The funniest thing about The Weekly this year was the way that during the coup that deposed Malcolm Turnbull pretty much everyone said “gee, wouldn’t it be great if Mad as Hell was on now to make fun of all this?” Because what was The Weekly‘s big satirical contribution to that whole debacle? Oh, that’s... Read More »
So last week’s episode of The Weekly opened with Charlie Pickering sitting behind his desk solemnly informing us that yes, while terrorism had cast a dark cloud over the week’s events the only correct way for us to move forward as a nation was to move forward as a nation or some such. “It’s been... Read More »
Briggswatch! Still in the opening credits of The Weekly, not on the actual Weekly. Then again he did just collect a decent share of $30,000 for winning the Australian Music prize, so he may have better things to do with his time. As did Kitty Flanagan, which is weird because… you know… Tom Gleeson was... Read More »
Is it just us – and it usually is just us – or did that bit at the very start of this week’s The Weekly (now back for 2017!) basically say new regular Briggs was hired because he’s black? Obviously that’s not what they planned to say with their hilarious and of-the-moment parody of that... Read More »
We’re just going to come right out and say it: The Weekly taking on Clarke & Dawe was perhaps the funniest thing we’ve seen on television this year. Not that the sketch itself was funny: oh no no no no no no fuck no. It was utterly pointless at best and bewildering at worst –... Read More »
What is there to say about The Yearly that we didn’t already say time and time and time again about The Weekly? Bugger all, which is the problem: we tuned in hoping they might have at least tweaked the format – considering they stole it wholesale from The Daily Show – but, well, more fool... Read More »
If you’ve ever seriously wondered why television critics in this country are respected by no-one – even as television criticism around the English-speaking world enters some kind of magical golden age of relevancy thanks to the irresistible rise of the recap – may we quote Debi Enker on The Weekly: “Through four months on air,... Read More »
It’s easy to forget how charming Mad as Hell is in its refusal to assume it’ll be invited back next year until you hear Charlie Pickering say “Welcome to the final episode of series one of The Weekly“. Series one? Forgive us if we’re wrong, but at the time of writing the ABC hasn’t announced... Read More »
Time was, the idea of having a long-running show was that you’d be able to tweak the format to improve things. Not on the ABC: after last weeks shock discovery that everyone there seems to think that How Not to Behave was a show that reached perfection with episode one, we turned our attention to... Read More »
This was the week where The Weekly finally decided it was time to stop carving out that rut it’s been so proud of and just settle back into it. No more tinkering with the format: everything we saw this week was old news. More importantly, the tone of the show – which is probably the... Read More »