This is one of the saddest things I have seen in a long time on Australian TV. A would-be 'Saturday night live', this is shoddily made, terribly written and mostly badly performed. Its 'stars' of Fast Forward or latter days are either underused (the great Marg Downey and Michael Veitch) or overused, revealing them for the crap hacks they are (Peter Moon, Dave O'Neil). Most of the newer performers are poor, with the exception of Kate McLennan (her gross-out girl character in the doctor's surgery shows promise) and Paul Calleja (fantastic Melbourne stand-up, who again is totally underused). Some of the more experienced actors like Jane Hall and Colin Lane are just hopeless - fluffing lines and milking the crowd for laughs that don't come. The worst thing is the way good ideas are totally thrown away (a great impersonation of the 'Super Nanny' in a 10 second sketch with barely any jokes!; Michael Veitch doing Molly Meldrum, also in a sketch with absolutely no actual jokes). It's even badly made, which most Channel Seven comedy shows are not. In one sketch with a ventriloquist dummy, you could actually see the actor's arm all the way through it: what the f...? And to top it all off, the 'special guests' turn out to be people who you can already see on Channel Seven for free, and on shows where you actually like them! - William McInnes, Tom Williams. It even manages to racially offensive (three white guys playing Lebanese guys and calling each other 'poofter' on a family show at 8.30pm?! Huh?) Unfortunately, I'm guessing this show will last only a few weeks before people turn off in droves and it gets the axe. But if it has any chance of surviving, Channel Seven needs to fire most of the lesser known performers (what the hell is a guy from 'Flipside' - one of the worst sketch shows ever made in Australia- doing on this show; who hired him again?). I never thought I'd say this. But Channel Nine's new late night version of 'Comedy Inc.' is about 30,000 times funnier than this. Maybe next time Seven is thinking about doing a comedy show, they should get whoever does that show. And I do mean next time, coz there's no way this garbage will last.
