The Legacy of the Legacy of The Late Show

Santo Cilauro and Rob Sitch on The Late Show circa 1992

 

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.

A young Magda Szubanski in an early D Generation skit

 

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

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Approaching The Late Show’s 30^th 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.

 

Tony Martin hosting an awkward Vox Pops on a Melbourne Streett in 1992

 

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 21^st 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.

Eric Bana as “Poida” on Full Frontal

 

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.

Still from the film The Castle

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