Of all the step-genres of comedy, poor old sketch seems to be the Cinderella of the lot. Long after political satire and dramedy have waltzed off to the midwinter ball it is inevitably sketch which is left behind, dressed in rags and scrubbing the program development cobblestones until they gleam.
And yet it's sketch where the richest rewards can be won, if the balance, tone and casting are right. Sketch gave us Magda Szubanski, Jane Turner, Gina Riley and Marg Downey. It gave us Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch, Mick Molloy, Julia Morris and Shaun Micallef. A generation later it gave us Rebel Wilson, Jason Gann and Mandy McElhinney.
What is even more fascinating is that sketch comedies don't need to be titanic successes to make a lasting impact. Seven's Fast Forward is unequivocally one of the most successful shows in the genre. Comedy Inc. was a ratings hit too. But others, such as Big Girl's Blouse and Big Bite had lasting impacts though they were, on paper, failures.
Which brings us to Black Comedy (ABC, Wednesday, 9.30pm) the deliciously dark sketch comedy that explodes the genre in brilliant and inventive ways. The first thing you have to do is toss your insecurities out of the window. This isn't for the faint-hearted, though at its heart, it's quite a gentle creature. But it does have bite. And bite is exactly where sketch comedies flourish.
This is, put simply, a riot. From start to finish it almost doesn't put a foot wrong. The sketches are short, easy to access and sharp. Older sketch comedies can be windy (remember those long, exhausting and sometimes unfunny French and Saunders sketches?) but not Black Comedy. This is as lean as it gets.
One highlight is Elizabeth Wymarra and guest star Deborah Mailman in the Housewives of Narromine, a gorgeous parody of the Real Housewives franchise. And Aaron Fa'aoso and Steven Oliver as feuding small town gay boys. And Nakkiah Lui as a perpetually offended indigenous girl.
Black Comedy has hit all the right spots. A Star Trek parody, a send-up of border patrol-type reality shows titled Blackforce, a brilliant send-up of American Blaxploitaton cinema and some spectacular cameos, including former 60 Minutes reporter Jeff McMullen, Matt Day, Sacha Horler, Brendan Cowell and Brooke Satchwell.
Slightly older, but no less risky is Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell (ABC, Wednesday, 8pm). In a way this bridges the generations, as Micallef himself broke into sketch (from law, a transition which is more common than you might think) all the way back with Seven's Full Frontal, the stepchild of Fast Forward. (Note for historians: it also gave us Julia Morris, Kitty Flanagan, Daina Reid and Denise Scott.)
The emphasis here is more topical: Canberra shenanigans, rogue politician Jacqui Lambie, the unpopular budget and whatever else can be ripped from the week's headlines. (In that sense, you can probably think of this as a low-budget Law & Order.) But it is no less brilliant for it, though topical comedy probably has a greater hit and miss rate than the "classics".
Micallef himself is a master of the genre. And Mad as Hell's format plays to his strengths. He's a natural raconteur, so his tonight-show-style interviews are a strong suit, though the show doesn't try as hard as its American cousins (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, for example) to push into the pseudo-real news space. That's a smart move. That identity crisis sometimes undermines the American political satires, in part because political analysis in the broader American media is actually quite poor.
What shows like Black Comedy and Mad as Hell do, however, is demonstrate that despite the persistent belief that Australia cannot "do" comedy, our funny bone is actually in pretty good shape, and that a tradition which was born in vaudeville and given voice in Australia though true masterpieces such as The Mavis Bramston Show and The Naked Vicar Show is alive, well and in good hands.
