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Ben Elton - Live From Planet Earth (new live Aussie sketch show) [split topic]

Started by 13 schoolyards, February 04, 2011, 03:01:03 AM

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13 schoolyards

In news that surprised me somewhat, it seems Ben Elton's new show is, in fact, a live sketch comedy show rather than a chat-based thing:

QuoteIF BEN Elton had a dollar for every time someone called him a "sell-out", he'd be a very rich man. Not that he isn't already. Even so, he finds the charge deeply annoying.

"People say on the internet, 'I thought he was supposed to be a radical comedian and now he's doing musicals — what a sell-out,' " says Elton, taking a break from creating his new show for Channel Nine. "Well, f--- off. I'm into entertainment.

"I was doing musical theatre long before I was a stand-up comedian."

Advertisement: Story continues below In a 30-year comedy career, Elton's credits are impressive. He co-wrote the landmark sitcoms Blackadder and The Young Ones; of his 13 comic novels, seven were No. 1s in Britain; and he wrote the musical We Will Rock You, a huge commercial hit that has turned up all over the globe and is now in its ninth year in the West End.

Along the way, though, he's received more brickbats than bouquets, usually for selling out. In the '80s, as an up and comer, he aimed his acerbic, leftist wit squarely at the failings of Thatcher's Britain; two decades later, he was collaborating with Andrew Lloyd Webber on a sequel to Phantom of the Opera.

Most recently, Elton was criticised for relocating to Australia. In late 2009, he moved from Britain to Fremantle with his musician wife and three kids (twins aged 11 and a son aged nine). The sniping is primarily from Brits offended that Elton is now a naturalised Aussie.

"I've actually been here on and off for 25 years," Elton chuckles. "It's funny, the Brits have had this thing about, 'Oh, he's moved to Australia', but I fell in love with an Australian girl 25 years ago and since then I've had a double life. I've had a house in Margaret River since the early '90s. It's merely that we've shifted the base.

"We want our children to experience properly and fully Australian life, Australian culture and, most important of all, their Australian family. But I'll always be born a Pom and she'll always be born an Aussie — and the kids will always be a bunch of mongrels."

Elton's new show is confirmation he really has shifted his base, in career as in clan. Called Live from Planet Earth, it will be shot in Melbourne on Tuesday nights, which is exactly when it will air. It will be a throwback to an earlier time: an era of live TV, raw and unedited.

With nine (largely unknown) Australian performers, he will perform sketches and deliver gags.

Wherever possible, he will rope in hand-picked guests. The program aims to combine variety with comedy but, beyond that, even Elton finds it hard to reveal more.

"It really is somewhat of a leap into the unknown," he says. "I haven't done a live TV variety show for about 20 years.

"This is a sketch show. It's not a chat show. If guests come on, they'll have to muck in. The core of it will be me hosting and doing, hopefully, great stand-up material.

"I don't think the format is necessarily unique but what's always been interesting about my work — if, indeed, it's been interesting — is that I believe the actual content was original and different. This is the same. We're going to be in the studio doing stand-up and sketches — we're not the first people to do that — but, hopefully, the gags will be new and fresh and interesting and we'll have fun with our guests. "And I've obviously made a huge stick for my own back with this idea that it has to be live. I often wake up screaming in the middle of the night thinking, 'Why did I do that?'

"The answer is that we live in an increasingly digitised, recorded society. People aren't watching telly at the same times and the human side of entertainment is disappearing. More and more people are watching everything on little letterboxes on bloody YouTube.

"And so I'm saying to Australia, 'For one split second it will just be us. At this very moment it's live.' I feel, as a stand-up comedian, the connection between my imagination and the imagination of the viewer is a very intimate one. At that moment you're exploring ideas that you hope will tingle their imagination, too, and will spark recognition and a comradeship. In the long run, comedy is about sharing experience, about pointing out the very things we all feel."

On Live from Planet Earth, Elton wears many hats. He will be producing, writing and performing. For this intense workload, there is a simple explanation: Elton is shirking his parental responsibilities.

