Kath and Kim S2 on BBC2 now

[Lee]

Yep.

[Bert Thung]

I can't watch this, the camera movement is making me ill.

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

I can't watch this. It finished more than two hours ago.

[Boing]

I can't watch this.Australians aren't funny,apart from Barry Humphries.

[Bean Is A Carrot]

I can't watch this.Australians aren't funny,apart from Barry Humphries.

Ever seen The Late Show, Shaun Micallef, The Games or Frontline? No? Well bugger off. I put it to you that Kath & KIm isn't funny. Of all the Australian comedies to make it BBC-2 why that one?

[Dark Sky]

Never seen this before but thought I'd give it a go.

I really disliked it at first on the grounds that the camera was violently lurching backwards and forwards in a manner somewhere between someone who thinks that documentary makers can't afford decent steadycams, and someone who wants to try to emulate Peter Jackson.

But by the end of the episode I decided that I'd quite enjoyed it, even if - as Bean Is A Carrot pointed out - it isn't actually funny.

[13 schoolyards]

From my dim recollection, I think the shaky camera / fake documentary stuff really drops away after the first few episodes - by the second series it's just a shot-on-video sitcom.  And yes, why is this Australia's big international comedy export when we've made a fair few shows that are a fair bit funnier?  Is it just that Kath and Kim can be seen as dumb / crass Aussies who're easy to laugh at even when the show itself is only fitfully funny?

[Pinball]

I can't watch this.Australians aren't funny,apart from Barry Humphries.

Ever seen The Late Show, Shaun Micallef, The Games or Frontline? No? Well bugger off. I put it to you that Kath & KIm isn't funny. Of all the Australian comedies to make it BBC-2 why that one?

Well said, although I actually think Kath & Kim is funny. I think the first few S2 episodes are weaker tho..

I had a politically correct friend over for dinner a few weeks back, and we watched "Seven periods with Mr Gormsby". hehehe. I don't know about her, but by Christ I laughed my ass off, only partly about the prog itself. Her reactions!! :-)

Just thinking about it now has caused me to spit my drink out, slit my wrists, and spray a mixture of blood and green tea at the PC monitor.

[petercussing]

I like Kath and Kim, too. It's not as good as some other aussie comedy, but i find extremely amusing. I can see why aussie might dislike it though, esp. with the seeming mass saturation of it in Oz.

And yeah, whoever it was who cussed Aussie comedy. Silly boy, you just ain't seen enough. The Games is one of the deftest pieces of comedy i've seen. Just refer to the aussie comedy thread, guy.

[Pinball]

Hear hear.

[23 Daves]

As Pinball has already said, the first few episodes in series two are a little bit below par for some reason.  

To be honest, though, I would still argue that series one of "Kath and Kim" is the only one really worth bothering with.  I know that's not what quite a few posters on here think, but their characters (faddish, celebrity-obsessed and stupid) and what they do (wander around shopping malls, adopt fads, argue with each other) limit the potential of the programme.  There's little scope for any development in their personal situations, and as a result the show starts to feel quite stagnant very quickly.  You begin to get a sneaking sense about what exactly will happen next.

In terms of other Australian comedies, I still wish Channel Four would get John Safran involved in something, but they just don't seem to be interested...

[Gavin]

To be honest, though, I would still argue that series one of "Kath and Kim" is the only one really worth bothering with.

It's my favourite by far, too. I really like the film as well, even though I know as little as is possible about The Da Vinci Code.

[Alberon]

I've seen one episode of series one which I thought was OK, but I thought I'd give this a go. I quite liked it. Maybe not the most startlingly original series around, but even the nudity jokes got a few laughs out of me.

In fact the episode made me laugh a fair bit, which, at the end of the day, is one of  the most important (if not the most important) things any sitcom should achieve, isn't it?

[Boing]

You see,I'm making sweeping generalisations again.I HATE all Aussie comedy because of Kathy Lette trying to be funny in interviews about her latest steaming pile of turd novel.I really hope that tedious social climbing illiterate turd gets cancer in her fanny and dies in pain.But to be honest,Aussies can't do comedy.If it's not two dykes who look like Charlie Drake in suits smoking cigars going:
"We HATE men,yeah,men are shit.And they all have small dicks and no brain,AHAHAHAHAHAHA"
Then it's some faggot in a safari suit mincing around doing Graham Nortons material from the 90's.
Fuck it,man.

[Bert Thung]

I've never met or heard of anyone that had anything other than murderous thoughts about Kathy Lette. Is she in any way defensible?

PS And I say that as a fan of Barry Humphries, Norman Gunston, Clive James and Mother and Son.

[Boing]

Blah blah Norman Gunston

Jesus,I REMEMBER THAT GUY!
When Channel4 first started.Bogroll on his shaving nicks,and interviewing celebs.Was he funny?I think so.I'd have to see him again.I've never heard the guy who played Pennis or Sacha Baron Cohen credit him.Wankers.

[13 schoolyards]

Kathy Lette is a bit of a shocker - if anyone's seen the Shaun Micallef sitcom Welcher & Welcher, there's a vicious send-up of her (well, of someone who's the horrid wife of a internationally famous lawyer - and Lette's man *is* Geoffrey Robinson) in one ep.  And supposedly John Safran has been in the US recently - whether he was talking to people about doing a show there or filming stuff for another Australian show I have no idea.

More importantly, there does seem to be something of a Norman Gunston-shaped hole in the history of wacky / annoying comedy interviewers.  Is it just because he did his stuff in the 70s and then walked away (until his ill-fated comeback in the early 90s) instead of lingering around until everyone was totally sick of him?

(and strictly speaking, 'Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby' is from New Zealand, birthplace of John Clarke and Tony Martin... which means that pretty much all the first-class 'Aussie' comedy of the last fifteen years is NZ in origin.  So blame them if you don't like it and leave us to our Hey, Dad! repeats in peace)

[Bean Is A Carrot]

I once read Kathy Lette's novel Mad Cows, which I quite liked. So then I sought out some of her other novels and I wasn't so keen. I still want to see Puberty Blues, though. Is that any good?

What annoys me most about Kathy Lette is her pre-scripted clever one-liners. Clearly all comedians write most of their material beforehand, but her one-liners really grate. Still, her husband is Geoffrey Robertson and that's got to raise her slightly above the cess pit.

But to be honest,Aussies can't do comedy.If it's not two dykes who look like Charlie Drake in suits smoking cigars going:
"We HATE men,yeah,men are shit.And they all have small dicks and no brain,AHAHAHAHAHAHA"
Then it's some faggot in a safari suit mincing around doing Graham Nortons material from the 90's.
Fuck it,man.

Clearly the "faggot in a safari suit" is Bob Downe, but who are the "two dykes"? Supergirly? Kitson/Fahey? Judith Lucy and Jane Kennedy talking about masterbating taxi drivers in The Late Show?