these awards, we were contacted by a cast member from an Australian comedy series we’d recently reviewed. While our review of their show was fairly positive – at least by our standards, but more on that later – this cast member was angry that we had characterised a portion... Read More »
Aside from how to hate life in all its forms, what did we learn from the latest season of Gruen? Because if you ask around, that’s generally seen as Gruen‘s big appeal: it’s a show that educates people about how the media, and advertising in particular, works. As education is obviously a good thing, Gruen... Read More »
Okay, so we’ve already made our moral objections to Gruen painfully clear. Someone has to: a few days ago we heard an ABC radio host describe Gruen as a show that “hates advertising”. Yeah, it hates advertising so much all it does is show ads. This is a show where a panelist can say with... Read More »
Ok, so Gruen is back tomorrow night after close to a year away, and what’s changed? Oh that’s right: the world has gone to shit. And here’s a fun fact: it’s all advertising’s fault. The theory is that the numerous shitful things that have happened over the last year or so – Brexit, the rise... Read More »
Press release time! Gruen returns for 2017 with its 99th episode Friday, August 11, 2017 — THIS IS A PRESS RELEASE TO SELL GRUEN… There will be grandiose language, hastily gathered quotes and just enough information to sound enticing without actually giving anything away. Yes, the show that unpicks the dark arts of advertising, branding... Read More »
There’s a whole lot of ways you can try to make a television show funnier. Two of the more popular ones are a live audience and editing out the boring bits. So how is it that Have You Been Paying Attention? seems to know how to use both in a way that actually does result... Read More »
What kind of mangled, dead-inside, meths-drinking husk would you have to be to watch Gruen week after week? What possible joy could you have left in your life that watching an endless hategasm pumping black spooge over the very idea of “community” in the name of making a quick buck was worth your while? “How... Read More »
One of the things that’s probably too obvious to be worth mentioning but it’s a pretty dry period for comedy at the moment so here goes is that the days of single-theme comedy shows are all but over. Remember that nightmarish period where it seemed everyone was trying to do “Spicks & Specks, but with... Read More »
The latest series of Gruen wrapped up last week after yet another ratings triumph: Gruen has ended a stellar run on ABC winning its timeslot again with 948,000 viewers. The show has never dipped below 900,000 all season (last week’s 897,000 was eventually adjusted to 900,000). Host Wil Anderson gave no indication if the show would return... Read More »
“Lauren, isn’t that stretching credibility?” That was the moment we gave up on Gruen for 2015 (we made it a whole ten minutes in – gold star for us). Wil Anderson and the panel were talking about a pet food commercial involving warring street gangs that joined forces to save a dog, this issue of... Read More »