They’ve shown about 4 episodes now, and I’m in love with it. But I’ll be totally honest, it’s definitely not for everyone. To watch SMASH you’re going to have to put up with a lot of showtunes. A lot.

The story follows the creation of a new Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Munroe. It follows the writers, directors, producers and actors and their relationships with each other. The Producer is left with next to no money during a messy divorce from her husband, which is the shows explanation for why everything happens so fast (she wants it to start making money as fast as she can so she can get her cut).

SMASH is basically the grown up version of glee, but they usually limit themselves to 3 songs per episode, and one of them is always an original song (the other two being covers). Following glee’s formula, all their songs are released on iTunes each week. And, I’ll admit, I did actually pay for some of them. The songs are actually really good, even the originals, I would actually pay to see the Marilyn musical if it was a real thing, because I think it would be the greatest musical ever.

So, as you would expect from a musical series, there is a lot of breaking out into song, but they have done a pretty good job so far of keeping it somewhat realistic.

If the show has a flaw (and it has many) it’s that it can get very lame. The other night one of the characters was in some speech about how he wanted to support his family that was so soppy and went on for so long that I had to fast forward it because it was literally that long. I don’t think I even took anything away from the episode from doing it, either.

Look, you’re either going to think this show is okay, or really hate it. So if you can stomach musical series, then give it a go.

SMASH airs Monday Nights on W (Austar/Foxtel)
Subscription SD Channel 115, High Definition Channel 215, or two hours later on +2 Channel 155,
(*times will depend on your timezone, check the guide for yours)

Not too often do I have the pleasure of viewing a series in advance of it’s screening in Australia. But this this time, I did.

New Girl is a sitcom starring internet heartthrob Zooey Deschanel as Jess, a tragically hopeless ‘nerdy’ young woman who moves into an apartment with 3 men she met on the internet after an embarrassing breakup with her boyfriend. It’s actually not terrible.

Jess makes social faux pas and has to turn to her housemates (who are almost as socially inept as her) for guidance. Also she likes to sing to herself a lot… ♪ a lot! ♪

So the plots probably aren’t the most deep you’ll find on television, and sometimes the B-story will not seem to really be resolved by the end of the episode (and never heard of again), but it’s still a lot of fun and I always get a few laughs out of it. Basically if you don’t have anything better to watch, it’s a pretty solid choice.

So, in terms of that, I guess it’s success here is really going to depend on where ten decides to put it on the schedule and what it’s competing against.

New Girl will air on Network Ten in 2012.
Ten affiliates are generally located on (Regional) Channel 5 or (Metro) Channel 10.

I don’t know how to feel about this, which probably owes to the fact that Nine have released very little information about it so there’s not much to go on, but by my standards they’re not exactly off to a great start. First there were rumours of Nine bringing it back as Big Brother: Secrets a gimmick used in other countries localisation’s where each housemate has a secret and everyone else has to guess it and basically it’s a really stupid idea that I really don’t think I could stand watching – but in their small releases of information recently (on their website, and this promo for 2012) there’s no more mention of the “Secrets” tagline (which, of course, isn’t to say it won’t still be there as one of their “twists”).

What the promo also reveals is the logo, which is probably the biggest letdown for me:

I feel like it could have been revamped a little better for this new series, rather than see it basically return to the old logo. I know it’s been changed slightly, but they somehow actually managed to make the logo uglier than it already was.

The only useful bit of solid information released so far is that the new host will be Sonia Kruger. I honestly only know her as Daryl Somers sidekick from way back when I still watched Dancing with the Stars - but there’s a chance she’ll do a good job, and after all these years I’ve managed to come to terms with the fact that Gretel will never come back.

