From Skithouse To The Wedge: Australia’s Lost Decade Of Sketch Comedy

Last month, as Saturday Night Live neared the end of its 39th season, cast-members Sasheer Zamata and Vanessa Bayer debuted their takes on Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, respectively. Much hay was made by SNL out of an invented feud between the First Lady and the expected Presidential candidate — two women with reportedly nothing but admiration for one another. Meanwhile, in actual Australian reality, our Prime Minister winked skeezily while being regaled with the not-at-all-winkworthy tale of a pensioner working on a sex line to pay her bills, the Government floated the idea of collecting HECS debts from the dead, and the Minister for Education/an adult human called the Opposition Leader a c*nt.

It left me wondering:  Why hasn’t a similar satirical sketch-based program caught on in Australia these past few years? Clearly we have the material.

It’s not for want of trying. The aughts were something of a boom time for Aussie sketch comedy, with Big Bite, Comedy, Inc., skitHOUSE, The Ronnie Johns Half Hour and The Wedge all fighting for our attention. The ill-fated Let Loose Live sought to do what SNL did, except much worse, and the zombified Hey Hey, It’s Saturday returned — to Wednesdays, we must never forget — in an effort to recapture the halcyon days of Daryl Somers’ reign, Dickie Knee, and minstrelsy.

Why did they all fail? Could it be that, by the time they arrived on our screens, it had become commonplace to catch up with Saturday Night Live‘s most viral moments via YouTube, making local product obsolete? Was attention already waning for any series that wasn’t either Big Brother or Australian Idol? Did the shadow of ’80s/’90s giants — The Comedy Company, Fast Forward, Full Frontal and especially The D-Generation’s Late Show and Shaun Micallef’s The Micallef Program (in my humble opinion, the funniest series in the history of time and of any dimension) — loom too large? Or were the new programs just shit? (Answer: It’s definitely because they were shit. I mean, maybe the first three points are valid as well, but it’s mostly the last thing.)

Join me as I descend into the crevasse and explore what is perhaps the worst sustained period of terrible comedy in any nation’s history, challenging even Germany’s record of 1914 to… well, today.

–

Let Loose Live (2005)

Let Loose Live may not, chronologically, be the first 2000s sketch show out of the gate, but it is pretty much Patient Zero for ruining the format as a viable genre in our country. (Ben Elton attempted something similar with Live From Planet Earth in 2011, and it enjoyed one more episode than Let Loose Live ever did before getting the ax: three.)

This ill-fated answer to SNL ran from May of 2005 all the way to early June of 2005. Broadcast live, it invited celebrity hosts to mug in front of a studio audience, and entrusted Dave O’Neil with the equivalent of the Weekend Update desk. Only two episodes ever aired, and helpfully, much of the premiere — featuring William McInnes (poor, poor William McInnes) — is available to watch online.

The introductory sketch was a play on Dancing with the Stars entitled Dancing with the Cars, and yes, people were paid to come up with and then execute that premise. It’s followed by a ‘cold open’-style chat between Jane Hall’s journalist and McInnes’ spokesman for the Ministry of Immigration and Inland Security and Happy Puppies, which then makes way for another SNL-inspired staple: the hugely annoying recurring character. Let Loose Live, however, innovatively does away with the whole ‘crafting someone for us to fall in love with and obsess over before driving them into the ground’ by making us despise a talkative, inappropriate moppet within the first four minutes.

As any long-time fan of Saturday Night Live can tell you, despite its incredible stable of stars and world-class writing talent, the show is wildly inconsistent, with moments of genius hidden amongst a string of failed sketches, sometimes derailed by the often-uncomfortable, ill-suited hosts. Now, imagine that instead of having an impresario like Lorne Michaels at the helm or some of the world’s best improvisers and comedians working behind the scenes, you’ve got a handful of stand-ups, fresh (or not-so-fresh) from the RSL circuit, having to come up with current, biting comedy pieces on a weekly basis. Yes, the monumental failure of Let Loose Live was inevitable. When the ratings cratered in its second outing, Channel 7 pulled the plug, denying us a promised Guy Sebastian ep. It remains a blight on our televisual landscape, and across the CV’s of many theoretically funny people. Let Loose Live is undeniably the worst thing any of the largely talented cast has ever been affiliated with, and the same probably goes for its viewers too.

