THE CRINGE DWELLERS

Aussie humour's a funny thing, isn't it.

What are we best at?

The usual cliché routinely trotted out on Australia Day goes like this. We're always been great at sport. Not to put too fine a point, we've err . . . punched above our weight. We’ve more recently been congratulating ourselves on the end of our 'cultural cringe'. In fact our cringes are still fairly healthy in various respects not least in our economic achievements - as indicated by our sad insistence on describing things in such terms as 'world competitive'.

1. William Burroughs' Baboon:

We’re also very good at humour: viz Gunston before Ali G; Aunty Jack before Little Britain; Frontline before The Office; Vizard before Letterman.

9. Tony.T

Most of our humour is dismal. It makes me cringe.

13. Nicholas Gruen

Tony T,

"Humour" is too broad a category by far. I think Australians have a great sense of humour. Subtle, ironic, low key. It suits some genres (like cartoons) and hasn’t worked that well with others. But Barry Humphries seems to manage. And Frontline was a great show. So it depends.

I miss things. For years I thought "I'm staying home to wash my hair" meant hair washing was a big deal; I never realised it was a brush off. Am I missing something here, too?

Speaking of humour: How The Hell Did We Get Here? The Baby Boomer's Guide To Comedy. How The Hell was yet another "Top 20" affair in which Aussie faces vote on the usual suspects: Frontline, The Paul Hogan Show, Mother And Son, The Naked Vicar Show, My Name's McGooley, The Aunty Jack Show, Full Frontal (or Fast Forward), The Games and Kath & Kim. Pretty much what you'd expect, right. I often suspect the faces in question vote for these shows because they were involved in them.

But before you jump to the confusion it must have been an all-Aussie affair, the 20 contained numerous foreign shows: Laugh In (18), Yes, Minister (9), Get Smart (8), Absolutely Fabulous (7), Monty Python's Flying Circus (5), Fawlty Towers (2) and Mash (1).

This is where my cringe quivers into action.

Were I putting the list together, the only Aussie show I would have included would be Frontline. The Games would have had a look-in, but it was a little too Clarke-Dry for me. McGooley is before my time. I thought Aunty Jack was rubbish, but I only ever saw it when Channel Two disinterred it a few years ago and like Peter Beattie, I loved the theme song. Most of the rest I detested, or at best tolerated. Mother and Son, in particular, shits me to tears.

The shows I would have included are mostly foreign. Yes, Minister, Get Smart, Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, Ripping Yarns, Dad's Army, The Royle Family, Hancock's Half Hour, I'm Alan Partridge, Will & Grace, Seinfeld, The Young Ones, Cheers, Newhart, Herman's Head, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Porridge, The Larry Sanders Show and Night Court.

You can argue all you like about the baby-boomerishness of my list, but the ABC show covered about 40 years, so mine did, too.

I've never seen The Office and I've only just started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. Boynton reckons CYE is a "grouse" grouch show like One Foot In The Grave, but I've never seen that, either. Guess I'll have to assume it's nothing like the completely shitful and hideous faux-grouch Becker.

Comments

[Snr Nubi]

TT, I thought BlackAdder might have made it & some lesser lights like The New Statesman. Actually what about The Comic Strip presents....Not mainstream enough s'pose.

[ThirdCat]

Australia you're standing in it. That was funny.

Wasn't it?

[Tony.T]

I was just in the car and realised I'd left out Blackadder. The New Statesman had its moments. The Comic Strip was too patchy for me.

Straya You're Standing In It was dodgy.

[ThirdCat]

oh.

[Yobbo]

The Office is great. You should really get around to watching it. Quite reminiscent of Frontline really, with Ricky Gervais playing the Mike Moore character.

[Yobbo]

And I never found Get Smart funny. I guess you have to be over 40.

[Tony.T]

Nothing's as funny as the footage I just saw of the tennis that had Our Lleyton, "hopes of the nation on his shoulders", slow-motion saluting the crowd after a win over Whatsisface (Ranked 101) accompanied by a saccharine, stomach churning Celine Dion style dreckfest that when on and on and on and on and ... etc.

I laughed until I threw up.

[Carrot]

Australian humour is one of the things I miss the most about living in Pudding Island. I'd give my left nut to watch and/or listen to Roy & HG again, laugh myself stupid to the 12th man with people that actually understand it beyond the stupid Indian/Pakistani names (incidentally, I haven't got the latest offering yet, is it any good?), talk about and recount funny sketches from "The Late Show" etc etc. I think Australian humour, and comedy, is fantastic, and a lot more intelligent than Australians give it credit for.

[Yobbo]

Kath and Kim, thought, is just fucking annoying. You can't keep making the same "poor people are stupid" joke and expect it to last more than 1 episode.

[Francis Xavier Holden]

"...still crazy after all these years.."

[pat]

Seems pretty cringey to be making a list of TV shows. It's actually another Boomer excuse to glorify their past and thereby themselves.

PS. I hate boomers. No really. I despise them. I really do.

[pat]

Easily what we are best at is killing the enemy in war.

The record of the Australian 9th Division in particular is peerless featuring in the Battle of El Alamein and the Siege of Tobruk. They were highly rated by Rommel and rated as the best soldiers of WWII at a divisional level.

On our record in general in that war here is a simple precis taken from another blog:

"The first defeat of Fascist Italy - Australian 6th Division - Battle of Bardia.