"You've got me there," he says. "The last time I did an interview with Parky [Michael Parkinson], five years ago, he asked me, 'Why are you touring again?' I said, 'When you've got three kids, you do miss the soft, gentle hum of a hotel minibar fridge'.

"No, I've written a lot of novels over the past few years, I've spent huge amounts of time in musical theatre and I genuinely have got a yearning to get back on the horse of stand-up comedy.

"It's a very pure medium for comic ideas."

Elton rejects the suggestion musical theatre was ever a departure. As a 13-year-old, he played the Artful Dodger in two productions of Oliver!; in the '70s, he saw Richard Gere in the original production of Grease in London.

"I love musical theatre," he says. "I did a degree in theatre and while I was at university I wrote two musicals and took one of them to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

"I think the secret to contentment as an artist is, in the words of Polonius, 'Above all, to thine own self be true'. I've had 30 years in the business and I've had some nice comments and I've copped a lot of flak but I can honestly say that everything I ever did I thought was bloody great while I was doing it. It might be that it wasn't great but at least I knew it was honest.

"What I'm trying to do a little bit with Live from Planet Earth is bring back big comedy," Elton says. "In the '90s there was the new minimalism, which began with shows like The Royle Family and The Office. It was wonderful close-observation comedy, where there wasn't so much a joke as an exploited attitude.

"I love all that but I come from a different school — of jokes. It's big comedy inspired by the shows of the '70s, like Dad's Army and Fawlty Towers. Certainly with Live from Planet Earth, it will be big comedy." The title implies big. "Well, in terms of the universe, the world is very small," Elton says. "You can look at it both ways."

Which is lucky, because Adam Hills new chat show is all chat:

QuoteAdam Hills has landed himself his dream job: combining a TV talk show with his particular brand of stand-up comedy.

"Nice" is one of those words that is the scourge of English teachers. Far more liberally used than such a lazy word should be, it connotes a kind of pleasant blandness: something that is better than average, but short of lovely, wonderful, delightful or many other more enthusiastic or precise adjectives - witness the perennial "have a nice day", "that's a nice colour", or "he's a nice guy".

Which brings us to Adam Hills. It's difficult to think of anyone in Australian entertainment more frequently described as "nice" than the genial host of the ABC's Spicks and Specks, yet you have to wonder whether, for a comedian, the word is a double-edged sword. While there is no doubt that Hills is a charming and generous person, the descriptor also encompasses his comedy, which eschews the dark and cynical routines so popular on the circuit in favour of feel-good, uplifting comedy designed as a tonic for the audience. Which might in turn run the risk of being, or being perceived as being, bland.

Except for two things: the first is that after spending some time with him, you realise that he couldn't be any other way. The second is that Hills' comedy actually works - his improvised "playing" with the audience shows off his cleverness and wit, and his performances, while relentlessly upbeat and energetic, rarely run the risk of being asinine. There is no doubt that audiences love him - Spicks and Specks has become a hit in no small part due to Hills' talent as host, for which he has three times been nominated for a Gold Logie. Now he is shooting for a broader audience with his new Melbourne-based chat show, In Gordon Street Tonight, which starts its 12-week run on February 9. The show is an interesting hybrid: each week Hills will interview three guests (there will, of course, be plenty of comedians among them), mixed with musical acts and Hills' improvised standup with the audience. It will be "as live" - the show will be filmed a couple of days ahead of screening. All of which has made the 40-year-old busy enough that he's had to forgo performing at this year's Melbourne
Comedy Festival for the first time in 15 years.

Hills will be more prominent on IGST than he is on Spicks and Specks, but he'll still have to find that difficult balance for a performer of knowing when to take centre stage and when to coax someone else into the limelight, or realise that for now, at least, your guest is more entertaining than you.

"It's very hard for a stand-up," Hills says, trying to answer questions and eat his pork cutlet dinner at the same time. "Thankfully though, from the very early days of stand-up I also learnt to compere, which is a very different skill." The skilled selflessness of the compere is something Hills puts to good use on Spicks and Specks, where the guests and team captains are often the centre of attention.

