The Apple Studel Man, I agree is very unfunny in writing but the most hilarious thing on the screen. So little can do so much. Eric and Stephen just hit such a note in these sketches....vintage sketch comedy. However the comment on Channel Seven doing us a favor by cutting the one hour episodes into half hours is so wrong. The network butchered the show. Each hour episode although being sketch comedy was painstakingly interwoven and interconnected and by cutting the shows in half meant that gags that were building up to a pay off in the last half hour were not seen for another week rendering them unfunny and out of context. Then the next week a sketch would come on with a tag line so left of field because who could remember what they had seen a week before? They basically ruined a lot of the hard work. I'd worked on a lot of sketch comedy in the past but because of these reasons this one was extremely hard work to make, so many cross references and reappearing characters. Also by cutting the shows in half they also ran the shows in an earlier time slot meaning that a lot of material, or certain words could no longer be used. This too created confusion in that the sketches no longer ran together in their seamless way that was originally meant. All in all Seven stuffed the show and I think Eric would agree, thought he would never make television again which he didn't except for the drama series Something in the Air. Thank god he did Chopper eh? A true Comic.