Finally, the compound. I know it shouldn’t matter where the house is actually located, but reports (and I’m not saying they’re accurate) that Nine may be looking to have their compound in Sydney to “separate it from Ten” make me more than a little sad. There was something I loved about it all being on the Gold Coast: a place that, although pretty far away from me, was still inside my home state, and in a city I occasionally visit. There is absolutely nothing actually confirming a compound for the series, but I think that if separating the series from the one that Network Ten ran was really a priority for them the logo (instantly recognisable from a fair chunk of Ten’s run) would have been the first thing to go, not the compound. The house was never that iconic and with a little bit of work most ignorant viewers won’e even realise the Dreamworld Stage is the same stage they used to use. Still, it will not surprise me one bit if they do move it to Sydney – anything at all being shot outside of Sydney or Melbourne these days is a long shot to find.

But don’t let all my negativity mislead you. There is a chance that Nine will pull this off, maybe someone high up there knows what they’re doing and will make this a great series of Big Brother. There’s just not enough confirmed information out there yet, even though every other website I find making out like they know every detail exactly despite none of them being confirmed by Nine or Endemol, or even a hint of  a reliable source.

As always, we’ll never know until it actually hits the screens, even if they did do everything else perfectly, the actual content of the show (or something like the editing) could end up being awful and unwatchable. But by the same token, even if they move it to Sydney and do really stupid things I would never dream of doing, it might just work accidentally and be the greatest show on Channel Nine (although, to be fair, that wouldn’t be too hard)

He’s back. Rove McManus has a brand new talk show, but he’s moved to pay tv and it’s now set in those United States.

I thought the show was surprisingly good, but I think it mostly owes to the fact that being located in Los Angeles means that the quality of guests is dramatically improved. The premiere episode featured Lisa Kudrow (Friends), Kathy Griffin (My Life on the D-List) and Jerry Ferrara (Entourage) – any of which could be considered a major guest for a talk show based in Australia.

The format is stripped back significantly from it’s predecessors, Rove Live and rove. with focus more on conversation with the three guests (who all appear from start to finish, rather than one at a time, or gathering one by one). I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I liked the idea, I mean it certainly works for Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show, but here I don’t think it pans out quite as well.

It felt a little bit empty, due to the fact that it was just Rove all on his own, without any of the sidekicks like Pete or the other billion people they had gathered by the end of it’s run on ten. They’ve tried to add gimmicks into the interviews (Random Question Hat, the 3 Leading Questions or Getting to Know You) but they all sort of fell a bit flat for me, and seemed so out of place with the lack of other ‘segments’.

Of course, most importantly: The theme music is amazing, the onscreen graphics are quite nice, and the set is probably up there with some of the nicest tv sets I’ve seen – which has guaranteed it’s place on my weekly viewing schedule.

I’m really hoping the show takes off, because I can see it being as great as his previous series have been, despite now being on cable, but it will need time to grow a bit. Ultimately I’d like to see other presenters added to the ‘Rove Team’, they wouldn’t have to be any of his old team, they don’t necessarily have to be anyone we’ve seen much of before, but adding in a few extra small segments (a la Ryan Shelton’s Investigationating) could really help the atmosphere of the program. That’s just my opinion anyway.

Rove LA airs Monday nights at 8:30pm* on FOX8: Subscription channel 108, +2 timeshift channel 150, or HD channel 208 (where available). *Daylight Savings time when applicable, check your local listing or EPG.

As the show started, I thought it could work. But it didn’t. The problem is that, while they’ve obviously tried to bring everything that they thought made Good News Week hilarious, they accidentally completely missed the point.

This new show, featuring host Paul McDermott, former team captains Claire Hooper and Mikey Robins, along with a ensemble cast of GNW regulars – admittedly some great Australian comedians in the mix (Including Sammy J and Cal Wilson). The show presents news stories with comedic bite, with other getting-a-bit-off-topic skits in between. The opening segment and is basically an elongated version of the monologue Paul would give to open Good News Week, but he sits behind a big C-shaped desk and no longer yells out “and THAT’S the good news!” when he’s done. I vaguely remember him having some other thing that sounded vaguely like a catchphrase, but I don’t see it sticking in my mind. This whole section reminded me an awful lot of The Colbert Report, if The Colbert Report were to drop their standards a significant amount.

