| THE AUSTRALIAN TUMBLEWEEDS 2007 | Part 1 |
ANNOUNCER:
From the National Tally Room in Canberra, it's the Australian Tumbleweeds 2007, with your host Kerry O'Brien...
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O'BRIEN
Welcome to the National Tally Room in Canberra, where history will be made tonight. The votes have been counted to decide who or what were the worst Australian comedians or comedies of 2007 and what a long year of Australian comedy it's been.
HE SHUDDERS.
The latest opinion polls are showing a comfortable win in these awards for bad comedy. Who'd have thought? And to take us through the results, it's the man who's become an institution on these occasions, analyst Antony Green.
THE CROWD WHOOPS AND CHEERS. O'BRIEN LOOKS ANNOYED.
O'BRIEN
And as always Antony will be weaving his unique brand of magic - if by magic you mean ludicrous graphics and hastily cobbled-together statistics which he'll read out slightly too quickly.
GREEN
Thanks Kerry, the first results should be coming in any second, but first let's take a look at the current state of Australian comedy...
A PICTURE OF A TURD SHAPED LIKE MATT TILLEY IS FLASHED UP ON THE SCREEN.
GREEN
And here's what the polls are suggesting the state of Australian comedy will be after we've seen all of tonight's results...
A PICTURE OF A TURD SHAPED LIKE MATT TILLEY HOLDING A TUMBLEWEED AWARD IS FLASHED UP ON THE SCREEN.
O'BRIEN
Thanks Antony, informative as ever. And also joining us tonight are yet more expert commentators, although so far we've only managed to round up Jack the Insider. Jack, it's very tempting to just throw the towel in now and give every award we've got straight to you, but by some oversight you appear to have not been nominated for anything. So tell us about your 2007, Jack. It was a big year for you, you seemed to come from nowhere?
JACK
Nowhere is as good a place to come from as any Kerry, just ask Kevin Rudd. Two years ago he was Kerry Packer's helicopter pilot with a perverse interest in collecting South American teapots, suddenly Robert Ray gets on the blower, calls him up while he's crossing the Pacific ocean, ferrying Jamie back from an all-nighter at a Scientology convention in the Andes and tells him to get back to ALP headquarters, it is his turn to be leader!
O'BRIEN
Hmmm, very good Jack.
JACK
Yeah. I...er...if you could just chortle every so often actually Kerry, that would be a bit of a help, I...
O'BRIEN
Chortle? Chortle at what?
JACK
Chortle at what I'm saying...the actual content.
O'BRIEN
But it's rubbish. It's not funny. There's nothing to chortle at.
JACK
Richard Fidler chortles.
O'BRIEN
Is that right?
JACK
When we do this on ABC local radio every week he chortles all the way through. I only have to say something like "Nick Minchin was partying with Kylie Minogue and David Hicks was passed out on the lino" and Richard brings the house down.
O'BRIEN
Right. Would that have something to do with the fact that Richard Fidler co-writes the character? And that it is in his interests to chortle constantly during these fairly pedestrian monologues that seem to be a drastically unimaginative cross between Clarke & Dawe and Roy Slavin?
JACK
Richard never talks to me like this!
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It might be funnier if he did, though.
JACK ADJUSTS THE SETTINGS ON THE CAMERA POINTED AT HIM TO MAKE HIMSELF LOOK ALL BLACK AND WHITE AND MOODY. NOT FUNNY, JUST BLACK AND WHITE AND MOODY.
O'BRIEN
Thank you Jack. Now, I think the first results should be coming through quite soon...
GREEN
That's right, won't be long now.
O'BRIEN
But while we're waiting, here's a film made by Tony Martin and produced by Mick Molloy about Australian comedy in 2007, we present Tumbleweeds Confidential...
NOTHING HAPPENS.
O'BRIEN
Er, I'm not quite sure what's happening here...
MOLLOY
Look, sorry about this, Kerry. I left the tape at home.
O'BRIEN
Can you go and get it?
MOLLOY
Um...my car broke down.