He thinks IGST is a type of show that has not been done anywhere else, in the sense of marrying talk show and stand-up. And it hasn't always been an easy idea to sell: he says that when he pitched it to television executives in England (where he owns a home and spends six months of each year) and the US, they responded along the lines of: "I don't know how that could work." But when he pitched it to ABC director of television Kim Dalton, he was in luck: Dalton had seen Mess Around, Hills' stand-up show on which IGST is based, in Sydney the previous year and could immediately envisage it. "Adam is an incredible talent," Dalton says. "In terms of the way he can connect with the audience, connect with people. And that's what impressed me when I went and saw his Sydney show."

So Mr Nice Guy got his own show, and he is clearly excited about it. In person, Hills is exactly as he appears on TV and stage: an easy and witty conversationalist, with wide-ranging enthusiasms. If there is a dark side to him, it's well hidden. He is a clever impersonator (he does a Billy Connolly so spot-on you'd swear the wild-haired Scotsman was in the room) and has a gift for accents, which he uses liberally when relating an anecdote. While he's quick with a gag he is also quick to laugh, throwing his head back when he thinks something is particularly funny. As to the "nice guy" label, Hills seems to put it down to having found his niche in life. "I love doing comedy, genuinely love doing comedy," he says. "So if I'm backstage, I'm rarely in a grumpy mood." In terms of his performances, he realised that if a comedian was positive, the audience went away feeling "uplifted".

He did not start his career this way; initially he tried on a nastier tone for size, but found it a poor fit. By way of explanation, he says he once had a gag that went something like: "I hate Americans. Americans are idiots. Americans name their children after personality traits they hope they're going to grow up with: faith, hope, charity ..." On the gag went, leading to a punchline about Australians with the same approach naming their kids "Top Bloke".

"And then one day I kind of went, that's a really negative thing to say, 'I hate Americans'," he continues. "What if there's five Americans in the corner? I mean, they know you're joking, but still. And then one night I turned the joke around and went, 'You know what? I love Americans. They are the most optimistic people on the planet. Americans are the only people that would name their children after personality traits ...' " And so a style of comedy more instinctively his own was born. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but then humour never is.

Comedy has always held a special place in Hills' heart. Born in Loftus, in Sydney's south, he had what he refers to as a "Scooby Doo moment" when he was about nine, on a plane trip with his parents and his younger brother, Brad. Tuning in to the in-flight radio, he happened upon Danish comedian Victor Borge performing his punctuation skit. "I still remember standing up on my seat, because my parents were behind us, and saying, 'Mum, Dad, there's a man being funny on the radio'," he recalls. "I must have listened to it four or five times, listened to the rhythm and just loved it every time."

He later found some of his father's records of comedians such as Peter Sellers, Allan Sherman (of Camp Granada fame), and Bill Cosby, the latter of whom seems to have been a particular favourite. "I think, for me, comedy was what bound our family together," he says. "I guess that's why I tend not to be quite so dark or offensive, because that's what I grew up listening to."

So Hills became obsessed with comedy, listening to as much as he could, and taking every opportunity to write and perform his own gags for classmates. Later, while studying journalism at Macquarie University, a friend invited him to the Sydney Comedy Store, which had an open mic night. "As soon as I worked out there
were such things as open mic nights, that was my second Scooby Doo moment," he says. Even though his first attempt, like most virgin stand-up routines, was a flop, Hills knew that this was what he wanted to do. His mother was not so sure. "She actually said - and she hates that I remember this - 'But you're not funny'," he recalls with a laugh. That only served to put fire in his belly: "This is someone who was born with one foot [Hills was born without his right foot and wears a prosthesis], and as soon as someone said, 'Oh, you probably won't be able to do that', I said, 'Oh, is that what you think?' "

His career has been one of mini-breaks rather than a big one, but he is still mindful how difficult it is to be a young comedian: especially now, when so many are trying to make a living from it. "In Melbourne in particular, but in Australia generally, you can't make a lot of money just being a comedian, you have to be on telly or whatever," he says. "If you're good, you've got to wade through a lot of shit in order to prove it."

