The Late Show was a
popular Australian comedy show, which ran for two seasons on ABC
TV
from 18 July 1992 to 30 October 1993.
Cast
The Late Show has its roots in the 1980s comedy group,
The D-Generation.
Consisting
mostly of Melbourne
University
students, The D-Generation managed to gain
a cult following with their radio and TV appearances.
After the breakup of the original
The D-Generation, some of the members
went on to perform on the commercial TV programme
Fast Forward. The remaining
members filmed several pilots for what was to be called
The
Late Late Show at Channel Nine. These were rejected, and so
the group accepted the ABC's offer of a one-hour timeslot on
Saturday night.
Segments
The Late Show featured a number of popular, recurring
segments.
Introduction: Stand up
The show opened with a
stand-up
routine by
Tony Martin and
Mick Molloy. The stand-up was topical,
usually focusing on the week's news. In 1995, the duo later went on
to host their own radio show,
Martin/Molloy on the
Austereo Radio Network.
The Late Show News Headlines
Tom Gleisner presenting The Late Show
News headlines
The Late Show News Headlines, presented by
Gleisner, would blend the week's real news
headlines with fake information and footage. For example, when
covering the replacement of Japanese Prime Minister
Kiichi Miyazawa, footage from an Asian
bodybuilding competition was shown. The News Headlines would also
feature interviews with newsmakers, most often played by
Rob. Some of the better-known impersonations
included
Jeff Kennett,
John Hewson,
Paul
Keating,
Imran Khan,
Yassar Arafat,
Gareth
Evans and
Desmond Tutu.
Street Talk
In
Street Talk,
Tony
Martin and
Mick Molloy would take to
the streets of Melbourne and interview passers-by on issues of the
day. These
vox-pop interviews often proved
more of an opportunity for the pair to ridicule their interviewees,
especially their dress sense.
The Toilet Break
The Late Show Toilet Break.
The Toilet Break, as the name suggests, was designed to allow
viewers time to use the
toilet during the
commercial-free show. The 2-minute long segment was played in the
middle of every show, featuring old music clips, with a
countdown displayed on the top left-hand corner of
the screen. During the first season, the toilet break consisted of
clips from The Natural 7 from
The Saturday Show. The
second season played clips from 1987's
Pot Luck.
Musical finale
All episodes in the second series ended with a musical performance.
Tony Martin would announce
that
Mick Molloy had organised for a
major celebrity to perform, only for Molloy to sheepishly admit he
had booked a minor celebrity of a similar name usually possessing
no musical ability. The humour in Molloy's recurring "errors" in
booking the performers may have run dry if not for the hilarity of
having well-known Australian non-musical celebrities and
politicians performing.
The performances included:
The Late Show finale in 1993 had a 'real' guest on to sing at the
finale:
Don Lane, who was notably appearing
on a competing network during the show's Saturday night timeslot. A
famous non-guest was Jana Wendt whom the producers had hoped would
either sing a song by
Nirvana
(Javana) or
Bananarama (Janarama). Wendt
never appeared. Other famous non-guests were Robert Gottliebson
(
Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer) and Tony Bonner
(
This Used to Be My Playground by Madonna).
Shitscared
Shitscared starred
Rob
Sitch as a stuntman combining
Evel
Knievel and
Ed Wood (in that he was
similarly unable to grasp his own sheer incompetence and lack of
aptitude in his chosen field) compounded by the 'spanner in the
works',
Mick Molloy as his half-witted
assistant and
Tom Gleisner as the
interviewer.
Rob played the arrogant
expert, who loved to pontificate about "the stunt game". He would
fashion detailed plans for each stunt, with an emphasis on
"safety". He would boast about his own significance, mumbling and
glossing over any questions relating to poorly funded, rundown
buildings and stunt apparatus variously referred to as 'Stunt HQ' .
Mick would always manage to ruin Rob's planning, inevitably
resulting in physical injury for Rob.
Pissweak World
Several-minute advertisements for mediocre theme parks with the
'Pissweak' brandname, e.g. Pissweak World, Ye Olde Pissweeke
Worlde, Pissweak Movieworld, Pissweak Town. Each would feature a
guided tour with examples of the many low-quality attractions.
Featuring the Pissweak Kids and narration by Tony Martin.
Examples (from Pissweak Town):
- "Ride a bucking Bronco" - clip showing a child sitting on a
Labrador.
- "See a bush printing press" - clip of a man holding a child's
head on top of a photocopier printing out a copy.
