The Five Freshest Bloods of ABC’s ‘Fresh Blood’
24 comedy web series landed on the web this week, from emerging Australian talent. And some of them are excellent.
#2. Written It Down
TV has long had a vexed relationship with improv, uncertain quite what to do with a form where the entire point is that you do almost nothing. This has been particularly evident in Australia, where TV producers trust comedians about as much as they trust the ebola virus; the structurally limited Thank God You’re Here and the grim farce of Slide Show are pretty much the only examples of experimentation with the genre.
Fortunately, Written It Down understands that what makes improv good is freedom. One of the performers in each scene is tasked with giving the other some bad news, which they read off a piece of paper they’ve just been given. For example, in episode one a guy is kicked off his mixed netball team for being a criminal warlord. After that, they just let the performers run with it, and the results are excellent.
There’s already two seasons of the stuff kicking around on YouTube — I can highly recommend chasing it down.