One of the functions of IGST will be to give young comedians and musicians an opportunity for national exposure. And he also hopes that he might be able to sell the idea overseas; he is well established in Britain and now has a manager in the US. "The dream for me would be to do a run of Gordon Street Tonight in Australia, then a run in the States and then a run in the UK," he says. "I reckon this industry works best for you when you stop trying to do something that's a big hit and just do whatever it is that you really want to do."

Which is exactly where Hills is now, filming IGST, continuing to host Spicks and Specks, and then heading
overseas with his wife and baby daughter for his annual jaunt. And for now he hopes - in classic Nice Guy fashion - that the new show captures a little of what he felt as a boy, listening to all those comedy shows with his family. "I would just love Gordon Street Tonight to be the kind of show that a whole family can sit down and watch for an hour and really enjoy, and bond over."

Both start this week. Should be interesting.


Famous Mortimer

Quote"I was doing musical theatre long before I was a stand-up comedian."
Really? He looks about 5 years old in his brief appearance in the Young Ones, was he an infant prodigy of musical theatre or something?

Bean Is A Carrot

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on February 05, 2011, 07:43:04 AM
Really? He looks about 5 years old in his brief appearance in the Young Ones, was he an infant prodigy of musical theatre or something?

Kinda. He was very involved in local amateur theatre as a kid, and played Oliver in a production in Godalming (I think it was Godalming). I think he did "am dram" throughout his teens too, then went off to Manchester University to do Drama, met Rik & Ade and some others, and the rest is history.

Anyway, it's slightly unclear what the format of Live From Planet Earth will be. And Paul McCarthy's involvement makes me rather less enthusiastic than I was. Thinking about Elton's past work, I'm wondering if it'll be like The Man From Auntie, but with more emphasis on sketches (sounds like they'll be ensemble sketches too) and less stand-up from Elton. And Jason Stephens is a producer, so maybe it'll be a bit Late Show-esque? It sounds way more interesting than In Gordon Street Tonight, whilst also being more risky. The guests in the first episode of IGST don't excite me much, and that's the problem with a straight-ish chat show (which this sounds like), people won't tune in for boring-sounding guests (I certainly didn't for Parkinson, Enough Rope, Jonathan Ross, etc).

MC Root

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on February 05, 2011, 07:43:04 AM
Really? He looks about 5 years old in his brief appearance in the Young Ones, was he an infant prodigy of musical theatre or something?

He looks even younger in Alfresco. :)

Jake Thingray

Apologies in advance for asking this of you nice people. But, do any of you Antipodeans recall any appearances on your TV screens by the disgraced idiot Michael Barrymore, in desperate attempts to revive his dead career, since he ran away to New Zealand a decade ago? Every attempt to reintegrate himself with the Great British Wally Public has met with varying degress of disaster, because he refuses to accept that times move on and he can never be thought of as an uncomplicated family entertainer ever again; the toilet-cleaning lunatic who wants to marry him and refers to him as "handsome, beautiful idol" claims everything he's done Down Under has been a success, but then she would.

Jake Thingray

Just to say, reaction to the Ben Elton thing, from critics and viewers, has been spectacularly negative, one readers' comment comparing it to his one-time bete noire Benny Hill.

13 schoolyards

That Elton show was a shocker. I believe it only got a six episode order, so chances are it'll last that long and then just... stop. Nothing ever gets axed on Australian television anymore, they just don't get to come back. Just ask Daryl Somers.

(can't help you about Michael Barrymore, sorry)

Bean Is A Carrot

A woman from New Zealand I know told me about 5 years ago that Barrymore did incredibly well in New Zealand in the musical Chicago. Beyond that I have no idea.

To be fair to Ben Elton, he wasn't the problem with Live From Planet Earth. His stand-up was as good as ever, it was the horrible sketches around it that brought the whole thing down.

Gavin

Quote from: Bean Is A Carrot on February 12, 2011, 02:50:03 PM
A woman from New Zealand I know told me about 5 years ago that Barrymore did incredibly well in New Zealand in the musical Chicago. Beyond that I have no idea.

