Between 1992
and 1993, Australians were treated to the short-lived, low-rent insanity of The
Late Show on ABC TV. Not to be confused with the slick, professional late night
American talk-show of the same name, The Late Show was a furiously ill-planned
exercise in stupid audacity, with a simple format of pre-filmed segments and comedy
sketches broadcast live in a 10pm time-slot on Saturday nights.
Featuring a
cast of local comedy stars who met while attending Melbourne University, the
show featured partly-improvised sketches parodying current affairs, skewering
celebrities, and taking cheap shots at the local culture of suburban Victoria. The
writers displayed a deep-rooted love for vaudeville comedy delivered with a
sardonic edginess that befits a show of such reckless vision. Aging Australian celebrities
earned their second-wind on the show, including musicians John Farnham and Kamahl.
A raft of Australian sporting and political figures appeared on the show (often
appearing in off-kilter musical performances) and one episode featured a young
Russel Crowe in a brief guest spot in character as “Hando” from Romper Stomper.
The show
that introduced the phrase “champagne comedy” into the Australian lexicon was a
cult success, spanning no more than two seasons on government broadcaster ABC
but helping to launch the entertainment careers of many of its regular players.
Cast members have gone onto mainstream success with primetime radio shows, television
shows, and profitable movies under their collective belts.
That vein
is, in fact, deeper again than just these successes. Indeed, the group sprang from
an earlier show with a slightly larger cast of familiar faces. This group, and
their show, was called the D Generation, and this collective of comedians from
the sandstone recesses of Melbourne’s oldest university have quietly imposed
their influence on Australian comedy television and film for over 30 years.
The
Original D Gen
The group
was formed from comics based out of the University of Melbourne, with extra
writers and performers joining in the second season to round out the cast.
Between 1986 and 1992 they produced two series, four specials, and three albums
including the ARIA award-winning The Satanic Sketches.
The cast
would include Late Show alum including Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy,
Tom Gleisner, Mick Molloy and New Zealand comedian Tony Martin. The show also
represented the earliest performances by Australian comedy icon Magda
Szubanski, who has gone on to international success in the years since.
Sketches
were frantic and brimming with surreal humour and the kind of utilitarian costuming
and effects that have exemplified Australian comedy shows since. The juvenile,
prankster comedy mixed with incisive observations of local life gave the show a
relatable quality; there was a naïve charm which offset the low-budget
anarchism on full display.
Between 1986 and 1992, the group appeared in a regular weekend radio show on Triple M Melbourne with a rotating cast of D Gen guests before television commitments appeared to take priority. Long-time duo Tony Martin and Mick Molloy would later revisit radio with their drive-time show Martin/Molloy, garnering commercial success and fairly comfortable careers as radio and television talking-heads. Their relationship came to an end around 2008 when the pair had a public falling-out and they have not worked together since.
The Other
Late Show
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33239902
Approaching
The Late Show’s 30th anniversary in 2022, it is worth revisiting the
unlikely success that the show created. Hosted by the duo of Martin and Molloy
in happier times, the show took on a late-night variety show format, bringing
characters and guests into the frequently anarchic show.
Not a
well-rehearsed show, the players would frequently “corpse” (industry parlance
for laughing during a take) during their nationally-broadcast performance, with
wild impressionist Rob Sitch and hyperactive Italian Santo Cilauro often doing
whatever they could to encourage it during more ludicrous sketches. The players
would be barely able to contain their own laughter, sometimes to contagious
effect, as the show went out live to screens across the country.
The charming
carelessness that went into many of these moments became a comforting and
relatable factor, and a sharp and precise production could have very quickly
derailed the train-wreck comedic values.
However,
under this silly and barely-managed exterior beat a deeply thoughtful and
relevant show. It regularly employed Sitch’s extremely physical impressions of celebrities
and political figures against Tom Gleisner’s relatable straight-man journalist
character to make variously savage or childish swipes at the news of the day.
The lackadaisical charm and snide sarcasm of Mick Molloy and Tony Martin’s quick
repartee lent their comedy an anti-establishment quality while still plumbing
the familiar rhythms of vaudeville comedy.
Tapping the
rich vein of community television, the show pre-empted many of the ideas
employed in later comedy shows. Parody ads for fake local businesses, like “Pissweak
World” or its cousin “Pissweak Water World”, litter the series, each leaning on
the cheap production values of community television and late-night advertising.