One time I saw Peter Moon trip over the red carpet at the Melbourne International Film Festival. It was less embarrassing than Let Loose Live.

–

Big Bite (2003-2004)

This one-season-non-wonder gets the smallest of footnotes in the history of Australian TV comedy for seeing the televised debut of Chris Lilley’s eventual Summer Heights High star, Mr. G.

Even more interesting than that, however, is its inclusion of Andrew O’Keefe as a featured player (and frequent spoofer of Russell Crowe). He has since proven to be far more adept at drawing out a 30-minute flirtation with an unopened suitcase — yet there’s something novel about seeing a young O’Keefe being amusing in a scripted manner, as opposed to just doing goofy stuff to make the Deal or No Deal dance remotely interesting. 

–

skitHOUSE (2003-2004)

skitHOUSE arrived courtesy of Roving Enterprises, with an esteemed collection of comedians in tow, such as Tom Gleeson, Cal Wilson, Peter Helliar, Corinne Grant and the guys from Tripod. The below clip is one of their better efforts, though it quickly descends into ugly stereotyping, indicating how even when armed with the most inventive and promising of premises, they would quickly rely on the easiest jokes available.

Wikipedia handily offers this explanation for its title: “a pun on the colloquial word: ‘shithouse’.” That, frankly, says it all.

–

Comedy Inc. (2003-2007)

Thanks to the talents of mimic Paul McCarthy, future Rhonda Mandy McElhinney, and the kid from Hey Dad! (no clips online for … obvious reasons), Comedy Inc. survived a few years on Channel 9, but not before rebranding as Comedy Inc.: The Late Shift in an attempt to fool people into watching it slightly longer.

This one was probably decent enough to be excused from the ‘shit’ tag; at least, that’s how I remember it. The Internet doesn’t do it any favours by only having a handful of skits available to revisit, many of them, curiously, in Castellano. Anyway, below is a sketch where their two best players pretend to be Kochie and Mel, and one of them describes someone as “a retardo.”

–

The Ronnie Johns Half Hour (2005-2006)

One of the darker, weirder efforts to emerge from the 2000s carousel of failure, Ronnie Johns achieved school-ground ubiquity thanks to Heath Franklin’s Chopper impersonation (and, controversially, its ‘High Five a Muslim Day’ sketch).

The Wikipedia page reminds us “the show hasn’t been on since November 2006 and has not been on Network Ten’s programming since,” which sounds to me like some Wiki editor needs to let the particularly fruitless dream of a revival die. (Felicity Ward is listed among its stars, furthering the tradition of genuinely gifted comics finding their footing after a show’s cancellation.)

–

The Wedge (2006-2007)

This one boasted Steve Vizard as a “Creative Consultant” and introduced us to Rebel Wilson, Wilfred creator Jason Gann, and Agony Uncle Adam Zwar. So… thanks, The Wedge.

Based around the oddbod inhabitants of a fictional suburb — which you may remember from that endless, enigmatic promo campaign — it lasted for just over a year and managed to produce the spin-off Mark Loves Sharon too. So, again… thanks for that, The Wedge. Maybe Let Loose Live shouldn’t shoulder all of the blame for killing sketch comedy in Australia.

–

The Chaser’s War on Everything (2006-2007) / Newstopia (2007-2008)

These two were actually pretty ingenious, and hinted that we, as a nation, had finally turned a corner.

Hey Hey, It’s Saturday would return one year later, dashing those hopes.

–

Simon Miraudo is Quickflix’s AFCA award-winning news editor and film critic. He is also co-host of The Podcasting Couch and tweets at @simonmiraudo.