O'BRIEN
That's OK, we'll get our runner to take you home and get it.
MOLLOY RELUCTANTLY FOLLOWS THE RUNNER TO HER CAR.
O'BRIEN
OK, well I think we can finally take a look at our first results, in which we look hopefully to the future of Australian comedy and see only...
A PICTURE OF A TURD SHAPED LIKE MATT TILLEY IS FLASHED UP ON THE SCREEN.
O'BRIEN
...and the winner of this award...
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O'BRIEN
An interesting batch of results, there. And we've finally managed to round up some sort of a panel, from Cookd and Bombd's CNNNN Aussie news satire - and other Oz comedy thread it's 13 schoolyards, Bean Is A Carrot and oceanthroats.
EVERY COMEDIAN IN THE TALLY ROOM BOOS AS LOUDLY AS POSSIBLE.
O'BRIEN
Well if you don't want them, I'll bring back Jack the Insider...
A COMEDIAN
Please, God, no!
ANOTHER COMEDIAN
We'll do anything...
O'BRIEN
OK, well I'll turn to you first Bean Is A Carrot. This is a controversial category for some in that it criticises those who are new to the world of comedy and therefore often given a free pass...
BEAN IS A CARROT
Yes Kerry, and while some of the nominees in this category are worthy of some praise, it is depressing to see so many of them repeating the mistakes of others rather than having the sense - and the guts - to develop their own styles. Ministry of Truth, a media collective from Brisbane with a website, a You Tube presence and funding from Arts Queensland, are one such example. They produced three sketches for jTV, all parodying aspects of the music industry in the much overused mockumentary style. Like a lot of comedy made in that style their parodies were lengthy, ponderous and contained as little as one joke or comic conceit in their entirety. What observations the Ministry made about pretentious musicians or the marketing of Emo music were barely evident in the resultant boring dirge.
Stand-up comedian Claire Hooper also racked-up the stylistic cliches in her weekly appearances on The Sideshow. While she lacked neither wit nor charm, her material tended to focus on the girlish or kitsch. In one routine she recounted her embarrassment at how she had choreographed a dance to Wa Wa Nee's 'Sugar Free' for a school assembly at the age of 10. The following week Wa Wa Nee lead singer Paul Gray appeared on the show to perform the song while a giggling and overwhelmed Hooper re-enacted her school assembly performance around him. Irony? Self indulgent and unfunny crap more like!
Former Quizmania host Nikki Osborne added a new string to her bow when she became 'the girl one' in the supporting cast of Mick Molloy's The Nation. She's not the first of Nine's attractive young female presenters to have been seemingly forced onto a comedy programme, but what made her wooden appearances particularly disappointing was that she couldn't even dredge up the presence or the sense of irony that Lavinia Nixon displayed in Micallef Tonight. Go back to taking your clothes off in 'Ralph', Nikki.
O'BRIEN
OK, well new comedians usually take their time to edge into the spotlight. No such luck with new comedy - increasingly it's thrust upon us in a blare of unwarranted publicity and screeching hype designed solely to give us viewers a migraine of such intensity that we'll blindly agree to anything if only they'll shut up and go away. Unfortunately, what we usually end up agreeing to is even more hype...
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GREEN:
Kind of unfair really, at least the other two nominees pretended to contain comedy instead of just piling on the reaction shots to cover up the fact that Lilley had given up on the idea of punchlines around week 4 of his six month shooting schedule.
OCEANTHROATS
Indeed, but Summer Heights High was drab and awful and also managed to find a way to be even worse than the massively over hyped, over watched and over wrought We Can Be Heroes. The lack of a David Bowie reference in the title didn't help either, that at least reminded We Could Be Heroes viewers of a good song, making the viewing experience slightly less worthless. But despite Summer Heights High's weaknesses, the lack of anything particularly funny and the fact that Chris Lilley's charisma was hiding in somebody's suit coat pocket in an expensive restaurant somewhere in Adelaide, the ABC continued to treat him like Orson Welles a week after the War of the Worlds broadcast. Spoiling him with the sort of hype every other ABC comedy programme maker in history has dreamt of, people bought the DVD, praised it, talked about it, looked forward to it, even lined up at ABC shops to get Lilley to sign it, indeed presumably did everything they could but watch the thing, for surely had they done so it would have become clear that Lilley is a one dimensional performer posing as a chameleon posing as several different characters posing as Chris Lilley. The anti Barry Humphries, Lilley creates characters which never stick in the mind, never feel alive and are usually not particularly funny. Summer Heights High is destined to be one of those forgetable footnotes at the bottom of Lilley's IMDB page, way below all the Marvel super hero movies he was made for, making him the Eric Bana of the '00s.