- "Ride a stage coach" - clip shows dejected children inside a
trailer being driven down a road.
Graham and the Colonel
Rob Sitch and Santo Cilauro as Graham
and the Colonel.
Similar to
Roy and HG,
Graham and the
Colonel were two satirical sports commentators, played
respectively by Sitch and Cilauro dressed in green ABC sports
jackets. Whilst the characters often forgot lines and used many
corny and humourless jokes, the segment was much loved. This
segment aired just before the end of each episode.
The intro music for the segment was "Light and Tuneful" by
Keith Mansfield, the same music used by the
BBC to introduce its Wimbledon coverage.
The Olden Days
The Olden Days was a segment
where the cast overdubbed Rush, a black-and-white
historical drama series produced by the ABC in the 1970s. It was aired during the first
series of the show.
Tony Martin did the voice of the star of the show, Governor
Frontbottom (as well as Judge Muttonchops). Mick Molloy supplied
the voice for the
John Waters'
character Sergeant Olden. Other characters were used
intermittently.
The Olden Days was released by the ABC as a VHS
video containing all the segments in order, although it has been
out of publication for a number of years. On
August 15,
2007, it was
released on DVD in
The Late Show Presents Bargearse and The
Olden Days.
Bargearse
Replacing
The Olden Days in the second series of the show,
Bargearse was an overdubbed version of Bluey, a 70s police drama set in
Melbourne
, Australia. The
segment was originally to be an overdubbing of an Australian soap
opera,
The Young Doctors,
titled "Medical Hospital", but the rights to the footage were
pulled at the last minute. The ABC series
Truckies was
considered for overdubbing in a segment intended to be titled
"Truck Wits", before the writers settled on
Bluey. This
change left the writers with very little time, and as a result the
planned 20 short episodes was cut down to 10, which aired in the
second half of series two.
Bargearse was named after its protagonist, Detective Sergeant
Bargearse, an overweight, moustache-sporting "rough-and-tumble"
cop. The sketches exploited Bluey's weight with plentiful fat
jokes, as well as many fart noises.
Bargearse was voiced by
Tony
Martin and his sidekicks, Ann Bourke and Detective Glen Twenty,
were voiced by
Judith Lucy and
Rob Sitch respectively. Other minor characters
were revoiced by
Santo Cilauro,
Mick Molloy and
Jane Kennedy.
Lucky Grills, who played
Bluey appeared on The Late Show three times: as a
guest in the mock press conference for the Biodome participants, as
the character Bluey protesting the last episode of Bargearse and in
the musical appearance as noted above.
On
August 15,
2007 a
Bargearse and The Olden Days double feature DVD was released.
Shirty: The Slightly Aggressive Bear
Shirty: The Slightly Aggressive Bear was a parody of
children's TV shows. The twist was that the main character, Shirty,
would react harshly to even the smallest insult. Many episodes
ended with a destroyed set, a firearm being shot, or injury to the
other characters. In one of the later episodes, it was revealed
on-screen that Shirty was played by the "Hando" character from
Romper Stomper as portrayed by
Russell Crowe. In every other episode
Shirty was played by Rob Sitch.
Charlie the Wonderdog
Charlie the Wonderdog was a series of short episodes which
first aired during
The Late Show's second series. The
segment was created after last-minute changes led to
Bargearse's planned twenty episodes being cut down to ten.
Starring
Charles 'Bud' Tingwell and the
"Pissweak Kids" (a group of children who also starred in the
Pissweak World sketches),
Charlie was a parody of
fictional animal shows, such as
Lassie and
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo in
which the animal regularly ends up saving the day. Charlie was a
dog owned in real-life by Gleisner.
The sketch featured purposely bad overacting from the children and
usually involved an unimposing villain or disaster (such as a
"smuggler" stealing "native fauna" - sticks and twigs - from the
bush) that had to be prevented. The actors would constantly praise
Charlie as a highly intelligent "wonder dog", in contradiction of
the behaviour of Charlie himself, who regularly had to be dragged
around by a rope to perform stunts. When the dog was required to
bark to alert the others of danger, obvious overdubbing was used
over footage of Charlie with his mouth closed or looking
distracted.
As the series went on, the problems and situations that Charlie
faced became more and more over the top. Charlie was eventually
assassinated in one of the sketches, only to come back in the
Charlie the Wonderdog Christmas Episode.
Geoff and Terry
Rob Sitch and Santo Cilauro as Geoff
and Terry.
