Press release time! RICK KALOWSKI APPOINTED ABC TV’S NEW HEAD OF COMEDY Rick Kalowski, former lawyer turned award-winning TV creator/writer/producer, has today been appointed ABC TV’s Head of Comedy. He will take up his position at ABC TV in Sydney in the second half of 2013. In the meantime, ABC Fiction will continue to manage... Read More »
Lowdown series 2 has just ended on ABC1 and it’s probably worth asking: why did they bother? To spend at least half the episodes re-creating various media scandals from the past couple of years suggests that, well, the writers weren’t exactly brimming with ideas when the commission came... Read More »
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Australian comedy is currently not operating at peak efficiency. In fact, it’s coughing its guts up all over the place. Duds to the left, ratings flops to the right, tired old formats hacking out their final breath everywhere else. What does it say about... Read More »
Why doesn’t Australia have any ensemble comedies? As in, why don’t we make sitcoms where we get together a bunch of actors people have actually heard of? Okay, sure, we don’t make sitcoms full stop these days, but on the rare occasions when we do make them – Lowdown, Laid *shudder*, Outland, The Jesters, Twentysomething,... Read More »
Making its debut tonight is the second series of Lowdown, the Adam Zwar sitcom set in the world of celebrity tabloid journalism. Series 1 ended with columnist Alex Burchill (Zwar) and photographer Bob Geraghty (Paul Denny) carting their boxes down the street after their employer, The Sunday Sun, had been shut down. Now The Sunday... Read More »
Last week's ABC 2012 launch and other recent announcements have made us feel pretty positive about Australian comedy, which is somewhat of a strange sensation. Here's the list of what's coming up next year, tell us what you think about it in the... Read More »
Lowdown has now finished and while it wasn’t an amazingly great show by any stretch of the imagination it has been the Australian comedy TV highlight of the year so far. Why? Because unlike anything else on offer – panel shows, dramedies, Hey Hey It’s Saturday - it was a reasonably well-written show with some decent laughs in it. And with dramedies and panel/variety shows the dominant formats in entertainment right now, a scripted show which gets laughs is something to be happy about. So, what the hell was going on with that final... Read More »
The final episode – you’d have to guess forever – of Wilfred aired earlier this week and hard as it is to admit, I’ll be sad to see it go. Not all that sad mind you, because that first series was pretty much a textbook example of how to put together a comedy that contains... Read More »
With Wilfred drawing to a close on SBS, and Lowdown just started on the ABC, Adam Zwar seems to be the dominant force in sitcoms right now. But at least with Lowdown he's produced something which isn't too bad; this is not like Wilfred – all atmosphere, no laughs - but a more conventional sitcom, with running jokes, over-the-top performances and farcical... Read More »