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 »
So… they didn’t get axed. Lasted the full ten weeks. Yep. … Okay, while that’s hardly the best thing that can be said about Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, the fact remains that they’re the first new comedy series screened on a commercial network in a prime-time slot to go the distance in a long... Read More »
Today has seen a variety of submissions being made to the Senate committee inquiry into ABC television internal programming cuts that have… kinda… zzz… Wait, what? Did someone mention The Chaser? Community and Public Sector Union ABC section secretary Graeme Thomson said on Monday there needed to be a full and open inquiry into the... Read More »
Here’s a question we’re yet to see answered: where exactly did the idea for At Home With Julia come from? Yes, Amanda Bishop was doing her Julia Gillard impersonation well before the surprisingly well-received ABC sitcom was announced, so chances are she had dreams of leveraging her performance into actual television work. But Veronica Milsom,... Read More »
More than just about any other form of television, comedy requires feedback. Stand-up comedians hone their act in front of live audiences; even shoddy no-budget Australian comedy films manage to fit in a bunch of test screenings to help guide the editing process. So why, we hope you’re asking yourselves otherwise this post is going... Read More »
A year or so ago, when the iPad was released, there was a brief period in which a small number of well known local comedy groups, well, two local comedy groups - Working Dog and The Chaser - released their own apps. Now with smart phones and tablet computers to be found in every second person's bag, including our own, we assumed there must be stacks more Australian comedy apps to download.... Read More »
Over the years we’ve developed something of a reputation as people who love to hate. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: we’re so full of hate we even hate hating, which is why we try to be fair and balanced with our critical responses to the wide world of Australian comedy. But... Read More »
Premiering tonight is Can of Worms, a new comedy panel show from Zapruder's Other Films. In recent years Zapruder's has earned a reputation for making intelligent, edgy television - The Gruen Transfer, one of their best known productions, is often talked of in reverential tones - so unsurprisingly, Gruen fans are positively panting with excitement about Can of... 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 »
We all know television doesn’t work this way, but still: It’s tempting to think the decision to team the second half of Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys series with Lawrence Leung’s new series Unbelievable (ABC1, Wednesdays, 9.30pm) was guided by more than just the programmers grabbing whatever was next on the shelf after Hungry Beast finished.... Read More »