Well-known U.K. funny-man attempts live sketch comedy on Australian television.
Sketch comedy is a painful art form to create and produce, as well as to watch. In Australia, if you don’t rate within three episodes, you’re out the door. Australians love their comedy, but when it comes to sketch comedy, they tend to not get past the last majorly successful sketch comedy show Full Frontal which ended in 1997 after a four year run on Channel Seven. Comedy Inc lasted a few years on Channel Nine, but goodness knows why… it was terrible.
Channel Nine have been aiming at a young audience for years and have been massively failing each attempt. Bring in a highly successful comedian and writer Ben Elton and give him a shot. After all, he’s an adopted Aussie (spent the 1990s living in Australia, then moved back to the UK, now back again), he co-wrote the UK hit Black Adder with Rowan Atkinson, written over 12 top selling novels, highly successful broadway shows in London’s West End (Queen’s We Will Rock You) and a movie producer (Maybe Baby, Stark). Team him up with some Australian B and C grade comedy talent, and get them to do a live performing sketch show similar to NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
Now, in today’s society, everyone is a critic, where everyone has Facebook or Twitter to express their thoughts and opinions. Ben Elton Live From Planet Earth was a show that was used as a guinea pig to show how powerful Twitter is in expressing thoughts and analysis on shows. LFPE copped it big time.
Within five minutes of the show starting, the laughs from the audience were sounding forced – the type of laugh where you’d think “oh, there’s the part were we are meant to laugh”, and it comes off awkward. Ben Elton himself introduces the show with a codes of practice warning, then goes into his routine, similar to his stand-up. Directly off the teleprompter. No pauses for laughing, just reading the lines. We are then introduced to characters on the show with each sketch, and while the performances from the actors are not too bad, the jokes weren’t funny. Fart and dick and fanny jokes were thrown around, but none hit their targets. Elton himself segued between each live sketch with his own sparkling stories, while the cast would quickly get changed into their next performances.
This went on for an hour. The characters and sketches were set up so they could make a re-appearance next week and the week after. Performer Geneieve Morris brought out her ‘bogan’ and straight shooter chat host Elaine Front to talk candidly with the special guest, which the first episode was Generation Y card holder Ruby Rose. Awkward questions were asked, and the guests awkwardly laughed (see David Tench Tonight – future post). Former Totally Full Frontal / Comedy Inc cast member Paul McCarthy would do his best impressions, but because of his … less than impressive TV resume, would fall flat. The on-going mini series “Girl Flat”, composing of he performers doing their best Lady Gaga, Madonna, Beyonce, and Lily Allen impressions fell flat – going on for a staggering 9 minutes.
The hatred was building with the viewers. Even the first episode wasn’t given a chance, rating around 425,000 viewers on a Tuesday 9:30pm time slot. By the third episode, viewers were down to just above 100,000 viewers after being moved to the 10:30pm slot. Channel 9 threw the axe at them.
As much as we love Ben Elton here, stick to writing novels and films.