To be fair to Ben Elton, he wasn't the problem with Live From Planet Earth. His stand-up was as good as ever, it was the horrible sketches around it that brought the whole thing down.

Really? He did a whole bit about receiving junk mail that suggested his penis is too small. It wouldn't have been funny ten years ago.

Although, if by "as good as ever" you mean even more crap then I agree.

Also, as an Australian, is it not irritating the way he says "we" as if he is one too?


joelde

he did pretty much all of the stand up material that featured last week on his appearance on get this back in 2006.

13 schoolyards

Thing with Elton's stand-up was - and I don't know his work at all well, so I didn't spot any of the pre-owned moments - that it was still a long way ahead of the rest of the material (Barker aside). Even if it was crap, it was polished crap of a moderately high standard, which is way more than anyone could seriously say about the sketch material.

With the material he was doing, Elton could easily have a moderately successful show on commercial television. Those sketches though, don't belong on a community television try-out going to air a 4am on a Tuesday morning.

Further to that - this: http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2011/02/ben-elton-says-sorry-yes-we-got-the-mix-wrong.html

Bean Is A Carrot

I loved Ben Elton back in the 90s but he's more difficult to defend these days despite having a very impressive back catalogue. One thing any Elton fan knows, though, is that he loves to recycle. Gags from stand-up routines he wrote in the 80s regularly appear in his novels, for example. I suppose he figures it's always new to someone, or that it's too good not to use again. I don't necessarily think we should hate him for this, pretty much every comedian brings out some old material from time to time.

It's interesting that his first gag on LFPE was one he wrote about 20 years ago (about how a comedian's arsehole ages at twice the rate of their body), but apart from one or two routines that he did in Get A Grip (UK stand-up tour in 2005, ITV series in 2006, but never in Australia) I think it was all new material. And his topical stuff was good too, maybe he should do more of that? Otherwise, why have a live show?

The real problem is the sketches. They were woeful. The performers did their best, but fucking hell... That TV Tonight article seems to say that Elton wrote all the sketches. I thought some had quite Elton-esque lines, but to hear that he wrote all of them...what was he thinking?

P.S. Elton's married to an Australian and has taken up Australian citizenship, and has lived on and off in Australia for about 25 years, so he's fully entitled to say "we".

Neil

This is of interest to most of us, so I'm going to split the tangent about Ben Elton's new show off into a new thread.


Queneau

The only parts of this show I've seen are the sketches posted on Chortle;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pfKjtoTdU8

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRF8Gk0EmCk

I honestly don't have the interest to seek out an entire episode. They are beyond awful. What is he thinking? I'd love to know. Actually, I wouldn't. If there's one person I never want to hear from again it's Ben Elton. On that subject, does anyone anywhere know how I might be able to locate the TV show Get A Grip that co-starred Alexa Chung? I've been after if for ages (for a friend).

Jemble Fred

It could be quite exciting if he really applied himself to taking this show to deeper, more intelligent areas. The question is whether he thinks that's what watchers of Australian commercial TV are really going to tune in for (I have no point of reference for Aussie TV audiences).

History shows that creators of comedy who get a sustained second or third wind in their career after the age of 50 are... non-existent, really. But it would be exciting if Elton managed it, and offered us something genuinely new and genuinely funny.

Bean Is A Carrot

Audiences of Australian commercial TV pretty much don't want anything intelligent or deep, and that's kind of a problem here because one of the few decent bits of Live From Planet Earth was Elton's topical stand-up.

