The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 35

Green Guide Thursday 4 October 1984 ool MediumG Milo, a sight so obvious I'm surprised Barry Humphries never exhibited it. The Dodgy Brothers are back to remind us of what it's like on non-commercial television. The Queen (the uncanny Sue Ingleton) made a resplendent appearance, and you can buy her Sex Pistols-type tune, God Save Gracious Me, at your local record bar. Tim and Debbie are back in Brianspace now like pure and applied, right? On to how to get a government grant? Wow, written on both sides of a pizza carton? challenging the viewer to view what they're viewing, right? And Rod Quantock's remoreselessly shaggy anti-comedy stories, an ABC joke in a locked tin for example, are so close to the knuckle that they might even be true. New chap on the team with the aforementioned and Evelyn Krape (I hope she features more in the remaining shows) is Peter Browne, who sent up some one selling Australia, called Roges.

Then there was a fanatical person resembling Bruce Ruxton called Bruce Pump fanged by Geoff Brooks in a very nice manner indeed. The show ran at about two laughs a minute for me, and that makes it even funnier than the news. And besides that, it's all about the news. And the news will never be the same again, at last. It could be that AYSII will rate better this time around the following the performers have in the real world should count for something, but maybe the ABC factor will prevent success even in a well prepared (for the ABC) timeslot Last time around it found a following when it was replayed before the News, when kids and grown-ups were watching.

Maybe nine o'clock is too late. A sketch show is the hardest and cruellest kind of TV comedy to attempt compare the number of laughs you need to get to'Survive in a sitcom like the not very good vehicle for Ronnie Barker. Open All Hours, with what you need in ASYSII. Whatever happens, a show with two laughs, smirks, smiles, grins, snorts or giggles a minute won't be forgotten seriously. IT'S amazing, and I use the word deliberately in its fullest sense, how shows that don't rate all that well insinuate themselves into the consciousness of many, maybe most, television watchers and isn't that nearly everyone? -7- and ones that rate extremely well nothing behind? -t I This phenomenon might be regarded as either a function simply of having a show appear on the ABC, or as a general effect of television itself that the material is essentially ephemeral, and that discussion about it only centres on the nostalgic recall of what is trivial.

(In serious forms of entertainment like literature and film it is the larger subjects, intentions, meanings which are of interest. In television the major subjects of discourse are the superficial trails of stars and other less than cosmic facts. The trivia quiz is the primary -mode of thinking about television.) Think of what the recent top rating blockbusters like All The Rivers Run, Return To Eden, Waterfront, and Body-. line have left behind in Australian culture. Not a lot that wasn't already there.

There's no denying their entertainment value, occasionally their controversial nature (on the night) but if you compare the size of the audience with what images or language or arguments they've created they pale beside the low raters, the cult creators like Australia, You're Standing In It. This is partly an argument in favor of comedy as being the only serious subject for television, at least the one that is most effective, and also an argument about the secret and unmeasured potency of the ABC. It is particularly useful for a sort of test marketing of comedy to a large minority audience, and paving the way for its commercial acceptance. When it works particularly well, as with Norman Gunston, say, the ghetto audience becomes huge, the commercial acceptance is complete. As well as that, the comic type, the language, the look, become accepted as part of the culture.

Norman Gunston, like Mo, will never be Characters which are larger than life, big, gross, extreme characters, which comedy has always used as stock in trade, are better remembered than the half-hearted dramatic personalities. Of course full blooded villains like JR do find a way to surpass their environment, but they're a rare breed. Drama (except documentary-style drama) finds the going much tougher. On the whole the rule seems to be that what is made seriously is used for its trivial essence, and what is meant humorously is taken seriously. And, as Rod Quantock might say, what a good thing that is.

Wouldn't it be better if there were more funny things to laugh at on TV instead of all the serious things? Wouldn't it be better if TV did more of what it was good at, and less of what it was laughed at for? Laughing, amazingly enough, brings us to Australia, You're Standing In It back for six weeks, beginning last night. Here is a show. Rod Quantock said, which believe it or not rated 11 (at best). Compare that to the high fifties for any recent Australian mini series. But it is AYSII which has created a cult around itself, has characters which lived outside television before and after, and can be remembered.

There were some not so good things in the first series, but there were some wonderful ones too. I imagine it will be the same the second time around, but that is the way of all sketch comedy shows. Consider, for a paragraph or two, Alas Smith And Jones, a small series of which warmed up the AYSII timeslot. Like AYSII it was made in 1984, starred former Not The Nine O'clock News comics Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones, and used 12 (count 'em) writers. I thought it was pretty funny most of the time, though the opening and closing routines sending up tonight-type show opening and closing routines were moderately dull.

They, or one of the writers, had a fetish about World War II, a common enough British foible, and in general they had it in for most people of the continental persuasion. Smith and Jones are splendid comic actors, and I liked their close-up head-to-head coversations, about language as she is used today. An innovation was doing long (eight minutes or so) sketches mocking some TV format; in the case of the last episode about the Spanish Civil War, it was the Attenborough Clark Bronowski-style documentary. They use short black-out sketches well to break up the show, and don't feel constrained about not using old jokes and routines. In short, good, but being a sketch show, with no common characters except Smith and Jones themselves, unlikely to achieve cult status.

Not Monty Python or Fawlty Towers, but something else, a bit older-fashioned even than those venerable shows, harking back to your Two Ronnies, minus, thankfully, the music. With all the resources and experience of the BBC, however it was no better than AYSII. By the cult creation test, i.e. its forgetability rating, far worse. AYSII is; this time around, under the direction of Kris Noble, smoother and more polished, the transitions from sketch to sketch better achieved, though perhaps it could do with a black-out routine or two to break the rhythm of the show.

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