Segments employ a cringe-comedy vox pops style that finds spiritual kinship
with the aggressive, unscripted lunacy of Billy Eichner’s Billy On The Street. Finding
its home on a late slot on ABC, a government-funded national broadcaster which
has had a poor-to-middling ratings history for most of its existence, the show
took regular shots at the network that was funding and producing them
completely, effectively biting the hand that fed them in fine comedic fashion.
A show of
its time, many of the risks taken here would simply not work in such a sensitive
and competitive climate as exists in the 21st century.
Full
Frontal Stupidity
Some other members
of D Generation’s early lineups went on to success on the Channel 7 sketch comedy
show Full Frontal. The show was a ratings success in Australia, indirectly competing
with the legacy of The Late Show and featuring Magda Szubanski, Michael Veitch
and introducing Eric Bana to Australian audiences.
The show
employed a more zany and broad comedic style, including a lot more recurring
characters and a more apolitical tone. Sketches didn’t tend towards the controversial,
instead making easy targets of safe cultural stereotypes and broad situational
comedy sketches. Lasting seven seasons, the show became a major influence on
Australian sketch comedy.
Bana, who
has since gone on to international success and acclaimed dramatic performances,
developed his early iconic character “Poida” on the show. “Poida” (which is
just “Peter” in effusive parody of blue-collar Australian dialects) was a
fantastically relatable bogan everyman, with just enough education to offer
idiosyncratic life lessons in unlikely settings while swigging cheap beer from a
can.
Bana unexpectedly
parlayed this promising comedy career into a leading role in the heavily
dramatic crime film Chopper, playing the eponymous real-life crook Mark “Chopper”
Read. For this role, Bana underwent a major physical transformation and delivered
a performance that earned acclaim from Hollywood, audiences, and critics. The
film was an international success and earned Bana his first serious acclaim.
The frightening menace of his character is marked by his sharp comedic sensibilities,
and the role proved Bana’s presence as a serious acting contender. He has since
gone on to roles in major Hollywood films and is considered one of Australia’s
biggest movie stars.
Magda Szubanski
also turned her appearances on the hit show playing broad, bogan characters
into a long and storied career in television and film. In 1994 she appeared in the
female-led sketch comedy show Big Girl’s Blouse on Channel 7. This show, roughly
mimicking the format of Full Frontal, includes the first appearances of the
characters that were later developed into the lead cast of hit show Kath And
Kim. Kath And Kim has since gone on to international acclaim for its charmingly
silly representation of Australian suburban life. In 1995, Szubanski appeared
in Oscar-winning family film Babe, alongside film legend James Cromwell, earning
wide praise for her performance in the groundbreaking feature. She also
appeared in the sequel, Babe: Pig In The City, which was directed by Mad Max creator
George Miller.
Other cast
members have gone on to various other quiet successes. Michael Veitch, who became
one of the show’s breakout stars, became a fixture of Australian comedy shows
for a number of years, appearing in short-lived shows and hosting Arts Australia
for several years. Marg Downey later made appearances alongside Szubanski in
Kath And Kim.
Working Like
Dogs
Tom Gleisner,
Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy, and Santo Cilauro went on to form a production company
called Working Dog Productions in 1993. Australian audiences may be familiar with
their production plate gracing the closing credits of popular television shows.
Among the company’s
most popular properties is the bumbling and colloquially friendly character “Russel
Coight”, played by sometime-Full Frontal guest Glenn Robbins. The show, called
All Aussie Adventures, followed a simple mockumentary-style format as the outback
survival expert character guides audiences through his disastrous travels in
the Australian bush. The show ran for two seasons initially, between 2001-2002,
but has seen enough grassroots support to warrant the production of a telemovie
in 2004 and a limited series in 2018 to trade on the show’s nostalgic tone and long-running
cult appeal.
Some of the
greatest commercial successes this group of creators were Channel 10 prime-time
shows designed for a broad, largely apolitical audience, firmly in the category
of easily-consumed media. The company created the long-running talk-show The
Panel, the format of which is an apparent template for longer-running
replacement The Project, and devised the improvisation comedy show Thank God You’re
Here. TGYH became an unexpected commercial success and spawned imitators and
franchises overseas, including in the US market which was a moderate success.