O'BRIEN
And what did you think of The Sideshow, oceanthroats?
OCEANTHROATS:
Well, The Sideshow was Paul McDermott setting out to prove he still had it after that strange ballroom dancing programme Daryl Somers crushed with his meisterwork Dancing with the Stars. McDermott, once again thwarted by arch enemy Somers, did his best to show the world, or at least Darwin, that he really is a weird, intriguing, edgy, offbeat genius operating on some crumbling edge of sanity, surrounding himself with freakishly good looking young people who read magazines. And the results were about as bad as anything has ever been ever, which was nice.
O'BRIEN
And I'll turn to you for this one, 13 schoolyards. The Nation...a bit of a failure for Mick Molloy...
13 SCHOOLYARDS
The Nation should have been a triumph. After years of trying to get back on television and a lengthy apprenticeship on the passably entertaining sports wrap-up Any Given Sunday, Mick Molloy seemed set to finally live up to the promise of his work on Martin/Molloy. And then he came out on stage in a suit and sat behind a desk for an hour playing straight man to an array of people far less funny than his little finger. Whether he lost his nerve or management at Nine told him to pull his head in, it doesn't really matter. A career of pointless cameos as "comedy bum Mick Molloy" on crap Working Dog projects is all that's left for him now.
O'BRIEN
Well unfortunately Chris Lilley isn't available tonight, so we'll cross to that little red-haired girl from Summer Heights High for her comments... Are you there?
THE LITTLE RED-HAIRED GIRL APPEARS LIVE FROM HER BEDROOM.
RED-HAIRED GIRL
(WOODENLY) Hello. Thank you for this award.
O'BRIEN
(READING FROM CARD): Um...it says here I'm supposed to call you a ranga.
RED-HAIRED GIRL:
I'm not a ranga. That's mean.
O'BRIEN
Well, that's kind of the point.
RED-HAIRED GIRL:
It's cruel to call people names just 'cause they have red hair.
O'BRIEN
Yes, but it's also funny. And don't worry, the mean people get their comeuppance in the end.
RED-HAIRED GIRL:
How?
O'BRIEN
Um...the ABC makes them rich and famous and puts out loads of press-releases calling them a comedy genius?
RED-HAIRED GIRL:
F**kin' ranga!
SHE DISAPPEARS.
O'BRIEN
And now on to Worst Actor, Antony...
GREEN:
Always a tricky one this, Kerry, as the fine line between being crap and being stuck with a crap character is often blurred in the whirlwind of rubbish that is Aussie comedy. Thankfully, tonight's nominees went above and beyond the call to ensure that those watching know exactly where the blame for their shoddy work lies...
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O'BRIEN
Well, 13 schoolyards, I imagine you have a lot to say on this category...
13 SCHOOLYARDS
Yes Kerry, let's start with Chris Lilley. His acting style consists of creating a comedy character, putting on a comedy accent, dressing up in a comedy costume and then not being funny at all. But instead of making him "not funny", this somehow makes him a brilliant mimic and subtle, insightful performer. Actually, it's the setting that's doing all the hard work - if they'd bothered to put Kylie Mole into a real school and surrounded her with real students and teachers, she'd probably have won an Oscar.
