Australian humour

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questionable said:
of all the terrible comedians in australia to complain about, you come up with shaun micallef?

at the very worst, some of his recent projects haven't come off well in execution. but the micallef p(r)ogram(me) is the funniest australian tv show i've ever seen, and as far as i'm concerned he can make whatever he wants for as long as he wants as reward for that.
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The funniest Oz tv show you've ever seen? Well I guess that goes to show comedy is in the eye/ear of the beholder. Which of course is the beauty of comedy.

It's that exact comment - 'some of his recent projects' - that really bemuses (certainly not amuses) me. He gets opportunity after opportunity to try his unfunny, mono-dimensional schtick and watch it not come off. Even Chris Lilley has the occasional moment of inspiration while Wil Anderson can deliver the odd zinger on Gruen although Todd and Russell, (y'know the non-comedians) are more consistently funny (or were, it's all too staged now). I can even forgive Denton for Randling.

At least now he's down to the channel that is making a second series of Puberty Blues taking a chance on him. Oh well easy solution for us all, you guys continue to watch him and I check out other channels. :thumbsu:

On that Kingswood Country discussion (which so sadly reminds me Toots is not here to join in :() Gary Reilly (another ex-pat Kiwi) and Tony Sattler were definitely writers of biting satire, right back in the Naked Vicar Show days. KC was as much taking the piss out of the audience that laughed at the wog jokes on face value as the characters in the show.
 
The Norman Gunston show was good. Some of his interviews were hilarious. The look of wtf on the interviewee's faces was priceless. I don't think Garry McDonald ever did a bad series. A comic genius. Bipolar - like a lot of witty people.
 
Relativity said:
The Norman Gunston show was good. Some of his interviews were hilarious. The look of wtf on the interviewee's faces was priceless. I don't think Garry McDonald ever did a bad series. A comic genius. Bipolar - like a lot of witty people.
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Yeah he is brilliant.

Micallef and Will Anderson are two of the least funny people to walk this planet.

I did used to love the old D-Gen, that was some funny s**t.
 

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The Late Show, Frontline and the D-Gen, with a small amount of Gunston and Kennedy is about it for me. The current attempts at Australian sitcoms and most stand-ups put us just ahead of Chinese, Arabic and German standards of humour.
 
The problem with comedy on Australian tv is the big heads at the top of the networks who are so far removed from today's society that all they see is numbers on a page. I doubt any of the major big network producers even watch 99% of the crap they produce they just look at the bottom line. Therefore they take really good successful people and turn them into watered down money making machines, Ie: Shaun Micallef, Hamish and Andy, and every attempt at recreating a Fast Forward/Full Frontal sketch show.
 
Gopower hit the nail on the head. They were too successful for their own good really. Once they had the radio every night and a couple of TV series it just got too much. To be honest since they cut back to 1 show a week I think they have actually gotten better again.

Chasers I've never been a fan of. Sometimes I feel they are just trying to be controversial for the sake of being controversial.
 
Australian commercial (and ABC to some extent too) media is the great killer of good comedy. Anything with a hint of clever, fresh and talent is brutally overproduced and the flower wilts far too quickly. Then the poor dead horse is left in harness and flogged beyond recognition. Good News Week was the cruellest but by no means the only example of this practice.

Clearly gopower and I will not agree on much related to comedy - I think Hamster Wheel is rubbish and the clever observational satire of the early CNNN group is long gone - another group that had the creativity squeezed out of it by relentless TV schedules. Now it's mostly jokes about Chad's arse.That dismal show produced as a sidelight by part of the team on Channel 7 further diminished their standing.

But to be non-contrarian to some extent I do agree about his observation on Hamish and Andy. Merrick and Rosso went alright too with their raw radio humour. That even translated well to TV for a little while.
 
Eddie Dingle said:
I have never watched or listened to Hamish and Andy so can't comment but that Hamish chappy seems quite amusing on Spicks and Specks.
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I like Spicks and Specks, but it is not a comedy in the pure sense.

I forgot to add that Barry Humphries is by far the best ever Australian comedian, if you could call him that. He will go down as amongst the best in the world.
 
Bargearse still makes me have very hearty lols, but I'm a sucker for that kind of humour. I think it's from all the King Billy Cokebottle tapes my uncle used to play me when I was a kid.

I'd also like to add that humour, like art and music, is subjective. What I laugh at probably won't be what someone else will laugh at, doesn't mean what I'm not laughing at is s**t. It's ignorant to make such statements.
 
Barry is brilliant especially he is just himself. I'm not a big fan of his characters except when he uses them to punctuate a presentation. I remember when poor Frankie J Holden had his abortive attempt at being a talk show host and had Barry on as a guest. Poor Frankie was just destroyed as Barry led him a merry dance. Mind you, it was a massive mis-match.
 

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Ford Fairlane said:
Barry is brilliant especially he is just himself. I'm not a big fan of his characters except when he uses them to punctuate a presentation. I remember when poor Frankie J Holden had his abortive attempt at being a talk show host and had Barry on as a guest. Poor Frankie was just destroyed as Barry led him a merry dance. Mind you, it was a massive mis-match.
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That might be the greatest comedic mismatch in history. I can vaguely remember that Frankie J show being promoted but I think his awkwardness in the preview ensured I would never watch it.
 
Australian humour? Few and far between anything funny unfortunately. Australia is a melting pot, but it's largest influences have been British and American. Yet they both do two things well, in completely different ways, that Australians just can't.

One is houses (almost every Australian house is a square boring box with zero character) and humour. We can take the piss out of ourselves better then almost any of country, but taking that to the next level as humour for the masses fails miserably more times then not. And I'd go a step further and say timeless humour is almost non-existent. By that I mean you've got plenty of classic British and US comedies that still are funny to watch a repeat of these days. Any Australian humour from the 70's - 90's for instance looks painfully dated by comparison.
 
Eddie Dingle said:
That might be the greatest comedic mismatch in history. I can vaguely remember that Frankie J show being promoted but I think his awkwardness in the preview ensured I would never watch it.
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It was terrible. He had Samuel L Jackson on as a guest just after Sam had finished making two movies in one year, I think it was Jackie Brown and Eve's Bayou. In Jackie Brown he had this long braided goatee and in Eve's Bayou he didn't. Frankie asked him if he regrew it every time he went back to shoot scenes in Jackie Brown. Samuel looked at him not sure if he was kidding and just laughed and said 'no'. Frankie didn't seem to know why Samuel thought that was funny.
 
Shaun Micallef is a genius

I'm going to watch that crime show they keep advertising on the back of him being in it.
 
Chiwigi said:
Watching those clips makes me glad I didn't have to suffer 80s and 90s Australian TV.
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Some humour is no good as a stand-alone example, or removed from its time. Fast Forward was excellent in its day, unmissable. Many of the skits repeated weekly and were enormously popular e.g. the airline stewards below (also unwatchable now).

 
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