Why is the ABC so obsessed with advice programs? There’s a reason why the commercial networks don’t make them and it’s not “duhh we forgot”: most Australians consider themselves perfectly capable of living their own lives thank you very much, and when they do need advice they turn to people who have a passing resemblance... Read More »
The trick with parodies is to make sure there’s more going on than just the parody. Those classic Mad Magazine movie spoofs had great art; Get Smart had a whole lot of jokes that had nothing to do with the “spy-fi” craze of the 60s. And the other end of the scale, SBS’s recent action... Read More »
For a few years now – well, it feels like years at least – we’ve been complaining / warning that Australian television likes everything about comedy but the making-people-laugh stuff. Of course, who listens to what we have to say? And so it has come to pass that in a few short weeks (July 25th)... Read More »
So, Nice has made it to air and we finally got to see the context in which that duet of “Islands in the Stream”... Read More »
Some shows come to us on a clear wave of passion and enthusiasm. Others arrive as the result of extensive product-testing and marketing. And then there’s Agony Uncles, which looks like the winner of a competition to come up with the cheapest possible programming alternative to running a photo of Tony Jones for half an... Read More »
The Chaser are back – as a proper team this time, not just various members hosting one-off arts specials and short-lived attempts to make public speaking thrilling – and it’s like they never went away. No, we don’t mean they’re such an important and vital part of our national consciousness that they never left our... Read More »
What does and doesn't get released on DVD in this country is often a bit of a mystery when you look at archive TV – that many people want to buy E Street? Really? – but things seem pretty cut and dry when you look at new shows: if it's an ABC comedy it gets a DVD... Read More »
Within minutes of her first appearance on The Late Show (and quite possibly within seconds of her first appearance on TV, on The Big Gig a year or so earlier) audiences were divided on whether Judith Lucy was hilariously funny or a caustic, sarky harridan. Lucy's long-awaited solo TV series Spiritual Journeyseems just as likely to divide audiences, for that reason and... Read More »
Australian comedy, particularly Australian comedy television, seem to be in one of its many “meh” phases. Angry Boys drags on and on, and newcomer Can of Worms (putting aside all the justly deserved criticism it received for the vast difference between what it promised and what it delivered) is equally dull television. Even Lawrence Leung's Unbelievable, an entertaining and amusing comedy/documentary series looking at magic and the supernatural, is somewhat tainted by being yet another example of an over-used genre which dates back to at least the first half of the '90s and Michael Moore's TV... 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 »