I haven't seen alleged comedian Tom Ballard very often on TV, but on the occasions I have, I didn't recognize much sign of talent.
A month or two back, when the ABC was running promos of him as star of a new daily (for goodness sake!) half hour format of comedy news commentary, I meant to comment that it looked very amateurish - remember him swinging around on a chair with his hands in the air? Just looked like they didn't have a clue as to what to do to make a smart or witty promo.
I tried watching the actual show last night. Even the name ("Tonightly") has "lame" written all over it.
Truly, it was awful, and I still utterly fail to see that he has any natural talent as a comedian, or basic likeability, at all. A half hour of topical material every day is a big ask for him, and his writers, but honestly, if it's going to be as bad as this, it deserves not even trying.
Speaking of basic likeability: I don't know anything about how amateur chat show Aaron Cheng Tonight came to be made - it looked more like a university student media project than a serious effort at TV - but I have to say, Cheng and some of the others on the show did have an appealing, dag-ish likeability which made it watchable, even with a very high rate of joke failure.
And another show I have only recently started watching: Rosehaven. The leads are really good in their roles, I think. Not the funniest show on TV, but it's quite appealing in its way.
have you been watching Brooklyn 99 on Netflix?
ReplyDeleteI am basically almost running out of episodes to watch.
I know you like 'likeable' and that is one of the few comedies that works well without having any unlikeable main characters in it. even the incompetent cops and the car thief villain is likeable.
Oh sure - I've praised the show here before. The series which featured Adrian Pimento (the mad, former undercover cop) a lot is particularly funny whenever he turns up.
ReplyDeleteI have been forgetting to watch the current series on SBS Viceland (I think Wednesdays and then on SBS on Demand, but only for a further week or so). I did see one episode, though, and I thought it showed signs of running out of steam. Hope I'm wrong.