The remainder of the show was basically fast paced amusingly presented news stories and skits paying out politicians and Underbelly (they really gave Underbelly a lot of shit). But none of it really stuck with me, I got a few giggles – but that has nothing on the gigantic laughs I would get from the old series.

You see, in their transition to scripted (if sometimes a bit improvised) comedy, they lost the magic (if you will) that came with the original format. Everyone was on separate sets, and it all felt a little bit cold. Half the fun used to be the back-and-forth you would get between Paul, the captains and the guests, but there is no room for any of that anymore, it’s all just felt cynical and disconnected.

Maybe it will settle in and find a way to bring back the hilarity, but it certainly isn’t looking bright. On the other hand, there is a lot of voiceover work by Robbie McGregor (The old voice of SBS), which is what makes it worthwhile for me.

Good News World airs at 9:30pm Mondays on Network Ten (Digital Metro 10/Regional 55)

In the last year I’ve started to have a bit of a thing for Australian TV series’. And over the last 2 weeks I started, and finished, watching all three Seasons of The Librarians.

At first I found it difficult to get into, the first episode was especially reliant on cringe humour (In very similar vein to what I’ve seen of The Office) which is by far one of my least favorite types of humor. Frances O’Brien, the main character and head Libriarian of Middleton Interactive Learning Centre, is a ‘devout Catholic’ and is constantly being racist and just plain discriminating to mostly everyone without realising it.

Most episodes will jump back and foward through time, slowly adding an extra layer of backstory  and explaining the ‘Present Day’ story. Some of my favorite episodes take this idea a step further by bookending the story with Frances explaining what happened to someone in the aftermath – which adds a unreliable narrator  and the ability for the show to jump around to different points in the story humorously revealing and explaining things in a very How I Met Your Mother-esque way.

Whilst cringe-worthily racist, homophobic and generally discriminating and unloving – I grew to love Frances in a scary oh-god-i-shouldn’t-be-able-to-relate-to-this kind of way.

All 3 Series of The Librarians are available on DVD, and reruns are currently aired Sundays at 6:30 on Comedy (Channel 122 or 153 +2 hours) for Austar/Foxtel Subscribers.

Our country, our rules, okaaaaayyyyy?

I’ve totally been neglecting invalid channel for far too long, so here is a present: The 1:30 advert for SLiDE, which starts in August on F0x8, and is set in Brisbane – which is exciting for me since I live in that particular city for most of the year.

I’ve been recording the ad breaks on F0x8 all afternoon trying to grab a capture of this ad.

Apparently ten has now realised that it’s not exactly cheap to be all-sports-all-the-time, and so they’re changing their original plans to make it a bit about sport, but mainly just aimed at manly men, and unsurprisingly they want to go straight up against 7mate. To clarify, they’ll still be showing a crap-load of sport, but between 4pm and 10:30pm, it’s all manly entertainment.

The best part is that as part of this big retool they’ve updated their logo, and while some people would argue it’s really not that different, I’m really impressed by it. The old logo was awkwardly shaped and barely worked when you tried to sit it somewhere, putting it in that box gives it a really-easy-to-fit-somewhere shape, plus the placement of the ‘one’ and the colours that still fit in with their original colour scheme but are just different enough… Oh my god, whoever did this was a genius and I love them.

Plus! It looks like they finally dropped the “HD” from the name and logo!

Still, I’m a bit disappointed about the change of direction in programming, I always had the tiniest flicker of hope in the back of my heart that maybe, just maybe, everyone would realise that ten was on to something with one and that every network would end up with a dedicated sports channel and leave more time on their regular channels for shows that are actually good. But I guess I can’t have everything.

I think if ten can market it well, this whole thing might just work, and I’m ashamed to admit it but I kind of hope it does, just so I can keep seeing that logo on ads as I flick past.

