Can you remember the last time anyone produced a full length scripted comedy show for a mainstream radio station? Apart from ABC Local’s lacklustre 2008 new talent scheme The Comedy Hour? You probably have to go back as far as the late 70s or early... Read More »
In a result so unsurprising even we predicted it weeks ago, Channel Seven’s Peter Helliar-hosted AFL footy show The Bounce has been axed. Well, not exactly... Read More »
Every week for more than 20 years John Clarke has been writing two and a half minutes of some of the best satire you'll find anywhere in the world, which he performs with fellow satirist Bryan Dawe. Highly intelligent, stuffed with gags and brilliantly performed, this is at the pinnacle of comedy in this country – and as an insight into Australian politics it puts a lot of serious analysis to... Read More »
Whilst updating iTunes last week I noticed that what had been the podcast feed for ABC Local Radio's 2008 comedy talent quest The Comedy Hour has now become the podcast feed for ABC Adelaide's Talkback Gardening, that perennial favourite of my father and many of his friends. If it wasn't for the fact that the ABC are great fans of recycling podcast feeds (do they think they're rationed?), I could probably draw a crap metaphor for the ABC's interest in The Comedy Hour from this – and indeed, there wasn't much interest in it from them - but my main feeling is one of sadness, that The Comedy Hour is yet another comedy writer's competition that's been shut down for good (although that's been pretty clear for a year or so... Read More »
Watching tonight’s episode of Rove – in which he attempted to interview 60 guests in an hour - was always going to be worth a look for comedy... Read More »
Reviewing Tony Martin’s second book, A Nest of Occasionals, is easy: in pretty much every way it’s just like his first. So if you’re a fan of Lolly Scramble,... Read More »
This weekend Sydney-siders had the chance to attend World's Funniest Island, a two-day, Big Day Out-style festival of comedy on Cockatoo Island. Amongst the acts were Alexei Sayle, The Goodies, Jane Bussman, Merrick & Rosso, the Scared Weird Little Guys and a host of others. The Goodies' show, featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden with Bill Oddie on video (he's currently ill, so couldn't make it) in conversation with The Chaser's Andrew Hanson, is of particular interest as it featured censored footage from The Goodies which was recently discovered in Australia but no longer exists within the BBC Archives. With recent talk about how “political correctness” and media OUTRAGE is, or may be, resulting in the censorship of comedy, it's interesting to examine what was actually censored from comedy almost 40 years... Read More »
This week's Hungry Beast proved to be more of the same: unfunny sketches and stuff we already knew. (Snack bars for kids are packed full of sugar, apparently. What next? They tell us the world's round?!) But at least that netball group sex scandal sketch turned out to be a joke (and I don't say that because I agree with The Daily Telegraph that the sketch was an “outrage” and “poor taste humour” that “raise[s] new questions about the judgement of senior ABC staff” - the only outrage and misjudgements here are that a sketch so unfunny could make it to air), and anyway, as the Hungry Beast team gleefully informed us during the opening to episode 2, the real joke wasn't that netballers would get themselves caught in such a scandal, it was on us. Ha ha – fooled you! You thought we'd actually do a longer version next week! You idiot!... Read More »
Here’s a question: what makes the Hey Hey it’s Saturday blackface controversy different from the controversy over The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch, or Hungry Beast’s promo for a fake story about netball rape,... Read More »
Remember when the ABC cut back their order for the final series of The Chaser's War on Everything from eight episodes to six after the "make a Realistic Wish Foundation" sketch earned them a two week... Read More »