The Best Australian Humorous Writing (16 page)

Though Cameron-Grey sees something different. “Viewers identify with the host—the abuser—and the winner—who is the strongest, the survivor. Gameshows once had consolation prizes for the runners-up, board games and stickpins, because they used to play fair. But now fair isn't entertaining.”

Gagged and bound, I'm not at liberty to identify the host, or the protocol, or the bastard who beat me because he knew Paul Keating managed a rock-n-roll combo called The Ramrods in the sixties, which I knew too, but the buzzer deals in nanoseconds, hence everyone at home, including my peers who once took me for intelligent, think I'm an idiot. And I am. Correct. You win $22,000.

Our show's winner, through a blend of brains and deceit, bags that sort of cash, and nobody feels happy about it, not even the host or the winner herself. She skulks about the backroom corridor after the show, looking sheepish in a lurex blouse, and apologises to the runner-up who naturally enough won nothing.

“I feel terrible,” she says to her gypped rival. “If I had my time over … I guess at the end of the day it's just a game.”

Given her chance, the runner-up would kill the winner. She'd eat the winner's liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti. Instead she shrugs, begrudges a smile and looks for the nearest exit. The bitterness is palpable, everyone too raw and ravaged and wrung out for tears or gentle sincerities. It's a brutality we call entertainment. Where Roman society threw slaves into tiger clashes and mock sea-battles, we cast our own frail selves into freak attritions that go by the name of gameshows.

I go home heavy-hearted, empty-handed. My so-called reward from the four-hour torment is a spam and lettuce sandwich, plus the chance to watch my lowest half-hour on the box. But I renege, once the timeslot comes. I don't need to go there. I have the shame already and, like a video souvenir, I replay it every day.

IAN CUTHBERTSON

“Why are you so quiet?” Lena (Emily Rose) asks Justin (Dave Annable), in the afterglow of the lovemaking session they both decided should not happen in the previous episode of
Brothers & Sisters
. Why not? Well, Justin had developed an addiction to painkillers, was in recovery from it, was not ready for a commitment (apparently sex is the kind of pleasure that's a no-no for recovering addicts; perhaps they will replace their substance abuse with sex addiction or something), and he was already late for a meeting with his sponsor. “Ah, screw it,” he had said, somewhat indelicately I thought, before locking lips with luscious Lena.

Lena, you see, works at the wine-producing offshoot of the Walker family business. She's been having it off with handsome Tommy Walker (Balthazar Getty) since his adored wife went home to mommy, blaming him for the death of one of their twins, a decision they made together, as viewers would recall.

But wifey has come to her senses and Lena has shifted to troubled, recovering addict and war-injured Justin. So far, so soapy, you think? Well, to a point.

The terrific thing about
B&S
is that we know more about the characters' lives than they do. Justin doesn't know Lena has been
diddling his brother. And Tommy doesn't know she is diddling Justin.

This sense of being ahead of the revelations for the characters leads to some juicy ironies, most uncommon in American soaps, er, dramas.

It works best with the queen of adultery, still the series' most interesting character, Holly Harper (Patricia Wettig), who works with Tommy in the Walker wine business.

Holly bore Walker patriarch William an illegitimate child, Rebecca, who strives to integrate herself, as a legitimate half-sister, into the already outsized Walker clan.

Lena works with Holly and Tommy, so the knowingness that viewers share with Holly, who sees all between Lena, Tommy and Tommy's wife Julia (Sarah Jane Morris), is delicious.

Brothers & Sisters
is at its best when it strives to integrate unusual elements into the Walker clan (and the show), such as adultery and its consequences, through the generations, and the troubled sexual and romantic life of gay Walker brother Kevin, played with terrific wit and sure-footed self-confidence by Matthew Rhys.

It's at its worst when it falls into quirky urban neuroticism, which seems to be the strong suit of mother Nora (Sally Field) and sister Kitty (Calista Flockhart). Tonight there's way too much of the latter as Kitty and senator Robert McCallister (Rob Lowe) tie the knot. You'll wonder if you haven't flicked back in time to Flockhart as that notorious queen of quirk, Ally McBeal.