This year is the first time I’ve ever sat down and watched the Logie Awards in full, start to finish. And I will assure you it was no easy task, as you can see from my notes about three quarters of the way through the program:
I had pretty much given up the will to live by the time they finally finished the damn thing.

If there was one thing that didn’t end up horrible about the whole experience it was the graphics, the diamonds and (excuse my language) shiny-ness were all pulled off beautifully. So now that the niceties are out of the way, let’s get down to business:

The Red Carpet

Now the first hour of the program was the Red Carpet part, which was separated from the main section of the Logies. They had a few hosts including Shelley Craft from Australia’s Funniest Home Videos and James Matheson from Australian Idol and some other chick who I can’t even remember.

The interviews were so awkward, especially James Matheson’s. Seriously, he was absolutely dreadful, he just kept trying to make some sort of joke about whatever celebrity he was interviewing but it was always some round about stupid joke that he had to explain, and he came across like he was sucking up to everyone like “Oh wow, Australia loves you, why do you think that is? Everyone in Australia loves you” No, James, that is stupid sucking up, that is not a useful interview question.

In terms of the actual show, it was very very choppy editing, in my opinion. I know they wouldn’t have had much time to put it all together on the night, so it may have been hard to get any sort of logical order, especially on a red carpet show where it’s a little bit unpredictable. But honestly, even just putting a transition graphic in between ‘bits’ would have helped a hell of a lot. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it was, but something made the end of most of the interviews seem cut off a bit too soon.

I know this is getting a little picky, but it actually had a whole section of the show have the audio out of sync. It was probably only like a second off, but that’s annoying enough.

The Actual Logies Part of the Logies.

It all started off with a performance by Katy Perry, which was good. I’m kind of happy they put a bit of effort into getting acts that people actually want to see, like Katy Perry and Maroon 5 (Jessie J is a bit iffy, I only vaguely knew who she was). The performance by Katy Perry was good, but it just didn’t seem big or loud enough. Certainly still impressive, though.

The set was disgusting. And as if to rub it in my face a bit, not to long after I thought “Wow, this set is disgusting” a presenter said “Wow, isn’t the set beautiful?”
No, it’s the opposite. Seriously, what they need is some giant logie replica’s up there, the oscars do it! Sure it’s tacky, but it sure beats those poles in random annoying positions that are inexplicably wider in the middle. Halfway through I thought that maybe it was  a feature of the venue that they couldn’t help, but if your venue has gross poles and you can’t help it you should just get a better venue.

My main problem with the Logies is that they can’t decide who they’re for: The TV viewer, or the TV professional. They’re trying to be both and it’s just not working, it was almost as if it really was an important industry event, and was only being put on television because someone wanted to make some money off it. If you’re going to put it out on TV you have to make it at least a little bit theatrical. The last time I came close to watching all of the logies was a few years ago when they were being hosted by  Gretel Killeen, and as lame as it was, and as much as I probably would have ripped it up if invalidchannel was around back then, it was better than Shane Bourne and his humor that too often felt like it was an in-joke that I’m not even supposed to get. The thing is that at the end of the day (And I do mean ‘end of the day’, the show didn’t end until bloody midnight) they want to steal some ratings so they need to make it something that real TV viewers actually want – which, surprise surprise, is not 10 hours of Australian celebrities and their in-jokes.

How would I fix this mess? Honestly, I would like to see the whole thing shortened, and I want more cutscenes, I want to see different shows coming together and crossing over with hilarious consequences, I want less awkward impromptu interviews – even the most set up of ‘conversations’ ended up dry and weird, but most of all I want to see those Road to Gold video packages back – Shane Borne going out and interviewing the gold nominees in the audience at random parts of the evening seemed wrong and really didn’t do them justice, like the rest of the interviews they were just awkward to watch.

In Conclusion

Karl Stephanovic? Really? Out of all the amazing personalities they chose that guy? Yeah, fuck this, the logies were shit.