The first Defeat of Vichy France - Australian 7th Division - Syria.

The first defeat of the German Biltzkreig - Australian Ninth Division - Seige of Tobruk.

The first outright Defeat of the Japanese Imperial Army - Australian soldiers at the Battle of Milne Bay.

The British Field Marshal Sir William Slim (Commander in Burma), who had no part in the battle, said:

'Australian troops had, at Milne Bay, inflicted on the Japanese their first undoubted defeat on land. Some of us may forget that, of all the allies, it was the Australians who first broke the invincibility of the Japanese army.'"

Cockheads laugh at the phrase "punching above our weight" but our record in the military theatre shows that that is what we have always done. Our recent performance in East Timor is unparalleled in recent times given similar situations elsewhere.

How easy it is for Boomers to forget that there are and were other generations far superior to them who have enabled and enable still their superficial lives.

[girtbysea]

chunky custard

[TimT]

Kath and Kim and The Office are both clever, but ultimately irritating because of their fake documentary style. Shaky camera style, jump cuts, and 'ordinary' language does not make a good substitute for scripted comedy. Though it's true, Kenny was a pisser, and a few years back the BBC did a hilarious piss-take of historical documentaries with a series of shows called 'We Are History', or something like that.

Dad's Army is great, as is The Simpsons, Frontline and The Late Show.

[carneagles]

The Late Show was superb. It had its irritations - Rob Sitch is a dick, Tom Gleisner's bits were awful and Judith Lucy makes me want to throw up - but when it worked, it worked well. I still laugh when remembering their pisstake of Frente.

We haven't had any really decent Australian comedy* in years. All recent attempts at sketch comedy has been dire, and all evidence suggests that the Working Dog crowd have gotten fat and lazy.

* (Intentional comedy, that is. The Irwin family are a sick joke, but that doesn't really count)

[Tony.T]

Yep, The Late Show is definitely one I should have had in there. Bad miss.

[nabakov]

Just saw some DVDs of \\\"15 Storeys High\\\" which I can throughly recommend.

http://www.sitcom.co.uk/15_storeys/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_Storeys_High
http://www.amazon.co.uk/15-Storeys-High-Sean-Lock/dp/B0000C88LB

Sorta like Seinfeld meets The Royle Family with a dash of the Pythons and League of Gentlemen.

Great running gags like the Nigerian Jehovah\\\'s Witness who\\\'ll do anything to get inside a flat including hosting marital aids parties and the five year old kid who\\\'s criminal parents have spent so much time in court that he only talks in legalese.

[Tony.T]

Never heard of it. \\\* But I fookin' well 'ate League o' Gentlemen. (And Little Britain, for what it's worth.)

* Just getting into the slashy spirit of things.

[fran]

the comic strip did do one i thought was very funny, "Five men in a car" about five salesmen on a trip to a convention where the top salesmen will be announced. Along they way they have various adventures, they all try to outdo each other selling whatever to every person they meet along the way.
cant stand Kath and Kim, if you like malapropisms i guess its clever.
I really liked "People like us" 1999 mock-doc by Chris Langham

[Tony.T]

From what I saw People Like Us was pretty good, but I only saw maybe two episodes.

[Clem Snide]

Good call. I've always thought that Hell consisted of people strapped in chairs with their eyelids clamped open a la Clockwork Orange, screaming as they are forced to watch Aussie comedy. However there is one thing that makes Aussie comedy look good by comparison, and that is Aussie cinema. Its creators and supporters will definitely burn in Hell with their eyelids clamped open watching Aussie comedy.

[Professor Rosseforp]

Yes, the list was lame, and had all the hallmarks of a preselected 20 programmes, which people ranked. McGooley may be of historic interest, but like Graham Kennedy, was tedious television at the time, and would never enter a list based on votes because too few people remember it -- and those who do see it through boomer-coloured glasses -- you might as well nominate another clunker from the time which never gets a mention, "Barley Charlie".
"Mother and Son" probably appeals to the same demographic as those flaccid British domestic comedies, where the plotline revolves around such scintillating stories as a dim-witted vicar who shocks everyone by putting daffodils in the vestry, or, a dim-witted husband who thinks his wife is having an affair when she is really planning a smashing anniversary dinner, etc etc.
What about the comedy which beat "Kath and Kim" (which I quite like) for the AFI's best comedy award, namely "Double the Fist" -- I only caught a couple of episodes, as the ABC tried to hide it away very late at night -- this wasn't anarchy, this was more like an apocalyptic blitzkrieg.
Mavis Bramston was groundbreaking during a conservative Menzies era during a time when few people had uni educations, and when we had a small population which all watched TV -- it set a dangerous precedent, in that skit shows have cropped up regularly (Fast forward, Comedy Inc), trying to emulate Bramston's university revue style -- and sitcoms have never really thrived in Oz (where is our Steptoe and Son, or Til Death Us Do Part?)

[Yorkshire Soul]

I can't stand Kath & Kim or Little Britain, I also can't understand why anyone would vote MASH in ahead of Fawlty Towers. I'm not anti-Oz, but pretty much all the Australian comedy I have seen over here sucks, mind you, you should see the dross we import from the States, Two and Half Men, oh dear.

Other great Brit comedy......

Porridge and Open All Hours, Ronnie Barker was a great man.