The full show is "available" from at least two places but I wouldn't necessarily bother. The sketches on YouTube are indicative, some of the stand-up you'll have seen before and the topical stuff won't mean anything to you unless you follow Australian news and current affairs.

biniput

Fucking Hell these sketches were so bad I nearly lost my religion. I nearly voted for the republicans. I mean these were not just bad but so embarrassing to watch I nearly re-aligned myself with SATAN. Seriously though they were so embarrassing i could not watch them through to the end. this mans talent looks rustier than the surface of Mars. They were like really feebly thought out stuff trying to be vaguely topical or modern and they just missed. Surly the way to go with anything you do for TV is to write loads of material THEN get the thing together in terms of announcing you want to do something. This looks like another case of someone thinking they have the talent to just knock it out then getting the show first (in terms of some company taking them up on an offer) then realising it's a bit more difficult than they imagined. Either that or they forget that what they laugh at won't work on the screen or just not giving a shit about the quality or about the standard they think they must live up to. Either way this show is not going to "add" anything to Elton's reputation.

Edit:

After seeing the above post i now think this is a case of what the TV company wants rather than Eltons true ability. HOWEVER surely he has both the ability and talent to produce something a lot better and he should maybe do something really useful by writing and producing his own show and trying to get that on TV to prove the point about what can work in Australia. Surely there would be some viewers who would want this?

Famous Mortimer

I made it to the thong/floss confusion in "Girl Flat" before I gave up. It's not just that it's bad, it's that it's so bad it made me want to forget the English language so I'd never have to try and watch one of his sketches again. Absolutely beyond abysmal.

Bean Is A Carrot

The production history for this show is roughly this: Elton announced he and his family would be moving to Perth last year. He was then approached by Jason Stephens (a comedian famous for being in the excellent 90s comedy The Late Show who's now a producer) of Freemantle Media (big Australian production company) and asked if he'd be interested in doing a show. A concept was developed and it was flogged to Channel Nine. It's not clear who came up with the concept of the show, my guess would be Stephens and Elton. There's a sort of a history of shows like this in Australia, and they've all been flops because the material's been poor. There seem to be lots of execs in Australia who want to do a local version of Saturday Night Live.

Australian networks have tended to axe big flops like this quickly, but more recently they've stuck with new shows to give them time to improve. This could go either way.

That TV Tonight interview 13 schoolyards mentioned is interesting in that Elton talks about how the politics in his sketches is sound. I'd argue that point. A number of those sketches involved jokes about "bogans" (similar to chavs), pregnant teens, and "freaks" (such as the female bodybuilder). That's not politically sound humour, that's base level.

Reading the whole thread first didn't prepare me for how bad those sketches were. It's really hard to follow what's going on in Girl Flat because it soon becomes one monotonous noise that goes on and on with the same stilted cadence for 7 miserable minutes. It sounds like a bunch of ten-year-old girls playing with a dictaphone.  One joke that stood out as being particularly dated was Beyonce's "I'm a role-model for young women who need to respect themselves by wearing just their undercrackers." Well, I never thought about the hypocrisy of that before, but nothing gets past Ben. And why would he write "undercrackers" in Beyonce dialogue? It's a twatty, unfunny word at the best of times, but conspicously bad in an American accent.

Jake Thingray

A quarter of a century ago, I thought he was going to be the next Lenny Bruce. If he really wrote that Girl Flat thing, he may well be the next incarnation of whoever wrote the closing sketch each week on CRACKERJACK.

The Cloud of Unknowing

All three of those clips above rely too much on getting laughs from clunge, minge, freckle, growler etc.  Perhaps he thinks he's still writing in the tradition of Rabelais or Barry Humphries/McKenzie, but euphemisms like that shoved into sketches that play like Dead Ringers cast-offs will make things look desperate.

Quote from: Jake Thingray on February 13, 2011, 09:39:28 PMIf he really wrote that Girl Flat thing, he may well be the next incarnation of whoever wrote the closing sketch each week on CRACKERJACK.
Good comparison - every time Amy Winehouse sang a terrible pun on Rehab it was just like that.  Like watching a secondary school play.
Quote from: Bean Is A Carrot on February 13, 2011, 07:01:25 PM
A concept was developed and it was flogged to Channel Nine.

Channelnine sounds like an Australian girl's name.  (That's probably already an old joke in Australia.)

13 schoolyards

Word is the show might only have a four episode run (with an option for six).  With Elton claiming the problem was the smut - and not the near-complete lack of laughs - they probably won't be turning it around before it's gone.

