At Home With Julia in homes on September 7
The ABC’s latest political satire, At Home With Julia, wraps today. The series, which invites Australians into The Lodge and life of Prime Minister Gillard (Amanda Bishop) and her partner Tim Mathieson (Phil Lloyd) is set to air on ABC1 on Wednesday 7 September, 9.30pm.
The 4×30 minute series finds the Prime Minister and Mathieson struggling with alone time as they get harrassed by Bob Katter, live in fear of terrorist attacks and receive unsolicited advice from Paul Keating.
In a statement, Executive Producer/co-writer Rick Kalowski said, “We can’t believe the quality of the cast we got. Or how little we were able to pay them.”
what utterly boring and seriously unfunny dross. Australian comedy seems to have fallen to the level of conscripting those who are the most eager to embarrass themselves. Does the ABC actually think that they are producing cutting edge comedy? Thin characters, utterly predictable writing. At home with Julia seems like the only link to comedy is that they found an actress who looks a little like Julia Gillard with a wig on and built a very unfunny and cringe worthy show around that premise. Where’s the person..at the ABC that says “Umm thats not funny..thats just friggin stupid and boring” Reality check thanks…don’t cut the arts at the ABC..take a wrecking ball to the comedy department…successive crap spread across years…with no end in sight.
I’m a writer who has sent in multiple comedy scripts to the ABC. Each time I’ve been turned down. Never given a reason, although my lack of experience was hinted at one time (hard to get experience in an industry as dead as australia’s though…)
I’m obviously biased, but I believe my scripts to be much better than this dross. The jokes in this show (if you can call them ‘jokes’) are few and far between, and often are so simple it’s like they were pulled from a $2 book of ‘1001 jokes for kidz!’ There is very little in story arc or structure, and the dialogue is just painful.
Surely any one with a sense of humour could of read over this script and improved on it 10 fold in pre-production. It really comes off as a first draft.
I’m going to keep writing and improving, hoping one day ABC take a look at my work. But it’s really demotivating when you see the sort of stuff that the ABC will accept. If ‘At Home with Julia’ is the peak of political satire that Australia can produce, it might be time to make the jump to LA.
This is the real problem with our industry. I mean a real real problem, the kind that needs drastic action. Somehow we have allowed people with no cinematic taste let alone taste for quality TV to run our own major broadcaster. At Home with Julia, Crownies, Librarians etc etc…I mean how many of these crap shows and now a federal parliamentary inquiry do we have to produce before we realise that the comedy department at the ABC has no friggin idea as to what makes effective satire, how to spot and nurture talent and what quality drama might look like and how to develop it. Let alone what local audiences might want to watch. Listen up TV land!!! The majority of what we produce (with the exception of rare gems..and when we make those rare gems they are brilliant, so if we can make them, why do we make so much dross?) is crap! There I said, actually its what most people who have to bare witness to this under realised over hyped digital tosh have to say. Its a mantra I hear every day. Why is Australian TV so bad? So So Bad? Well the good writers, the writers who try and push an envelope never get a look in, let alone an agent..and dribble that hits all the obvious points for people ( who somehow have been given the responsibility to pick and choose, based on what level of obvious skill?) who wouldn’t know what effective comedy of drama looked like or how it was constructed. Here’s the new reality..its obvious to all that whoever is greenlighting this stuff needs a quiet tap on the shoulder and put out to pasture. Enough is enough..you don’t know..you don’t…and take your hand off the greenlight button and stop telling people that crap is good..its not we’ve had enough of the waste, the boredom, the annoying infantile humour etc etc. Its not that we don’t have the money to develop quality ideas, its the ideas that we choose to develop aren’t quality. Lets wipe the slate clean and start again. New ideas and a new perspective that start with an honest realisation “Those that think they know..don’t”..you don’t know a thing..if you did you wouldn’t inflict this continuous drivel on us.
“ABC TV programs such as Crownies and At Home with Julia, which were made by independent companies, should never have been commissioned by the public broadcaster, a federal parliamentary inquiry heard yesterday.
The claim was made by Graeme Thomson, the ABC secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, in evidence to the Senate inquiry into ABC outsourcing of programs to the private sector.
http://www.theaustralian.com.a.....6147371614
The arts programs at the ABC were great. If this outsourcing “At Home with Julia, Crownies” etc is an example of what the private sector can come up with then we need a friggin reality check. Who else is sick of being fed crap TV as quality?
I know I am. Take a broom to the comedy department at the ABC..at least thats a start.