Matthew Newton is actually pretty good at playing a sleazy creep on Stupid Stupid Man. Unfortunately, he seems to be pretty good at playing a sleazy creep in real life if his court docket is any guide. And Anh Do is basically a victim of the current desire for "reality" on television. Ten years ago his grinning, awkward performances on Thank God You're Here would have seen him yanked off-stage by a giant comedy hook two minutes in. After all, what little comedy he brings is more than counterbalanced by the cringe factor that comes from seeing him flail around. But because for TV producers and reviewers cringe equals comedy, he's invited back next week. And because he knows he's onto a good thing, he'll never, ever get any better.
But back to Chris Lilley. Again, him winning this award wasn't exactly fair. As the writer and producer of his own show, Lilley knew exactly how to play to his strengths. The other nominees had directors and editors and producers to ensure that their gurning excesses never made it to the public eye - Lilley just had his own ego telling him that the public would lap up his pantomime excesses, so hell, why not spend another five minutes waving his hands around like Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served? at a rave party.
O'BRIEN
Well, as I said earlier, Chris Lilley is unavailable tonight, but as his show was so popular with Victorian state school teachers, we cross to Mrs Macintosh, Year 10 English teacher at Brighton Secondary College, Melbourne, where Summer Heights High was shot. Mrs Macintosh, what are your thoughts on Chris Lilley's win tonight?
MACINTOSH
Kerry, we're all really proud of the work Chris did showing state schools to the wider community.
O'BRIEN
Even though he made a programme that showed state schools as inept institutions where the students were almost entirely bullies or criminals, while the teachers were for the most part grossly incompetent, completely out of touch or so self-obsessed they seemed barely aware of their students as anything but mirrors to reflect their own ego? This, after all, was a series where one of the main characters came from a private school and spent the whole series insulting the students - "povvo bogans" was one of her descriptions, if I remember correctly - and then suddenly at the show's conclusion she yelled out "State schools rock!", seemingly unaware of the irony of saying that while being driven away from said state school in a limo, never to return? A series where the supposedly feel-good conclusion involved a student covering the school in obscene graffiti - exactly the kind of thing that most parents say puts them off sending their children to state schools?
MACINTOSH
As I said, we're all really proud of the work Chris did showing state schools to the wider community.
O'BRIEN
Thank you, you are dismissed.
MACINTOSH
Hahahaha! That's very good, with material like that you'd be ideal to co-write series 2.
O'BRIEN
Piss off will you!
MACINTOSH
(THROUGH GIGGLES) My students are always saying that! The realism's uncanny.
O'BRIEN
(TO FLOOR MANAGER) For God's sake, cut off the satellite!
MRS MACINTOSH DISAPPEARS.
O'BRIEN
And now to our next award...
GREEN:
Yes Kerry, Australian comedy isn't exactly packed with decent roles for women, so it almost seems a shame to have an award for Worst Actress. Then again, if these women keep getting work, things are hardy going to improve for everyone else...
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O'BRIEN
13 schoolyards, your thoughts on these results...
13 SCHOOLYARDS
Well Kerry, Nikki Osborne isn't so much an actor as she is one of those passably attractive pieces of furniture the commercial networks keep around to pop up on lifestyle shows. Unfortunately for her, when the Nine wheel of opportunity stopped spinning, the arrow was pointing to The Nation, a show that really, really needed a smart, funny, intelligent woman to balance out Mick Molloy's comedy persona. Instead, Osborne did what she does best: made no impact whatsoever. And Madga Szbanski used to be able to act. But why should she bother now that she can rake in the cash for simply being 'Madga'? Who cares that 'Madga' only really works when she has other decent performers to play off against, not to mention actual jokes to say - there's gold in them thar hills! As for Rebel Wilson, she's simply a reminder that for some people there's nothing funnier than a stereotype and there's no better stereotype than a fat chick.
O'BRIEN
Sadly Rebel Wilson can't be here tonight, but I'm supposed to make a joke here about how fat she is. Which I suppose she is, if you think the cast of Home and Away reflect what Australians are really like. Still, Ms Wilson has her fans. Let's cross to some of them now...