LARISSA DUBECKI

Say what you will about Madonna's music; she continues to be a master—or perhaps that should be mistress—semiotician from the Benny Hill school of innuendo.

The title of her latest album,
Hard Candy
, refers to both her yoga-buffed body and the self-belief that she remains a scorching sexual proposition, a stance furthered by the lyrics to the single “Candy Shop”: “I'll be your one stop/ candy store/ lollipop/ have some more/ my sugar is raw/ sticky and sweet.”

Clearly, the near-saturation level of global recognition she enjoys is not based on her wit, but Madonna has other claims to fame. Few other 49-year-old women, for example, would consider wearing an album cover outfit consisting of little more than a black swimsuit, thigh-high leather boots and an ecstatic expression.

Fewer still could boast a career spanning 26 years, or that each new album release is a keenly anticipated event—although her status is based less on the quality of her musical output and more on her infamous talent for reinvention.

She has gone from the rebellious Catholic schoolgirl of
Like a Virgin
to cowgirl (
Music
), urban guerilla (
American Life
) and purple-leotard-wearing disco princess (
Confessions on a Dancefloor
).

Hard Candy
, her 11th album of original material, which is released in Australia today, doesn't disappoint on that count. Hip hop–influenced R&B is the flavour du jour. Corralled for the project were Justin Timberlake, who co-wrote five of the songs and sings on four, plus top-shelf R&B producers Pharrell Williams and Timbaland.

As the world's highest-selling female recording artist told this month's
Vanity Fair
of working with the hottest songwriters and producers: “I needed to be inspired and thought, well, who's making records I like? So I went, I like that guy and I like that guy.”

The Material Girl's music is in many ways immaterial to her career, but with the artist turning 50 in August,
Hard Candy
is in many ways a stab at ongoing relevance, despite her quite believable promise that “I can go on and on”, on a track called “Heartbeat”.

The trouble is that, while her longevity has been based on an almost uncanny ability to plunder subcultures and turn them into mainstream trends,
Hard Candy
comes across as a thinly veiled attempt to keep up with an already forward-thinking pack of R&B-flavoured artists including Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera and Nelly Furtado.

It is unlikely to tempt the thirtysomethings who pester wedding DJs to play “Into the Groove”. Nor is it going to impress children who associate Madonna with their parents' vinyl collection, despite “Four Minutes to Save the World” giving the impression she threatened Timberlake with an electric cattle prod left over from the “American Life” video to repeat her name over an insistent beat.

Elsewhere, Kanye West pops in for a spot of self-aggrandising rapping on “Beat Goes On”, while Madonna shares her insights about how you don't have to be rich and famous to be good (“Dance 2Nite”), and, in “Incredible”, we discover how great her husband, British film director Guy Ritchie, is in the sack (“Sex with you is incredible … metaphysical,” she warbles).

Hard Candy
is no answer to the retro-disco pop of 2005's
Confessions on a Dancefloor
.

Those who fail to find any relevance in the Madonna juggernaut may be left posing this question about the desperation faintly perfuming her
Hard Candy
Gucci-does-dominatrix image, and her latter-day music: Just because she can, does it mean she should?

MARIEKE HARDY

So the comely goons have packed away their wee bathing costumes and mystifying array of headwear for the year and the Gold Coast compound has been disinfected and bulldozed or whatever it is that happens to the
Big Brother
house once its dizzy half-dressed residents stumble into the wider world.

And those of us who have bothered to catch more than one episode of the series can finally relax/repent. Bless me Father, for I have sat through
BB
2007 in its entirety and, try as I might, I can't seem to wash the blood from my hands.

For all its hinted at glamour, its conveyor belt of grinning wholewheat dill pickles, its comfortingly inane tasks, the '07 series just didn't sparkle. Even Mama Killeen was looking tired and irritable this year, presumably biting the heads off a few bats backstage before prowling out to ensnare a hapless halfwit in her verbal net and relieve them of their lifeblood.

