BERT: What are the political comedies that seem to get the most discussion 'round the office watercooler? Yes, it's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report - shows which satirise the political goings on IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. And that sums this category up, really - we Australians are so bad at taking the piss out of our politicians that we have to import programmes that do it well, and hope that audiences will accept the fact that they'll have to Google any jokes they don't quite understand. Meanwhile, various people in this country try to emulate The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and succeed only in failing spectacularly. Let's take a look at some of the worst examples now...
When it started in the mid-90s Good News Week was The Chaser's War on Everything of its day - a programme your friends and family would praise for its witty insights. Since then it's been done to death, burnt out, retired, come back and morphed into an entertainment programme where guest musicians are more common than satire. People still claim Good News Week is biting, but if you can bothered to slog through an episode or two you'll find this isn't the case. Unless someone mentioning that Rob Oakeshott once gave quite a long speech is what passes for biting in this country. Sadly, it just might. The work of Gabby Millgate as Julia Spillard has a similar vibe. It's just more superficial references to politicians, or policies, or Tim Mathieson's hairdressing skills, rather than insights, intelligent takes, or even jokes. Perhaps these videos are actually Millgate's audition tapes for a Hawke-style telemovie entitled The Red Queen? That explanation would make more sense than most of the actual content of her half-arsed efforts. Hungry Beast frequently gets political, yet they don't seem to do that much political comedy. Those Veronica Dynamite sketches aren't really political, and Dan Ilic seems to save most of his political gags for those GetUp! ads he does. Maybe Hungry Beast's nomination here is more a reflection of our voters dislike of the show's comedy output, which looks flashy but often has the feel of a second rate university revue. EDDIE: Have we ever done any political satire at GTV-9, Bert? BERT: John Clarke and Bryan Dawe's old segment on A Current Affair? EDDIE: Not enough drag work for my liking. And where's the pie-in-the-face stuff? You can't spell "Australian Political Satire" without "Pie". Question 65 on The National IQ Test. Think the tradies took that one out.
|