The group
have made more ambitious forays into the world of film, having made three features
to varying degrees of success. The latest, 2012’s Any Questions For Ben?, was
met with a lukewarm critical response and has been relatively forgotten. Their
previous film, however, stands as one of the highest-grossing Australian movies
ever. The Dish, an ambitious tale about Australia’s role in broadcasting the
Apollo moon landing to television audiences around the world, grossed over $17 million
– a remarkable sum for an Australian film.
Arguably,
Working Dog’s biggest contribution to the Australian cultural landscape – while
somewhat less lucrative at the box-office – was their first film foray, an
ambitiously low-key comedy called The Castle. The film introduced phrases into
the Australian lexicon that are still commonly uttered decades since its 1997
release. Lines such as “Tell him he’s dreaming” or “It’s the vibe” still evoke
a referential humour for many Australians, even when context is loose at best.
The country doesn’t have so many widely successful cultural representations,
and so The Castle – with its scathing but sweet image of downtrodden suburbia –
has filled a larger than usual space in the shared artistic experience of
Australians.
Champagne
Comedy
It is hard
to underestimate such far-reaching influences on Australian comedy, television,
and film. Members of the original D Generation have found their homes in many
different places, and with such a heavy focus on writing and production, rather
than performance or acting, it’s easy to have lost sight of some of the main players
over the last three decades.
Indeed,
some of the stars of the Late Show have barely been seen in public performances
since those days yet they maintain significant influence behind the scenes.
Jason Stephens, for instance, came to prominence as another zany cast-member in
the second series of D Generation and went on to be a fixture of The Late Show.
He had originally come to the show as a writer, however, and his creative chops
have continued to service the film and television industry for the decades
since. Stephens acted as the creative director for one of Australia’s largest
independent television production companies, FremantleMedia Australia, from
2004-2014. His production of The King, a film based on the life of Australian
television legend Graham Kennedy, earned three AFI Awards, the most prestigious
film and television awards in the country.
Late Show-alum
Judith Lucy has built a career from this early success as one of Australia’s
premiere stand-up comics and comedy writers, and she has performed
internationally to great acclaim for decades at festivals including Edinburgh
Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festival. Her earliest appearance on the show,
however, included a comprehensive test – administered by Molloy and Martin – of
her comedy talents which including pressure tests to ensure she could continue
telling jokes while, for instance, inside a car crash and the immensely silly sketch
still stands as one of her most iconic pieces.
Beyond the
direct influence of D Generation alumni on the Australian comedy oeuvre, the show
and its stars have borne a strong influence on generations of Australian
comedians, writers, and creators. The anarchic sketch comedy of D Generation,
The Late Show, and Full Frontal helped paint the television landscape in vivid
colour, giving rise to some of our biggest stars in the process, and creating a
template for live-television during the 90s. Youth-oriented Saturday morning music
program Recovery – which has earned its own special place in the
cult-television hall of infamy – echoed the unrehearsed train-wreck comedy of The
Late Show, complete with ill-conceived vox pops segments and surreal
community-television elements written into the fabric of the show.
The heady
political comedy that was the foundation of early Working Dog show Frontline, a
satire about news reporting, has been retraced by countless imitators to
varying degrees of success, although few with the same focus and charm as
Working Dog’s own 2008 series The Hollowmen, following the closed-door dealings
of Parliamentary policy advisors.
The kitschy
surrealism, prankster spirit, and DIY ethic employed by D Gen cast shows clear
influence on the likes of groups like Auntie Donna. Their more subdued forays
into mainstream media have provided older Australians with comforting
replacements for the talk shows and comedy game-shows that used to be the
backbone of national television. Their films have quietly provided the template
for a uniquely Australian kitchen-sink comedy, and have influenced writers and
performers for close to three decades. Their productions have provided a
launchpad for some of the country’s brightest stars and have tapped a rich vein
of older stars to breathe new life into their flagging careers.
The members of D Generation are not a terribly self-possessed group where self-promotion is concerned, and you’ll rarely see pictures of them unless they have posed for them intentionally. However, they have rarely remained idle during the last decades and have managed in that time to fold themselves into the DNA of Australian culture in unseen ways. Their outsized influence is in fair contrast to the size of their celebrity, and that seems very much by design.
Karl May