Watching to see which terrified assistant slipped up with their autocue work each week and faced the poisonous glare from her laser eyes (I'm convinced she sleeps upside down or in some kind of futuristic ice chamber) was a mild diversion from the weekly tedium of feigning excitement over evictions, but not enough.

Everyone involved with the show seemed bored by the concept, the routines. How were the rest of us simple-minded fools supposed to get on board for our dose of cheesecore television when our hosts couldn't even bother getting off the couch to greet us?

“What
Big Brother
promises, he delivers,” we were told via thundering voice-over in the weeks preceding lift-off. If a subdued mob of dullards treading water for 100 days and barely mustering the energy for a few limp rounds of Marco Polo in the pool was one of the original items on the “must have” agenda, then
BB
has certainly come through with the goods.

Whether the disappointingly tepid choice of housemates was simply a reaction to last year's Turkey Slap incident (there was something privately enjoyable about watching Helen Coonan repeatedly use those words in Parliament, wasn't there?) or—frighteningly— Australia has just milked its supply of ambitious dumbbells dry, the show failed to produce a character who set us alight. Where was our defiant Merlin, our adorably thick Reggie, our politically dynamic (swoon) Lefty Tim?

Last Monday's Final Eviction Cashback Bonanza Johnny Casino Goodtimes was memorable mostly for the fact that it went about 18 years over schedule and several of the housemates waiting to be interviewed by
Big Brother
crossed over into middle age during the course of the program.

A limp, drawn-out affair that proved a sadly fitting climax for a series that failed to set the nation's texting teens on fire, it ambled from forgettable one-on-ones with friends and family members, to some of the most awkward time-filling since Molly Meldrum desperately attempted to subdue a rather refreshed Iggy Pop on
Countdown
.

Let's face it, when even knuckle-dragging truckie Travis cottons on that the producers have run out of material and are informing their host to just “tread water”, you ain't fooling anybody.

Vox pops with the crowd fared little better—there's only so many times you can watch Mr Gold Coast Mike Goldman lean into a terrified-looking child and ask them who they think will win before you become sorely tempted to go do rum shooters at the pub instead.

Monday's other two standout moments involved Gretel being hit in the head by a rubber chicken thrown by a toothsomely imbecilic ninny named Bodie (police are yet to find his remains, though judging from the murderous expression on Killeen's face post-collision there wouldn't have been much left for the crows to pick over) and a cheerily half-baked pantomime performed by the housemates that was so utterly horrifying I have written a strongly worded letter to my local MP demanding all involved be lined up and shot.

From what I witnessed through my self-imposed finger jail, the piece was supposed to be some kind of cheeky, self-reverential knees-up romp but in actuality was more excruciatingly embarrassing than having a naked sauna with your uncle.

Anyway, in the long run, I know, I know … you're right—it's
Big Brother
.

Me sitting here complaining about the lack of sexy zing in this particular reality television show is like turning up at Mardi Gras and musing aloud that there seem to be rather a lot of homosexuals in attendance. You know what you're signing up for when you throw yourself at the mercy of Gretel and co.

I only hope that next year they manage to relocate their mojo and give us sinners something worth repenting for.

MARIEKE HARDY

I get the sneaking suspicion—and I'm quite happy to be proven wrong here—that a large portion of the sisterhood isn't all that keen on Nigella Lawson. We like food, certainly. Some of us are also partial to boobies, and innuendo, and ladies with big, round bottoms, but even then Nigella seems to make selected members of the wymmyn's network slightly suspicious.

Perhaps it's the chocolatey vowels and habit of rolling herself all over the preparation space in a fashion that would be considered deeply unhygienic by most food and safety officers. Perhaps it's the overly posh “grahnd piahno and plahstic bahgs” business. It could even be the high-waisted trou. Most of all, though, I'm guessing what many folk get their knickers slightly twisted about is the heavy lashings of sauce. And I'm not referring to the lady's condiments pantry.