A MEETING OF THE REBEL WILSON APPRECIATION SOCIETY IS TAKING PLACE IN A VAST HALL. IT IS EMPTY APART FROM THREE PEOPLE SITTING IN PLASTIC CHAIRS IN A CIRCLE. ONE OF THEM HAS A BOX OF TISSUES ON HIS LAP.
DAVID
Still, this Monster House programme is promising for her isn't it?
COURTNEY
Oh indeed, I should say so, you know Rebel, she'll make it worth watching, just as she did...The Wedge...
THE THREE GET NOTICEABLY MORE DOWNCAST.
MICHAEL
What if, and this is just an idea...let's not be getting married to the thing, just one idea...but, what if Rebel...
DAVID
Yes?
MICHAEL
Um...no, its gone. Forgot the idea I had. Not sure how good it was anyway. Think it involved working in a supermarket.
COURTNEY
Yes. We'll keep thinking about it though.
MICHAEL
One thing, I think. The reason we came together like this, the reason we keep meeting like this, is because all of us, I think...clearly we all have some sort of faith in Rebel. I think we all believe she has the ability...the talent to really do something. You know. Great. I really think that is what we are hoping happens, that she does something great. And I think we are all big enough to admit that at this stage, she hasn't done anything very great. Or for that matter good. Or even anything that wasn't just about the worst possible thing you could imagine having to force yourself to bloody well watch. You know.
COURTNEY
Right. But obviously we all believe that she could go on and do something, you know...
DAVID
Well I don't know really...
COURTNEY
What if... What if...oh...oh, ho ho! I have it!
MARTHA
What? For God's sake, what is it?
COURTNEY:
I have it! A sitcom! Yes! Fabulous! Alright, call up Rebel, tell her we've commissioned a new show, tell her the ABC want Rebel! Now, what are we going to do about Michael Veitch?
BACK TO THE STUDIO. THE CROWD GOES WILD.
O'BRIEN
What's with you people? You actually want more Michael Veitch?
GREEN:
No, Kerry. Channel 9 just put a picture of Rebel Wilson as Fat Mandi through their shredder.
O'BRIEN
Quite right too. What are Channel 7 doing?
GREEN:
They appear to showing some kind of graphic of planet earth that zooms rapidly in on a skyscraper that doesn't exist anywhere in this country.
O'BRIEN
And what does that represent?
GREEN:
No idea. But boy, aren't Mel and Kochie whipping up that crowd?
THE CROWD NEAR THE CHANNEL 7 STUDIO WHOOP AND CHEER. SOME OF THEM START A CONGA LINE.
GREEN:
We haven't seen a Tally Room crowd behave like that since...
O'BRIEN
(INTERUPTING GREEN) This is outrageous! I am a serious broadcaster and this is being hijacked by people who think that results of this gravity can be turned into cheap entertainment.
GREEN:
But Australian television's all about cheap entertainment, Kerry. You only have to look at the winner of this next award to see that...
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O'BRIEN
The first win for Kyle Sandilands tonight. oceanthroats, your thoughts?
OCEANTHROATS
Kyle Sandilands roamed the 2007 media landscape doing what he does best. What that is nobody is sure. Presumably it must be 'being Kyle', which he certainly does better than any of the growing army of his proteges who get churned out of the FM breakfast factories by the hour nowadays. In many ways Kyle is in an envious position, not having to worry about things like talent, ideas or doing anything other than being an insult to anybody who can read a street directory, all whilst getting paid in islands. One way or another Sandilands continued to work towards the inevitable opening of his own 'Sandi-Lands' theme park and there are enough Australians out there excited about buying the Sandilands showbags to keep him in sandbanks for a bit longer. Baffling.
O'BRIEN
And 13 schoolyards, do you have anything to say about the nominees?
13 SCHOOLYARDS
Well, Jackie O is who the media thinks you want for a best friend: someone not that smart, not that funny and only good-looking to people who think Paris Hilton is "sexy" and not "a coked-out skank". With a television career so littered with corpses it resembles a Baghdad marketplace and a radio job that involves sitting next to the most hated man in Australia and not vomiting, it's hard not to wonder how she manages to keep from lying down on a railway track. I guess millions of dollars are good for something after all.
