With another federal election on the horizonm we are about to suffer through the cringe-inducing media circus that rolls into town every three years as two middle-aged men desperately attempt to wrangle votes from a cynical and fed-up general public. Expect the smooching of babies, the wearing of hardhats, the promising of this, that and the other, and smear campaigns that will make Australians even more leery of politics than we are already.
As the silly season ramps up, so will the need for comedy to make all the drudgery and farce more palatable. Election campaigns provide catnip for political satirists; like psephologists (a spiffy word to describe voting and polling geeks), this is truly their time to shine. The words “political satirist” might sound rather highfalutin, but, as we are about to see, the best Australia has to offer – while witty and waggish – can also be joyously low in the brow.
Below are six of the best political satirists on Australian screens, encompassing both individuals and groups.
Shaun Micallef
Ah, Shaun Micallef: the very funny man with the slick gray hair and the deer caught in headlines demeanour. Taking its title from an iconic scene in the 1976 classic Network, about a news presenter who goes rogue and becomes a raving “prophet of the airways,” Micallef’s comedy series Mad as Hell – now in its 14th season, which began February 2 – has a well-honed format that leaves plenty of room for experimentation.
Episodes begin with Micallef delivering a quip-filled summary of the week’s events, before moving into various wacky segments including interviews with actors playing caricatures of Australians – from political advisors to media commentators, reporters and others. These zany to-and-fros give the show an unpredictable, bouncy energy, especially as the host embroils himself in the absurdity.
Micallef keeps a straight face, playing a person scrambling to keep it together while mired in madness. He has the slick, corruptible look of a person one might expect to see in a court of law– with a moral compass comparable to Saul Goodman – rather than a comedy writers’ room. In fact, Micallef worked in insurance law before making it as a full-time writer and comedian.
Mark Humphries
When appointed the resident satirist on ABC’s flagship current affairs program 7:30, Mark Humphries had the big shoes of beloved comedy duo Clarke and Dawe to fill. He took it, ran with it and made it his own, executing riotously funny sketches written with fellow satirist Evan Williams.
Humphries treats sketches as mini self-contained narratives, often outlandishly framed. A recent skit for instance unfolds visually from the perspective of Scott Morrison, who is presented with a box of feedback from colleagues reporting terms of endearment such as “complete psycho” and “horrible, horrible person”. A sketch from December highlighted the federal government’s vaccine rollout failure in the form of a crass “everything must go!” late night TV ad. Another, from late January, was styled as a faux trailer for a movie called “RAPID ANTIGEN TEST: THE MOVIE.”
Humphries is a rare kind of talent: he’s not just very funny, but very funny very quickly, highly skilled at transforming news headlines into comedy gold.
Trisha Morton-Thomas
Give Trisha Morton-Thomas her own series! The Anmatyerr writer, actor, presenter and director has helmed two recent SBS documentaries that showcase her unique style: Occupation: Native and History Bites Back. Morton-Thomas is witty and cunning in a personable way – her disarming demeanour allows her to pry open sensitive topics effortlessly, as if she’s just sitting down for a cuppa and a chinwag.
The aforementioned documentaries challenge myths and preconceptions about Indigenous people and question the widely accepted, Judeo-Christian view of Australian culture and history – a potentially heavy line of inquiry unpacked with lightness of touch. Early in Occupation: Native, for example, the presenter explains the origin of the documentary’s title: it refers to her birth certificate, on which her mother’s occupation was listed as “native.”
This leads into a parody job interview sequence, the man behind the desk discussing with Morton-Thomas whether she wants the job of being a “native”. Perks include: “a lot of Dreaming time”, while cons include: “you’ve gotta deal with 229 years of negative stereotypes”. That boss is played by the fabulous comedian Steven Oliver, who is one of the stars of Black Comedy (see below) and, like Morton-Thomas, deserves many more gigs and more prominence in Australian media.
Juice Media
What if the government released advertisements that actually told it like it is? This is the premise of Juice Media’s “Honest Government Ad” series, which is presented by Ellen Burbidge and Zoë Amanda Wilson, voiced by Lucy Cahill, and written and created by former academic Giordano Nanni. Told in a very pacey style, and served in snackable three- or four-minute increments on YouTube, the bitterly sardonic group deliver visceral, queasy humour: you laugh while your stomach turns.
The faux ads cover political subjects as varied as people smugglers, welfare, the economy, Julian Assange and the coronavirus – but the highlights have been the climate change episodes. Juice Media channel the rage many of us feel towards our climate crisis-denying, fossil fuel-addicted government, turning that anger into whip-sharp takedowns adorned with turns of phrase such as “shitfuckery” and “look at this graph shaped like a penis, because it shows how fucked we are!”
These videos – including one about how we’re “net fucked by 2050” – are so good they drew the attention of Greta Thunberg, who is a big fan and participated in a podcast that accompanies the series.
“The clever and sassy creators of Black Comedy pelted out jokes through an Indigenous lens, taking TV satire in directions – cliche as it may sound – it had never been before”
The Black Comedy crew
It’s tough to be original in sketch comedy. Due to the brevity of most sketches, and the number needed to fill out a TV half-hour, content creators often fall back on familiar concepts. Not so in the intensely fresh Black Comedy, which wrapped up in 2020 after four seasons (consisting of six episodes apiece). Its clever and sassy creators pelted out jokes through an Indigenous lens, taking TV satire in directions – cliche as it may sound – it had never been before.
Some sketches were for shits and giggles, like the hilarious “what’s this then, slut?” running gag about two campy gay men determined to outdo each other (Taika Waititi is a fan). But the show was also pointy, polemical and fearless. The first season, for instance, opens with Captain Cook looking through a monocular from his ship, observing an Indigenous man who puts down his spear to perform a fabulously merry dance – and is promptly shot dead.
One classic recurring segment parodied copaganda shows such as Cops by following “BLAKFORCE” – a special task force that raids the homes of Black people and busts them for behaving like white people (think buying Delta Goodrem albums). Another hilarious skit involved an abusive Indigenous GPS that reduces the driver to tears. Like most sketch comedy shows, Black Comedy could be hit and miss – but the hits were stratospheric.
Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan
The two Kates, initially best known for their viral parody cooking series The Katering Show, are political satirists in a broader cultural sense. Their ABC series Get Krack!n is a spoof of breakfast TV, critiquing the cheap theatre of this, shall we say, intellectually iffy form of entertainment, using it as an opportunity to reveal, as poet and researcher Alison Whittaker put it, the “complicity of upper middle-class white women in widespread oppression”.
In one episode they satirise the wellness industry by sitting down with their resident “health krackspert” (Candy Bowers). She offers them a glass of turmeric which she claims can cure cancer, depression and in fact “all human ailments and diseases”. It “tastes like a fart”, though. Another scene shifts the comedy from nonsense to shocking social commentary. A newsreader rattles off the day’s headlines, announcing that “a woman was shot in the face by a man” and “another woman was killed by a man.” And in other news, “a woman has been murdered. A woman has been stabbed. A woman has been thrown off a bridge whilst being stabbed.”
The second season stretched the premise, and wore thin – but eventually culminated with a gooseflesh-raising finale. The two Kates passed hosting duties onto Larrakia woman Miranda Tapsell and Gamilaroi/Torres Strait Islander woman Nakkiah Lui, who, incensed by a segment in which white commentators debate whether racism exists, launch into mad-as-hell monologues. Tapsell declares, “I’m not done being angry, I am angry… because we are dying in infancy, we are dying in custody, and we are dying decades earlier than you.” A searing critique – truly one for the ages.