To be very clear from the start, I never watched Good Game before Hex came in as a host, not for any reason other than the fact that I didn’t actually know the show existed; when I first stumbled upon it Hex was already a host. For that reason I have no opinion on the whole Junglist issue. From research, I do know that it happened, but to be honest I don’t really have an opinion on it.

Good Game is a game review show, made by the ABC. I can’t remember why on earth I ever started watching it, but something must have hit that little part of me that wishes I was a gamer.

Bajo and Hex are hilarious to watch, they have so many funny moments. You can tell they know their shit, too, they’ve been around the block when it comes to games and they use terminology without it sounding super lame and out of place. At the same time, they make it easy for non-gamers, or people who wish they were gamers (ie: me) to understand. Bits and pieces feel really awkward though, and I know they put in awkward moments for comedic effect sometimes, but I find that these don’t always have the comedic effect that they’re probably going for, and end up going full circle just being plain awkward.

The main thing that really grinds my gears about this show is that the rubber chicken rating system, which is a out of 10 score given to every game reviewed, is severely broken. A few months back, they did dedicate a section of the show to trying to explain the way they rate games, but it just turned out to be a terrible failure.

Sure, it was hilarious and was interesting in that they explained how they review the games, but the problem remained that there is absoutely no consistency between the scores they hand out. Nearly everything gets a score between 7 and 9, and it barely ever feels like the the score they give is right or even comparable to other games they’ve reviewed. If I remember correctly, they somewhat acknowledged that their rating system doesn’t completely work, so the question is why have it at all? In theory, the rating would sum up how good they thought the game was at the end of the review, but I would argue that it would be better if they ended reviews with a short summary of the good, the bad, and who would/wouldn’t get something out of playing it – which they sort of already do, but if they took out saying number they gave a game, they’d have a few precious extra seconds in which to expand that summary.

Otherwise, the reviews are quite good. You can really tell that they’ve taken all of the footage themselves, it’s not one-sided stock footage from the developing company. The hosts really play the games themselves and it shows, but you know that you’re getting a real opinion from someone who played the game and know exactly how it handles and how annoying all those bugs are, not two people reading straight from some sort of rigid script.

Being on a non-commercial network helps too, if any commercial network tried to do a similar format, sure, it may be more popular (hell, it’s hidden away on ABC2, so I’d be betting it wouldn’t be hard) but there would be the slimmest chance of me ever being able to say a good word about it, because once the game companies start paying sponsorship, you’d be seeing a lot of 10/10′s and a whole lot of kiss-ass. In my head a commercial version of the show would be way too polished and just wouldn’t feel right.

Being a clearly small-budget show on ABC2 means that they have a relatively small fan base so interation with fans is a big part of the production of the show. They have forums that are actually used by fans and the production team, and Bajo and Hex constantly interact over twitter and facebook. They do social networking well, is what I’m saying, which is something that simply wouldn’t work for a big production.

One last thing that used to annoy me (and hasn’t really happened as of late but I’m going to mention it anyway) is that they sometimes have mentioned things that “will be on next weeks show” and then haven’t had them on the next episode, or said that something will be on next week for like 100 weeks in a row. I understand that there could have been delays or there wasn’t enough time to fit a report segment in, but if you can’t guarantee that you’re actually going to put something into the next weeks show, don’t say that you’re going to. I probably wouldn’t be too bothered by it here or there, because I probably wouldn’t even realise, but for a while it was getting very noticeable because it seemed like a lot of things were getting pushed back.

All in all, Good Game is a good show. Sure, I could find about a thousand ways to improve it, but it’s small size and down-to-earth-ness is all part of it’s charm, if it got any bigger, and glossier with a good ABC1 timeslot and cold hard celebrity hosts, it would just be unrelatable, and I probably wouldn’t even bother with it anymore. It’s got it’s niche and it should stick to it, but for gods sake get rid of the rating system!

I’m giving it 7.5 out of 10

Good Game airs on Tuesdays at 8:30 on ABC2