Geoff and Terry (
Sitch and
Cilauro respectively) were two conman
entrepreneurs, who would appear regularly with a "new exciting
product" or scheme. Sitch and Cilauro primarily used the segment to
make Jane Kennedy, who played the interviewer, laugh and forget her
lines. Jane Kennedy also admitted in the Best of the Late Show DVD
commentary that she was in fact drunk during one of the live
sketches.
After a particularly bad performance Sitch and Cilauro vowed never
to do Geoff and Terry again and the pair were reborn as the Oz
brothers.
Other segments
- "The
Oz Brothers", stereotypical Australians also played by Sitch and
Cilauro, who were obsessed with cricketer David Boon and often prayed to him while facing
his home town, Launceston
.
- Music video parodies, usually with a high-degree of visual
accuracy.
- Celebrity interviews, where Martin went through hours in
make-up to play Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Michael
Jackson.
- "Commercial Crimestoppers", where amateurish commercials from
regional Australia were mocked.
- "Countdown Classics", a segment where Countdown music videos
were ridiculed by Tom and Jane, who were dressed in 70s-era
clothing, sitting on beanbags.
- "Muckraking", a kind of celebrity gossip segment hosted by
Molloy and Stephens, which often degenerated into irrelevant
ranting.
- "Mick's Serve", usually accompanying the news headlines
Gleisner would get Molloy to comment on a topical issue. This
resulted in Molloy ranting over the issue whilst becoming
increasingly enraged. The event would end with Gleisner calling in
men in white coats to douse Molloy and the news desk with fire
extinguishers.
- Tony Martin's "Masterpieces of Modern Cinema" where Martin
would criticise substandard cinema, for example Jaws: The Revenge and Armour of God.
- "Sink the Slipper", a segment where one of the cast, usually
Molloy, would identify and criticise a noted personality who had
done or said something outrageous during the preceding week, and
would then proceed to kick a fake pair of buttocks poking through
part of the set which represented the personality. These segments
were excluded from the VHS/DVD releases, purportedly for legal
reasons.
Video/DVD releases
- Three volumes of The Best Bits Of The Late Show were
released on VHS, along with standalone
compilations of Bargearse and The Olden
Days.
- In 2001, the ABC released a DVD entitled
The Best Bits Of The Late Show: Champagne Edition, a
double disc set collecting all three "Best Bits" volumes, as well
as an additional hour of footage and a number of easter eggs. The DVD also featured a
commentary track hosted by Tony
Martin, but involving the entire cast and several special
guests.
- The Olden Days and Bargearse were released
together on a double-feature DVD on August 15, 2007. The DVD also
contains several excerpts and sketches from The Late Show
in the form of special features. Additionally, there are another 17
excerpts hidden in the DVD
menus.
After "The Late Show"
Citing the enormous effort involved in producing each week's show,
and the desire to explore other formats, the cast decided that the
second season of
The Late Show would be the last. Most of
the performers have remained prominent in the Australian comedy
scene.
Jane Kennedy,
Tom Gleisner,
Santo
Cilauro and
Rob Sitch formed
Working Dog Productions, and made
the successful TV programmes
Frontline
(1994–1997),
Funky Squad (1995),
A River Somewhere
(1997–1998),
The Panel
(1998–2004),
All Aussie
Adventures (2001-), and
Thank God You're Here (2006-),
and the successful movies
The
Castle (1997) and
The
Dish (2000).
Tony Martin and
Mick Molloy had a top-rating radio show
Martin/Molloy (1995–1998),
before moving into film with
Tackle
Happy (2000),
Crackerjack (2002),
Bad Eggs (2003) and
BoyTown (2006).
Tony Martin hosted a radio show on
the national
Triple M network called
Get This (2006–2007). Molloy
hosted
Tough
Love from 2004 to 2006 and was then dropped from the radio
station.
Judith Lucy appeared in both
Crackerjack and
Bad Eggs, and continues to tour
with a series of successful one-woman shows.
Jason Stephens is now the
Director of Development for
Fremantlemedia
Australia, one of Australia's leading independent television
production companies.He was the creator behind
The Choir of Hard Knocks
Article - 'Choir offers sanctuary from ‘Hard
Knocks’ 'He also produced and Co-Executive produced the 2007
film
The King , the
telemovie based on the life of
Graham
Kennedy lifestory.Jason also developed the comedy
Newstopia (2007) starring Shaun
Micallef.
See also
References
- Cilauro, Santo and Martin, Tony (2007). Bargearse DVD
commentary. The Late Show Presents: Bargearse and The Olden
Days. ABC DVD.
External links
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