Introducing ‘Australia, Get It Up Ya!’: A New Sketch Series That Probably Makes Fun Of Your Hometown

If you live in one of Australia’s major cities, it’s likely you can’t stray too far without thinking of the work of a local comedian. A stroll to Sydney’s beaches will come with standard jibes about the Bondi Hipsters. Each hungover ride on Melbourne’s 86 tram is now impossible to do without kind of hating yourself because of The Bedroom Philoshoper. Ritzy suburbs are now prime sites for songs about active wear. Smokers at any train station are now constantly hounded by the words “ciggy butt brain”.

Now, it seems like four Melbourne comedians are on a mission to fill in the gaps. After writing sketches for specific locations and travelling all around the county, they’ve released a new comedy show which aims to take the piss out of everyone equally. From the Northern Territory to Tasmania to Tamworth, introducing: Australia, Get It Up Ya!

(Of course, it still makes fun of Brunswick too).

Directed by Evan Munro-Smith and starring Andy Matthews, Matt Stewart, Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall and Bec Petraitis, the show which has recently premiered on Melbourne’s Channel 31 has a whole load of talent behind it. The performers have previously worked as writing staff on shows like The Project, The Chaser’s Media Circus, and Mad as Hell; and combined with Munro-Smith they run Stupid Old Studios: a collective which has worked on projects with Tripod, Sammy J & Randy, and the Sydney Opera House. They also have long-time stand-up Claire Hooper on board as narrator.

After catching the great first two episodes which have included a long bush ballad about farming and Starcraft, an important warning about the latent dangers of wind farms, and vision from a somewhat dystopian future in which people literally jerk off to locally-manufactured cars — wow, this country’s fucking weird — we spoke to the show’s creators.

You should probably get on board with this one before they make it to your hometown.

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Junkee: Tell us a little about the filming process! What are all the locations you filmed from and how long were you on the road? Any big highlights?

Alasdair: Filming is great, making comedy is one of the most fun things you can do. We filmed on weekends and days off, between work and other engagements. We’ve been doing it on and off for over a year. You can see that from the lengths of Andy and Matt’s beards in various sketches.

The Land Speed Record sketch from episode two is a highlight, we drove out to a salt flat, five hours from Adelaide, having never seen it, finishing off the script on the way. Once we got there we were racing to get it done before the sun went down. As darkness almost hit we realised we’d lost the rented van keys on the sand somewhere.

Andy: The quality of some sketches is directly related to the length of the car drive to the location. Fortunately, Australia is comically large and so there were enough really long drives to get some really quite good gear.

Matt: I’m already feeling nostalgic about the interstate shoot. For the most part the trips were long weekends (either officially or our own invention, for instance the Queen’s Birthday weekend we were in the NT and the ‘We all have to call in sick on Monday’ weekend we were in South Australia). The longest trip was the east coast, which we did over a week and a half in a hired van (thanks to our Pozible supporters). That was my highlight. It was like being in a moderately successful touring rock band (which has always been my dream).

Bec: We filmed in every capital city and have been filming since the January 2 this year. Top tip: don’t start a comedy show where you need to fly places anywhere near New Year’s. The lines are not kind and nor is the feeling of relaxation around you with everyone else going on holiday! Bastards. In saying that even though we were working, traveling around with these dorks was one of the most memorable experiences of a lifetime, from the place in between NSW and QLD that had a toilet with no seat or door to the time a drunk Perth man mistook Matt for a certain advertising rabbit. Good times.

A lot of local comedy seems to be quite focussed on specific city locations recently — a move that makes sense for small budgets. What made you branch out all over the country? Are rural areas a bit of an untapped resource for this stuff?

Alasdair: Usually we’d just film things in our warehouse…

Andy: It’s a studio in Brunswick.  You make it sound like we sell Persian rugs or something.

Alasdair: …But things always seem to look better when it seems like you’ve made some effort. We figured the farther away we got from the warehouse the better it would look, so we went as far as we could go without having to update our passports.

Andy: We’re still working on our ‘make effort = higher quality’ theory. Personally, I’d love to find some loopholes. I think we also just liked how ludicrously ambitious the idea seemed. It’s a truly stupid thing to try and do on a community TV budget.

Evan: And regional Australia looks fantastic! You don’t see that sort of thing in comedy because it’s so expensive to get a crew there, but since we’re such a small team we can just jump in a van and drive wherever we want.

Matt: A few of us have some sort of a rural connection as well, Al grew up in Tathra in country NSW (and Canada), Andy grew up in rural Tasmania, I lived my early years in Kyneton/Charlton in country Vic and Bec went to Beechworth one time. Rural is also a fun word to say.

Bec: Thanks to the lovely Evan Munro-Smith we’ve always been focused on getting something that is not only funny but also looks good, which is where shooting on location really helps. Even if people think the show is a frightful bore, they can still look at it and say “Well, gawsh ain’t dat purdy” (I imagine this is how the people who don’t like this show speak). Also, it’s really fun and gives the sketch a bit more weight taking the piss out of a place you are in — like our ones about Tamworth, Glenrowan and Doo Town.

