Chez les dingues

Yes, I'm going to throw it in the deep end with that opening statement. I could almost go further and say it's the worst show of all time but that wouldn't do because I've watched an episode of "Passions".

I watched the first episode with extremely high expectations after being in weeks of hysterics with the Ten network's UK import The Sketch Show and after the advertising campaign, how could I resist? I soon learned my lesson for being so susceptible to hype though as, through half an hour, nothing managed to make me smile. I found myself being far more entertained by ads for dishwashing detergent and breakfast cereals, and generally I detest all ads.

For one thing, there are three members of the cast I have heard of, the rest are complete nobodies and there's no prizes for guessing why. But Peter Helliar and Corinne Grant are funny enough people as we see on "Rove:Live" and "The Glasshouse" but they cannot act, and yet they try to. As for Ros Hammond, well she's got very steeply downhill since appearing in the brilliant and eccentrically hilarious three series of Shaun Micallef programmes.

But the cast aren't entirely to blame. The writing is juvenile, the jokes are either old or non-existent and always predictable from the start of each sketch, but the worst part of it is that the show takes itself far too seriously. It's always playing for laughs and trying to milk humour from every joke rather than, at least occasionally, laughing WITH the audience AT itself, which is one of the endearing qualities of both Shaun Micallef and the team from The Sketch Show.

It's a sad day in Australian television when I find myself pleased that "Comedy Inc." exists just because it raises the dignity of Australian sketch comedy up a slight notch. All I can say is, if Ted Emery and Gary McCaffrie were dead they'd be rolling around in their graves. I can't bring myself to give this a single star.

The only reason that I watch this show is for Tripod. Now, I may be a little biased being a Tripod fan before I started watching the show. Honestly though, the rest of the cast annoy me immensely and the skits are often more cringeworthy than funny. Its only worth it to wait for the Tripod skits (that phone hold skit was priceless!) and songs at the end which are ALWAYS funny. Songs like "Stuntman", "The Xbox Song" and "I only get into stuff (just after it's finished being cool)" are way too funny to be lumped alongside such drivel as that Australian fast bowler crap. If anyone noticed on the Skithouse 'greatest hits' (the biggest joke of all!) episodes, a great majority of the skits were the ones involving Tripod.

Go Scod, Gatesy and Yon!!!

This is one of the funniest shows to hit australian television in ages. The songs by Tripod are great and really funny.The cast is really talented and pull the sketches off perfictly. The show is rating well so it looks like it will be arround for a long time.

Welcome back to good Aussie comedy. It's about time too. Established actors give Skithouse an big edge over many past and present comedies, with all new skits not relying on derobertory comments about other people and shows.

Special mention to Simon Hall, Scott Edgar and Steven Gates also known as Tripod for the comedic songs at the end of each show. But the others should not get left out of been praise either.

Australians have always had their own brand of comedy, dating back to the days of Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton and Kingswood Country just to name a few. Then flash forward a decade or two to 1987 and we were graced with what can ultimately be described as the beginning of modern sketch comedy in Australia. I'm talking about the DGeneration of course. It was the original team on this show that was responsible for pretty much every other well known Australian sketch comedy show (Fast Forward, Late Show, Comedy Company, hell even The Panel). These shows captured Australian culture and satirised it perfectly.

Unfortunately times change. The shows eventually got cancelled (or in The Panel's case, were created) and we were left with nothing. Totally Full Frontal tried to capture the success it's predecessor had on channel seven, but it didn't work and with that there was no sketch comedy on Australian TV anymore.

So what do today's writers do? They take an original concept from an English television show (short, literal sketches) and turn it around to aim it at an Australian audience. This is the birth of Skithouse.

If sketch comedy shows were Brady sisters, Skithouse would definitely be Jan. Boring, annoying and always trying to out do Marcia (which we will refer to as The Sketch Show). I'll give you an example:

There is a guy in an office, he keeps running into a wall. Someone walks by and notices what he's doing and says, "Hey (insert name here) the door is over there."

Yeah that's top notch writing.

My only question is, why is this still on television? Have we forgotten how funny we can really be? There's only one other sketch show on and that's Comedy Inc. and while it has it's moments, it's not that much better than Skithouse.

A hint of advice to the writers: BE FUNNY! You have some talented people there (Tom Gleeson and Tripod) USE THEM!