We Interrupt This Broadcast splits the I do’s and don’ts of sketch comedy
Load up on laughs with We Interrupt This Broadcast, a long-overdue comedy series coming soon to Channel 7 and 7plus.
The biggest new comedy in decades, We Interrupt This Broadcast makes fun of Australia’s favourite (and least favourite) shows. Fall in love at first sketch with MAFS, reject a rose from The Bachelor, squeeze into your Skims with The Kardashians and prepare to declare to Border Security.
Nothing is off limits as We Interrupt This Broadcast reboots and revitalises a long-standing and near forgotten Australian tradition: taking the piss out of everything, including ourselves!
We Interrupt This Broadcast showcases eight of Australia’s most seasoned live performers and versatile comedy talent: Christie Whelan Browne, Bridie Connell, Michelle Brasier, Adele Vuko, Duncan Fellows, Greg Larsen, Ben Russell and Bjorn Stewart, with celebrated screen actors and established comedy performers supporting the ensemble cast throughout the series.
Sounds sketchy? When asked why reality TV and popular culture is so ripe for parody now**,** Duncan declared: “Reality TV is in constant need of parody but to its credit, it does a really good job at parodying itself.” Christie agreed that they’ve “become a parody of themselves”.
Greg divulged: “Because it’s soft when you squeeze it but not so soft that the skin breaks or turns mushy.” Ben added: “I don’t enjoy the word ‘ripe’ and kindly ask you to refrain from mentioning it again!”
We Interrupt This Broadcast is a HELIUM original production for the Seven Network.
I’m certainly interested and will watch the pilot, this is the sort of show that grabs me, even if this one’s production values don’t look that flash, but the promos aren’t too bad and I like how they’re also taking a tongue in cheek swipe at their own shows. I like Lawrence Mooney too and he used to be a regular on TFB, maybe they could get him on again for cross-promo.
Also agree with Johnson it’d be best placed around The Front Bar, maybe move TFB to 7:30pm (do single H&A for a bit) and this could be 8:30-ish with that lead-in and similar demographics. Also might be wise due to classification, if the latter show has been produced to an M or MA level, would be fine, TFB is also M (as it’s officially entertainment even though they use the Seven Sport watermark) and for some time now carries the cons advice “Some Coarse Language” (even though I’ve yet to hear an F-word and they couldn’t possibly know as it’s live unless they hand a pre script to a network classifier - probably more a ‘just in case’ warning like what Rove and now HYBPA do).
Front Bar is too important for AFL states and rates too well to bump to 9.30.
Maybe run it first in Syd/Bris then Front Bar.
With the reverse for Mel/Adel/Perth
That could work, they’ve done this successfully before, such as Hey Hey and HP special over two different weeks due to one-off Sunday AFL mid-last year and all combined rated well
MAFS runs until 9pm Monday to Wednesday. That limits the options to avoid MAFS to running at 9pm which seems too late for this sort of show or on Thursday at 7.30pm. Sunday is another possibility when it could run up against 60 Minutes as an alternative.
We Interrupt This Broadcast will indeed debut on Tuesday, February 28, according to Sunday Herald Sun’s Fiona Byrne. She writes that more than 1000 sketches were written for the series with almost 500 being shot and produced. Each episode will feature around 40 sketches.
If correct this is a good ratio - I found Open Slather, Comedy Inc and Double Take all had slower paces than that so there’s some hope. I think the biggest hope this show has is appealing to families - which is something none of those other shows did.
