Skithouse

I refuse to believe this is the worst sketch show on Australian TV - for starters, there's the truly appalling Comedy Inc.

This is a fair show, a bit hit and miss but there's some good stuff in there. Australian Fast Bowler is fantastic. (I believe whoever wrote that other comment is missing the point - what the parody is in this case is of sports hero worship, not individual fast bowlers. And superheroes are called generic things like "Superman" and "Batman" hence "Australian Fast Bowler".) Tripod are better singers than they are actors, but they're always funny.

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!

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!!!

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.

The first season of skithouse delivered a few laugh's here and there but most of the sketches were more often than not, poorly writing and badly directed. But if seems that the skithouse team has lifted up the laugh's for the second season and the writers have put a little more thought into there sketches to give the audience something worth while to watch on a Wednesday night. Great comedy for everyone, lets hope they could put together a third season as well! 9/10