What do you think of the state of Australian sketch comedy at the moment? Are we doing things better or worse than the days of Full Frontal?

Alasdair: There’s some good stuff around at the moment, it’s just not all on TV yet. Aunty Donna and Fancy Boy are two sketch groups making great stuff, including two pilots for ABC Fresh Blood. Henry and Aaron from Western Australia are also making good stuff.

Australia’s doing pretty well compared to the Full Frontal days, Australian sketch shows may not be able to compete with cooking shows where people renovate things whilst dancing but the quality is better than at any time in recorded history. Pre-colonial Australia may have had some kickass sketch stuff but we just don’t know cause we don’t have records of it.

Andy: Renovancing with the Chefs is a great show. I think maybe sketch struggles to find an audience because it’s almost too good online. It’s shot by nature so it works on YouTube really nicely, and there’s less of an incentive for people to sit down and watch a whole episode. That said, there seems to be a real push, at least from ABC and SBS, to put money into developing sketch concepts that could make it to TV. That’s great because it provides a stepping stone that wasn’t there before — that’s important when commercial TV doesn’t have the same budgets and ability to take risks than it did in the Full Frontal era.

Matt: Oh man, Full Frontal was my favourite show when I was a kid. That was truly a golden age of TV sketch. Australian sketch is in amazing shape at the moment, though I think every generation probably thinks they did it best — it just goes through phases of high and low visibility.

Bec: I agree, there’s a lot going on and it’s all bloody great but because a bunch of it is available for free, sketch for a lot of groups is the thing you do on weekends that ain’t paying the bills. It might be opening up a few doors though and getting you out to a wider audience. Hopefully we’ll see some more free to air sketch comedy soon!

So much classic Australian comedy is very character-based, but I love that Get It Up Ya! mixes all that with broader political issues as well. The radio shock jocks and wind farms were particularly great — what else is on the way? Does a conservative government make these kind of laughs a bit easier?

Andy: I think a lot of our stuff has some kind of satirical element to it, but often even we’re not sure exactly what we’re making fun of. There’s a big sketch coming up about the Tasmanian voting system that is just plain stupid. There’s more from the shock jocks as well, and a sketch about the Minister for Women that was filmed when Abbott was PM and might now seem REALLY weird. I think we like sketches where we take a stupid idea so far that it becomes its own reality.

Bec: We thrive off stupidity, so if the government is doing that too it definitely helps, whether they’re conservative or extremely liberal. People bang on about them ignoring human rights and helping the rich but they really don’t focus on how them doing those things aids the comedy groups. Thanks, government!

I know you were partly funded by the Community Broadcasting Foundation, but you also relied on a crowdfunding campaign to get the initial production funds. Is this the standard way of getting these kind of projects done now? (Are you the nomadic dance troupe making your way across the desolate outback?)

Alasdair: We are that dance troupe! Yes it’s sort of the way things are done, but only in situations where no one on the team is getting paid. We received just over $20,000 in funds from CBF and crowdfunding. In the commercial world $20,000 doesn’t buy you very much TV but with a little help from some very talented volunteers you can make a six-episode sketch show.

Andy: I’m not sure that anyone’s really nailed a new model for making community TV and online stuff in a sustainable way. Crowdfunding is great, but unless you’ve already got a huge fan base it can be hard to push it beyond just asking friends for money (big thanks to our friends, by the way). I think there’s going to be a lot more content that is made in partnership with a sponsor. We should have got tourism Australia involved.  Although we do say some pretty mean things about Perth.

Bec: Doing it yourself is the new getting commissioned by a network, so grants, crowdfunding or sponsorship means you can do it while still eating. And eating is great. I do it at least three times a day. Sometimes more. Get onto it, people.

Matt: Haha we are totally the nomadic dance troupe!

So, Tasmania is pretty well-represented in the jokes of the first two episodes… That’s it. That’s my full question. Respond to it how you please.

Andy: Great question. The mix of different states in different episodes fluctuates throughout the series, but why wouldn’t you start off with the state that has the cleanest air in the world? (According to the CSIRO. FACT)

Alasdair: Yeah, Andy is from Tasmania and considers it the real mainland. I reckon he’d live there if there were opportunities, money or people there.

Matt: Andy and Emma Sharp (who co-produced the show with Carly Milroy) are both from the little state, so we had free accommodation! Also, for my mind, it is Australia’s premier whisky region. Add those two elements together and we had a lot of hangovers at a friend’s parent’s place.

Bec: We’re three white guys and a white girl — covering Tasmania a bunch is as close to overseas diversity as we’re gonna get.

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The third episode of Australia, Get It Up Ya! airs 9pm tonight on Channel 31 in Melbourne. Watch the first two episodes online via their YouTube channel:

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