And what is there to say about Matt Tilley that hasn't already been said about an infected bowel abscess? They're both amazingly painful, spray shit all over the place and take forever to go away. But at least a bowel abscess doesn't put on a crap Indian accent and call you up during breakfast to tell you your car's been sat on by an elephant.
O'BRIEN
Well, sadly, Kyle Sandilands is in the Tally Room tonight...but he's refusing to join us on the panel unless we pay him an appearance fee. What, you're not rich enough from having your face on stickers recommending below-average DVDs nationwide?!
CROSS TO SHOT OF KYLE IN THE TALLY ROOM. HE GIVES THAT POUTING 'WHATEVER' LOOK OF HIS.
O'BRIEN
So no Kyle here tonight, which I'm sure you'll agree is a real shame, especially as he was going to be plugging the new movie version of his public feud with fellow radio schlock jock Dave Hughes - Kyle vs Dave: whoever wins, we lose.
And now we turn to entertainment programmes, where many great comedy careers have gone to die...
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O'BRIEN
Well that is a surprise, I thought The Nation would win that hands down.
GREEN:
Yes, polling indicated that Kerry, but at the last minute people seemed to have gone in favour of The Sideshow.
O'BRIEN
13 schoolyards, your thoughts on these results?
13 SCHOOLYARDS
In a perfect world, the ABC would have been able to budget for The Sideshow as an educational programme - it sure did a good job educating those who tuned in as to why no-one goes to the circus anymore. Of course, who would have guessed that combining stale circus acts with the stale antics of Flacco and The Sandman would have resulted in a show that came out of the oven already past it's use-by date? And while he's perfectly competent in an arm-waving way, getting Paul McDermott to host a show aimed at "tha yoof" in 2007 is like getting Aunty Jack to co-host The Late Show or Rob Sitch to compare The Chaser's War on Anything, only the other two were funny once.
O'BRIEN
And speaking of funny once, Andrew Denton's become very popular as the host of Enough Rope in recent years oceanthroats...
OCEANTHROATS
Yes, but Enough Rope is basically a lifestyle programme masquerading as the sort of thoughtful late night religious interview hour Geraldine Doogue sometimes hosts. It's usually good for at least one half-decent interview a series, but Denton struggled to do even that this year. There were moments when it was almost possible to see a good show hiding behind Denton's humdrum, dull-as-ditchwater questions and the wildly zooming camera work, but those moments usually wandered off after half a minute and got lost in the Simpson Desert. The Kyle Sandilands interview surely drove several people into clinical depression and Denton probably interviewed them in as boring a way as possible the week later. With Michael Parkinson writing introductions to lavish collections of Denton's finest interviews it is taken for granted that this is good quality, sharp television. But there's less going on here than in one episode of Today Tonight, even one that gives the Chaser a good kicking.
13 SCHOOLYARDS
And while we're on the nominees for this award, what the hell was The Nation meant to be anyway? A talk show with sketches and news reports and entertainment news and sporting updates and a live band? Presumably the failure of the (far superior) Mick Molloy Show meant Mick couldn't go back to having some funny people sitting around on a couch chatting, which is pretty much what he does best. What The Nation proved he doesn't do even remotely well is sit next to Jackie O. Mind you, who except a moronic ego maniac with 15 other jobs does?
O'BRIEN
But back to our winner, everyone from The Sideshow is here tonight, in fact, most of them have been sleeping here since the show was axed. So we now cross to one of those puppets they had on to make the show seem cutting edge and "out there", who's currently living in a shirt recently discarded by Laurie Oakes in the Channel 9 dressing room...
BEAR PUPPET
Thanks Kerry - I'd just like to thank...
O'BRIEN
Whoever the idiot was who thought putting hand puppets on a national television show was a good idea?
BEAR PUPPET
You're mean! (BURSTS INTO TEARS)
O'BRIEN
And you've got Andrew Denton's hand up your arse.
BEAR PUPPET
Better his than Kevin Rudd's.