Why they went with a live sketch show format when there hasn't been a successful example of said on Australian television in at least 30 years - in contrast to the many successful sketch shows that mixed in recorded material, or the many successful live variety shows, or the many successful examples of basically anything else but a sketch show - is the real question here. It's like they wanted it to fail.

Bean Is A Carrot


Queneau

QuoteFrom a peak audience of 805,000, Elton's show fell to 633,000 in the first 15 minutes, with an average of just 296,000 in its final 15 minutes.

Blimey. People kept watching?

The one on the left in the hilarious "Courtney & Bree" sketch above is Kate McLennan, who was in Let Loose Live - 2005's stillborn live variety show. Not only do they keep trying to make this format work, they continue to use the same fucking people.

MC Root

Quote from: Bean Is A Carrot on February 14, 2011, 01:51:04 PM
According to this article Elton's got one week to fix the show or it's off air.

Yikes, I don't dare look at the full show, the clips or anything for fear that I will, like some people be utterly horrified. Why would Elton incorporate smut and why on earth would either Jason Stephens or Ben Elton himself pitch this... I was very concerned when I heard more specific details about what had been pitched, but christ what a fuck up this sounds like. I'm glad I don't watch TV here in Australia. Look what it's done to this poor bastard that some of us still had some kind of respect for despite being involved in the sequel to Phantom of the Opera. I think this would easily fit into the pissing on your own legacy category, and I haven't watched it. :(

Quote from: Frankie Trumbauer on February 14, 2011, 02:44:44 PM
The one on the left in the hilarious "Courtney & Bree" sketch above is Kate McLennan, who was in Let Loose Live - 2005's stillborn live variety show. Not only do they keep trying to make this format work, they continue to use the same fucking people.

Let Loose Live - oh fuck I'm definitely not going to bother watching it. Please update us if the show improves this week as I really don't think I can just watch it to see Ben Elton completely fuck up, other than the stand-up.

I saw one of his shows in a tour many years ago, and I recognised a single gag from his earlier material, needless-to-say I heckled "Write something new!" in my disappointment. My god Beanisacarrot, he recycles stuff in the books? I guess the argument that he thinks there may be someone else who hasn't heard it and its finding a new audience may be a good analysis, but I always find when comics recycle very jarring for some reason, even if it's just the one gag. I don't know why.

Queneau RE: Get A Grip:
I used to have all the episodes downloaded, but the hard drive I had them on died, and the place I got them from only has the live tour he did. I haven't actually looked at that to be honest, but the episodes of Get A Grip that were there died pretty quickly. If anyone does unearth it, please PM me or if you get a PM Queneau. I did find some of it amusing I think...

Quote from: Bean Is A Carrot on February 13, 2011, 07:01:25 PM
That TV Tonight interview 13 schoolyards mentioned is interesting in that Elton talks about how the politics in his sketches is sound. I'd argue that point. A number of those sketches involved jokes about "bogans" (similar to chavs), pregnant teens, and "freaks" (such as the female bodybuilder). That's not politically sound humour, that's base level.

oy vey...

Just looked at that article Beanisacarrot linked, the only thing we really need to know is this horrific fact. The picture of the ensemble cast is also horrifying.

QuoteFrom a peak audience of 805,000, Elton's show fell to 633,000 in the first 15 minutes, with an average of just 296,000 in its final 15 minutes.

The result means Live From Planet Earth is vying for the dubious title of the worst prime-time debut in recent TV history.

Bean Is A Carrot

Not quite sure why the fact that Elton's material involved "smut" was a surprise. Are people unaware of his 30 year back catalogue of material, which is basically toilet humour, "smut" and left-leaning politics. I'll never forget watching his pap smear routine on TV and my mother turning to me and saying "You know, he's right about that".

As for why pitch the show, Australians are largely unaware of his recent failures, and still think of him as that guy who wrote Blackadder and The Young Ones, and appeared on all those Ray Martin specials. Some of them probably remember The Man from Auntie, which was a good series. I wish this had been more like that, with the sketch cast relegated to tiny sketches between Elton's stand-up.