The ABC’s 2025 upfronts announcement last week says a lot about why the ABC makes the scripted comedies it does. And it’s all about where comedy programming sits within the ABC’s corporate structure. A couple of years ago the ABC restructured and split its operations into two areas: Content and News. Content oversees comedy, drama,... Read More »
It’s been a big week for comedy on Seven – unfortunately that week was from twenty years ago, as the network continued to ignore producing anything new in favour of saluting shows old enough to vote and performers old enough to be excused from voting. Seven knows audiences won’t tune in these days for regular... Read More »
Is nostalgia for the comedy of the past - The Late Show, Hey! Hey! It's Saturday, Kath & Kim - a good thing? And how can it be done... Read More »
The ABC’s 90th-anniversary program ABC 90 Celebrate! was a noble attempt cover nine decades of broadcasting but left some... Read More »
Sure, Upper Middle Bogan is the front-runner for Australian comedy of the year – well, Mad as Hell might still beat it, but saying UMB is easily the best Australian sitcom of the year feels like damning it with faint praise – but there’s one thing about the show that no-one seems to be talking... Read More »
Wow, good thing we didn’t bother reviewing The Kath & Kim Kountdown: Clip special The Kath and Kim Kountdown has been dumped from Seven’s Sunday night line-up after just one outing. Could Australia’s legendary goodwill towards the foxy morons finally have run out? Or perhaps someone should have told the programming team at Seven that Kath... Read More »
First, the bad news: Channel Seven, home of commercial sketch comedy in Australia for close to two decades, now thinks this is a good idea: From Kylie and Dannii to Warney and Thorpey, the celebs come out to play for a new series of Kath & Kim specials coming to Seven. A galaxy of Australia’s... Read More »
In his review of Kath & Kimderella (available here), TripleJ film reviewer Marc Fennell says the film “has no jokes”. He is wrong. Not wrong in a “oh, it’s just a matter of opinion you guyse” way. Wrong in an easily proven, factual, obvious way. Fennell is wrong to claim Kath & Kimderella contains no... Read More »
In these days of a thousand digital channel flowers blooming, repeating your programs as often as possible during the week of release is a sign of commitment. “This is a show we’re standing behind,” a repeat says, “this is a show we want to be seen by as many people as possible”. Whether it’s a... Read More »
We don’t normally get much mail here at Tumbleweeds Central, but our recent post on Lawrence Leung’s new show Unbelievable drove someone to write in with a John Safran / Leung connection we’d missed*. It seems that, for once, our comparison of Unbelievable with Safran’s earlier shows had some basis in real-world events: There is... Read More »