AWKWARD CUT BACK TO THE STUDIO.
THE PUPPET DIVES BACK INTO OAKES' SHIRT. GERARD HENDERSON CAN BE SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND MAKING FURIOUS NOTES IN A NOTEBOOK LABELED 'WHY ABC BIAS WILL KILL US ALL - VOLUME 207'.
O'BRIEN
Right, um, do we have any more results Antony?
GREEN:
Yes Kerry, let's go from entertainment shows that weren't entertaining to situation comedies that weren't funny, as we take a look at...
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O'BRIEN
oceanthroats, your hatred of Chris Lilley is legendary, anything to say about the win for Summer Heights High, here?
OCEANTHROATS:
Summer Heights High gave us chapter two in the rush released 'Chris Lilley is such an astonishing genius let us celebrate the fact out of all proportion before he actually does anything to warrant it' omnibus best seller with a foreword by Bryce Courtney and a preface by The Little River Band and it didn't make great reading. If there was good about this show the out of control snow mobiles crashing into trees of hype tended to make it a bit of a trial to watch, let alone enjoy. Bereft of imagination, any sense that anybody involved had an idea to knock together between them and humour that could fit inside a green tea bag and still barely soothe the bedraggled viewer after a hard day's breakfast radio, Summer Heights High seemed at times to have been conceived and produced as an excuse to stage a vaguely clever advertising campaign.
In the end though Lilley gave the ABC and its merry, easy-going audience what it wanted. Pleasantly, occasionally dark material that got them bristling just enough to think about complaining, before the great waves of dullness washed in and put them all to sleep. Summer Heights High was the show that wasn't there in 2007, and not even the odd breakthrough controversy, surely the whole purpose of the enterprise, could keep most viewers awake long enough to give it much of a bad review.
OK, so it was pretty barren and dreadful. Is it Chris Lilley's fault if it gets more hype than your average Kyle and Jackie O travelling 'We hate you Australia' bus tour? Probably not. The problem is that in five years nobody will have any reason to remember this show, which finally seemed to only exist as a way to stop prgrammers having to bother about actually getting to work and sorting out new shows with new ideas, jokes, laughs, and general basic worth. It looked enough like a sort of smart, cool, five years old and finally getting shown out here UK comedy show to get people laughing about it at dinner parties and feeling like they had turned on the ABC of a Wednesday evening and waltzed into a cutting edge TV show with minimum fuss, and this is probably all the ABC wanted. It really was awful, but there's a DVD of it though. Gamey.
O'BRIEN
And let's not forget our nominees. 13 schoolyards, what of Wilfred and Kath & Kim?
13 SCHOOLYARDS
Ah, Wilfred, where to begin? The annoying performances, perhaps? The scripts, where long pauses and hits from the bong covered up the fact the bugger-all was going on? A halfway decent concept totally thrown into the bin because the creators didn't really know what they were doing? Perhaps the problems started with the central relationship between the three characters: OK, it's fine for Wilfred the dog to be a surly moronic bogan or for the Adam character to be a bit of a wimp, but when the woman who owns Wilfred - Adam's love interest and the reason he's putting up with Wilfred at all - is a sulky, nasty bitch who gets pregnant in the last episode with another guy, then it seems reasonable to wonder exactly why Adam didn't hit the bricks halfway through episode one.
And hasn't Kath & Kim settled firmly into a nice, comfortable rut? It's become the kind of show that pretty much anyone could write a half-way passable script for - Kim acts like a bitch, Kath gets swept up in some fad, Kel acts all sexed-up, a few celebrities make guest appearances and Sharon has some eye-catching injury. Throw in some wordplay and the regulation catchphrases and job done. It's seriously puzzling as to why Gina Reily and Jane Turner haven't hired a bunch of writers and turned it into a 22-episode a year sitcom along the US model - if they wanted to keep the characters fresh they would have quit two series ago.
O'BRIEN
Thank you. (TURNING TO GREEN) Do we have any more results yet, Antony?
GREEN:
No more here Kerry, but there are some on page 2...
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