Making topical comedy isn’t easy. Forget the time constraints: we’re talking about having to make comedy out of the daily news. In Australia no less, land of no amusing news in good times or bad. And at the moment, things are pretty, pretty, pretty bad. Was 2021 the year that much of Australia woke up... Read More »
One of the many, many ways you can tell Mad as Hell is a great comedy show is that when things get shit out in the real world, the comedy on Mad as Hell gets sharper. Which sounds like it should be obvious, but then you remember The Weekly gave us multiple seasons of Corona... Read More »
Mad as Hell is back! Yeah, there’s not a lot more to say about that really: they know what they’re doing and haven’t stuffed it up, so we can all sit back, relax and continue to enjoy the best Australian comedy series of the last decade. Case closed, mission accomplished, time to put the blog... Read More »
You wouldn’t want to say Australian comedy is dead, but the iron lung it’s getting around in is starting to look a little worse for wear. Oh sure, individual comedy series are still being made; people are even having careers in comedy, so long as you put quote marks around “careers” and “comedy”. But the... Read More »
Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell won the award for Best Comedy Entertainment Program at this year’s... Read More »
Earlier this year we wrote a little about how Mad as Hell, as basically the last ABC comedy program still in existence, was having a bit of fun using all the old laff-getting tricks that other shows used to mess around with. Back then we were generally approving: little did we realise they were about... Read More »
You can tell when Mad as Hell is angry at the ever-increasing rightward tilt of Australia’s media and politics because they start making jokes about Labor. So it was no real surprise that Mad as Hell came roaring back onto our screens this week with a few extremely cheap shots at the nominally left-ish side... Read More »
As seems only fitting in these unsettled times when we’re all scrabbling for the smallest snippet of certianity, Mad as Hell series 11 ended with host Shaun Micallef letting us know that he and the rest of the team would definitely be back later in the year. They also spent much of the episode hammering... Read More »
The good news is, Australian television comedy continues today exactly as it would have if a lethal pandemic wasn’t killing thousands across the globe. The bad news is, Australian television comedy continues today exactly as it would have if a… you get where we’re going. Unlike live comedy, there’s been no wave of cancellations across... Read More »
Mad as Hell without an audience? How’s that going to work? As it turned out, pretty well. Which should have come as no real surprise considering Shaun Micallef did roughly the same show without an audience for years (that’d be Newstopia, by the way). Obviously the situation wasn’t ideal, but these days what is? (also,... Read More »