When Tonightly with Tom Ballard was axed last year, Australia not only lost a show which was delivering a solid half-hour of interesting, passionate and funny topical comedy four nights a week but it a lost a show which had been allowed to be itself. So often, TV executives take a bunch of people who’ve... Read More »
Here’s a question for you: when exactly did Charles Firth rejoin The Chaser? Because he definitely left for a while there – his reports from the US fizzled out fairly early in The Chaser’s War on Everything, and he hasn’t been an on-air part of their television work since then – even their last Election... Read More »
Australian comedy in 2014 did pretty much what it was expected to do: not all that much. The days of any local comedy connecting with a mass audience seem to have ended with the mass audience realising Chris Lilley only ever had one idea, while the ABC’s other crowd-pleasing mainstays either tossed off a half-arsed... Read More »
From the ABC’s press release trumpeting their 2015 line-up: Comedian CHARLIE PICKERING returns to ABC to present a news comedy show that promises to be opinionated and outspoken Well, at least they didn’t say “funny”. According to websites much closer to actual news sites than ours: Humorist and self-avowed political junkie Charlie Pickering will host... Read More »
Remember The Roast? Remember how it started in 2010 as entertainment show parody WTF! before turning up on ABC2 and Foxtel’s Comedy Channel as a daily two minute news parody before being expanded this year to a full ten minutes four days a week? Remember how to any of the hundreds of struggling comedians in... Read More »
Yeah, you heard us: The Roast won’t be back on the ABC next year. If you want a ridiculous parody of a news show, you’ll have to watch the Bolt Report #roasttv — The Roast (@TheRoastTV) November 3, 2014 Who knew there was an upside to massive budget cuts? Guess even entrenched failure cruising on... Read More »
It’s a sad indictment of the mental prowess of the people who run the Australian media that they seem to think hiring people who work in an industry to comment on that same industry is in any way useful to their readership. Oh sure, we can see how they’d come to that conclusion: who better... Read More »
Nice things: we just can’t say enough of them about Shaun Micallef. It’s not just that he (and his trusty regular cohorts, co-star Francis Greenslade and writers Gary McCaffrie and Michael Ward) are funny: he’s hard working too. Not for him vanishing for a few years in some behind-the-scenes gig or personal project no-one ever... Read More »
The 25 June episode of The PodRoast started with an interview with The Roast’s Executive Producer Charles Firth, in which he discussed why he left The Chaser, how The Roast came about, and what his comedy ambitions... Read More »
The Roast is a concept which never quite manages to die. But you know that, we’ve talked about this before, you keep seeing it listed in TV guides and you keep not tuning in. It’s just not very good. But... Read More »