Chez les dingues

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.

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.

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 show "Skithouse" is the funniest show ever to hit Channel Ten, after Rove Live. Its hilarious mix of sketches and just plain old stupidity leaves me on the floor in laughter! As well as a wide variety of acts, there are the regular sketches such as the Australian Fast Bowler (played by Tom Gleeson), The geeky, squeaky-voiced high school kid (Scott Brennan) and the delightful antics of the somewhat masculine-looking Fleur the ballet dancer (played hilariously by Damian Callinan) that make this show so unique. All in all, Skithouse rates at the top of my list in the comedy department!!

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.