Tag: Josh Thomas

Please Like (looking at) Me.

For a show that’s just jam-packed with bubbly hipster fun like wandering through mazes, or running down a well-manicured suburban street with a stolen trolley, or cracking jokes in cool inner-city eateries, or putting a chicken on your head, the one word that comes to mind when thinking about Josh Thomas’ sitcom Please Like Me... Read More »

Australian Media Eager to Please

Back when the ABC was running promos for Please Like Me and The Ex-PM pretty much back-to-back, we noticed something a little unusual: while the commercials for Micallef’s show focused on people actually saying and doing funny things, the Please Like Me spot only showed one thing, over and over – people laughing. Maybe we’re... Read More »

The Answer’s Still No

Press release time! Josh Thomas’ Please Like Me season 3 premieres on ABC Thursday, July 23, 2015 — ABC TV is pleased to announce the highly-anticipated third season of Josh Thomas’ comedy drama Please Like Me will premiere on ABC on Thursday, October 15 at 9.30 p.m. The third season also marks the show’s move... Read More »

Vale Please Like Me series two

In Helen Razer’s recent examination of the history of the laugh track for The Saturday Paper – – which is something of a must-read, if only for the part where she says: It is not so much that the laughter is immediately infectious – psychological studies indicate that a laugh track or an enhanced “live”... Read More »

Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number

How to explain this? Currently halfway through its ten-episode second season, Please Like Me steadily gaining the attention of local audiences. Perhaps it was ‘Josh Thomas baggage’ – as cultural critic Dion Kagan dubs it in his wonderful Metro Magazine article – that kept local audiences away. “Josh Thomas Baggage”. There’s the name of our... Read More »

Or it could just be that the show is shit

Submitted without comment from TVTonight: It’s no laughing matter when a network picks the wrong timeslot for your show, and it’s a fate that appears to have befallen Please Like Me for Josh Thomas. Last year it launched to 176,000 viewers on Thursday nights on ABC2 and was the channel’s highest-rating scripted show. This year... Read More »

The Right Kind of Chap

We’ve been pretty hard on Fairfax’s television reviewers these last few years, what with their blatant nepotism and incessant championing of complete shit. But of late we’ve been wondering: have we gotten them all wrong? Back when Marieke Hardy’s Laid was more than just a punchline to a joke about wasting taxpayer funds, Fairfax’s writers... Read More »

Big Swinging Dicks

“I’m not the problem today mum, you’re the problem” Well, no Josh, you’re always the problem in Please Like Me. But for a brief shining moment early on in episode two of series two, it looked like maybe that problem had been solved. Josh was the put-upon son, his crazy mum was crazy, and as... Read More »

Getting In Early For This One

Normally we see television shows the same way you do: by illegally downloading them from torrents a few weeks after they first aired because we totally forgot they were on. Sometimes, when it’s a particularly dodgy local effort we know no-one else is going to record, we’ll watch them as they happen. But today’s post... Read More »

Comedians in Comercials: Never Remotely Funny

Well, doesn’t this just sound dandy: Optus has recruited comedian Josh Thomas to promote its “live more yes” positioning as it seeks to amplify its ‘Yes’ branding through new price offerings and services. It’s hard to know what’s more depressing in that sentence: the idea of “amplifying branding”, “promoting positioning”, or calling Thomas a comedian. Sure, you... Read More »