Micallef Tonight

I'm lodging this comment a little too late, but I was fast forwarding through some old TV tapes (y'know, where you tape certain shows you aren't able to watch there and then) and I saw Shaun Micallef interviewing Anthony LaPaglia and Dave Hughes....Why the sam hill isn't Shaun Micallef on TV!?!?!?

In my rather stunted view, he is funnier than any ol' Jim Carrey or Mike Myers or (dare I say it) Christopher Guest! C'mon, with segments like "The Credible Hulk", characters like Myron and Action Boy and small jape-esque phrases like "Miced Volvo" and "Homosexuality" (you had to be there to understand), surely there is some room for him on the box, particularly if Tony Squires can have his own 60 minute program. Obviously not...

If you're not as furious as I currently am, let me leave you with this quote from David McGhan's "Dr. Miracle."

"Jack, get me 4 BP's of stat and Electrocardioman. Rory, get me 10CC's of Murgol. Because I've gots me an idea..."

of course comparisons between rove [live] and micallef tonite are going to come up but all i can say is that the latter is the clear winner.

are people not sick of rove yet? his won his gold logie, i guess he has done his job. he doesnt seem to be able to get over the fact that he actually WON... which makes his show so lame at times.

Micallef is, in my opinion very orignial. i never watched his ABC show so i cant really compare his ABC humour to his channel 9 humour. I love his special guests such as (i think it was in the first show) the chicken parmisiana, because he couldnt get any of the performers from the casino... and just from tonights opening remarks: "I dont know what you made of the news this week, but this is what i made of it..." then goes to a shot of a paper mache like life-sized model of a man. i could not stop laughing.

this is what makes micallef so good. he is silly, stupid, embarrassed at himself, and seems to be extremely unprofessional. and he pulls it off, unlike rove who doesnt seem genuine.

micallef tonight makes me look forward to my monday night tv lineup and i hope that it lasts.

The first episode of micallef tonight, i thought was reasonably funny and more original than anything else that i had seen on australian tv. But you notice by about the third episode that he reuses the same jokes over and over again exept he could sometimes re-word them. and you cant help but to see some similatatery's in the set up of the whole show, compared to Letterman's show.

Letterman has that musical Paul guy and his little orchestra, where as micallef has the unfunny guy with the curly hair on the piano with an orchestra with him, fancy that. The layout of the set is pratically the same as well, Letterman has a desk with a couple of chairs next to him and yes so did micallef.

Shaun Micallef doesnt belong on a tonight show he would be better off in some kind of sit-com. Even though it was broadcast live, if they didnt say it was you could probaly never tell. As the whole cast of the show was un-animated and you could easily see that they had tried to perfect every line that the writers had put down on script for them. They could of at least been a little more spontanious.

The Micallef tonight show, did not communicate properly with the audience and shaun himself has no interviewing skill's what so ever. And of corse if was axed becasue no one really watched it, denton's show may not of pulled in the big names but it did pull in the ratings and out rated the unfunny show of Micallef tonight

After the slew of new comedy shows to come out in the past 6 or so months in Australia, I had high expectations for Shaun Micallef's latest effort. His ABC shows were genius, easily the best comedy ever to come out of this country.

He never struck me as the kind of comedian suited to a live talk style show though. So it was interesting to see how he'd handle it.

Firstly, the show made me laugh more times in the first 10 minutes than all the Comedy Inc episodes put together. Sure it had some slow parts, but nothing more than what you'd expect from a first time attempt at a live show.

Also, for those who think Shaun getting up on his high horse was a complete rip off of Rove's 'what the...' segment should know that he did the segment in his original ABC series many years ago. If memory serves me, it was before Rove's show was airing on channel 10, correct me if I'm wrong. Truthfully, I really don't see too many similarities between the two... and Shaun makes me laugh more anyway.

Overall, I think it's a great start, and will only get better. Hopefully he'll add some comedy sketches like he had on his ABC series, it was probably the only thing the live show was lacking.

The Jamie Durie thing was pure Micallef also. Let's just pray he doesn't attempt the excruciating Rove style satellite interviews.

There's my two cents. Cheers

In the glut of Aussie tonight shows, Micallef shines. While Rove Live panders to the masses with its 'nice' humour, all likeability and no edge, Micallef Tonight takes the genre, tears it into pieces and satirises it. It is a parody while still being a significant contribution to the tonight show stable.

While Rove seems to have been watching too many tapes of Conan O'Brien recently (to the point of Rove blatantly copying his cat hisses, "I'm cool baby's" and camera sparring), Micallef has obviously seen Conan and allowed him to influence his show much more indirectly. As a result (like O'Brien) Micallef includes sketches in his show - slotting them between guests and sometimes even during interviews. He has embraced O'Brien's sense of the visual in his comedy (this is TV, after all) - so expect to see many more cartoons, puppets and clay-mation. Like O'Brien, rather than see the real world and pass comment on that (like Letterman does so brilliantly), Micallef creates his own comic world and cuts loose within that. And at last we see a live Australian TV show that has edge - and has the bravery to put their plums on the line and say 'we're now going to commit to this sketch and laugh if you want, but we don't care.' Saturday Night Live, Conan O'Brien and Letterman have the same philosophy.

I don't understand all these allusions people are making between Shaun's High Horse and '...what the?'. They're both completely different. Let's get one thing straight - all observational humour comes from the same basic premise - 'what's the deal with that?, did you ever notice this/that, etc...different comedians say it differently obviously. Then they riff off their thoughts on why something is so absurd (Seinfeld - parakeets flying into mirrors, Jimeoin - thongs, Micallef - rapid acting Panadol). It can take on many guises - The Late Show (D-Gen) had 'What's All That About' with Tony and Mick, who both later did their radio show with segments called 'Please explain', 'Cocobananas' (ie - that makes me cocobananas) and 'nutbags' (what a nutbag). All of this material could come under the same heading but is presented differently.

Anyway - 'what the...' is NOT observational humour - it's 'Phunny Photos' from Hey Hey It's Saturday, with a few misspellings thrown in for good measure. But that's how you win Gold Logies, apparently. Be nice - don't offend anyone or try anything different so middle Australia will like you. Rove's now in fine company with his other banal friends, Daryl Somers and Bert Newton. Rove Live jumped the shark in the first episode, but I thought the episode in which he interviewed Heidi Fleiss dragged it down to a new level. Tacky. Could you imagine any other tonight show host doing that - Leno, Letterman, O'Brien? It doesn't exactly reek of class to me.

I loved Micallef Tonight - a few dead spots but it showed real spirit and creativity and that's what counts for a show to have legs. Francis Greenslade is still a ham though. Even on the old show. Not funny.

Rove Live is Rove Dead. Micallef: 9/10.