Another TV Week Logie Awards has come and gone.  Continuing the tradition, here is my review.

After last year’s abysmal ceremony – possibly the worst ever – this year was actually pretty good. Bert Newton was great – as expected. He was charming, at ease, funny, and received a standing ovation. Everyone loves Bert.

I’ve got to say though, I was worried. With Hey Hey back on Nine, I was sure we would be treated to stupid Hey Hey inspired comedy skits. Fortunately there were none. And fortunately Hey Hey didn’t win any awards. There is hope for Australian television after all.

Straight out of the gate we had Shaun Micallef. The guy is a comic genius, and his acceptance speech was hilarious as always. In fact, Shaun, or at least the show he hosts, won 3 awards. So we saw a lot of Shaun that night.

I’m still annoyed that we have to have “international” guests at the Logies. I don’t get why we can’t seem to stand on our own feet? Couldn’t we have had Paul Kelly instead of John Mayer for example? How good would that have been?!

Having said that, k.d. lang was brilliant. Absolutely magnificent.

It wasn’t all roses though. There was not enough Bert for a start. It started well, and then Bert disappeared for most of the night. We had a rather lame Don Lane tribute (Don’s son PJ seems rather talentless, yet keeps showing up each year at these awards). And the night went on far too long.

We were also witness to a new trend in Australian television award ceremonies – when you win an award, you must stand up with every cast member and backstage hand, spend 10 minutes finding each other, hug, kiss, congratulate each other, and then slowly wind your way through the tables in order to bring the entire mob up on to stage with you. No wonder it went on so long.

Ray Meagher winning the Gold Logie added some Aussie colour to the proceedings with a comment about winning a chook raffle. That brought some life back in to a long night – but unfortunately, that was the end of evening.

Anyway, overall one of the better Logies.  Would be great though to one day just celebrate Aussie talent.

It’s become a tradition at Curmi the Blog to give a review of Australian TV’s “Night of Nights” each year. I’d hate to disappoint, so here it is.

What the Fuck?

I had considered just posting that. But I love a good whinge, so I couldn’t resist posting more. Where the hell do I start?

The Host

In 2006 we had 5 hosts at the Logies. In 2007 we had 3. Last year we had no hosts. This year we went back to 1. That host was ex-Big Brother host Gretel Killeen.

Let’s face it – Gretel is a crap host. She’s annoying, she speaks down to people, she’s annoying, she’s not funny, she’s annoying. And this year she was sporting a hairdo like a Vulcan. Ok, maybe I take back the fact that she isn’t funny.

I’m not sure if she writes her own material. If she does, the network shouldn’t let her. If she doesn’t, the network needs to fire the comedy team they used. Because there was little that came out of her mouth that was funny throughout the night. But then there was little that came out of anyone’s mouth last night that was funny.

To try and make her more interesting, someone decided it would be good to have her change her dress every couple of ads. Works for me when I have to give a presentation on software development. Here’s a selection of Gretel’s clothing changes. I didn’t include the one where she had cotton wool all over her to make it look like she was stuck in a cloud (that came from a painful sketch involving her falling through heaven).

Wil Anderson once described Gretel as “mutton dressed as hooker”. I’ll say no more.

Overseas Guests

You know, I’ve been critical each year about the Logies bringing over overseas guests to try and make the night more interesting. I’ve always believed we should be able to stand on our own and celebrate Australian TV. This year we almost did just that.

We had Jessica Mauboy to start off the show. She chose to sing a song that didn’t sound totally like an American pop song with a Black American rap half way through, so that was good. Unfortunately it looked and sounded like she mimed it (I could be wrong though – see below on sync issues).

We had Tom Burlinson – best known for his role in “The Man From Snowy River”. I thought his singing was piss poor, but at least he was another Australian.

It was looking good, but then we got Annie Lennox. I’d like to say she was crap, but I’d have to say she was probably the only good thing the entire night. Go Australia!

Comedy

I was in pain. The audience looked to be in pain. And then we had The Umbilical Brothers. Mime is generally not funny. It doesn’t get funny just because you add silly sound effects to it. And it doesn’t become comedy gold when you spend 5 minutes adding stupid voiceovers and sound effects to the nominee videos. One minute of that crap would have been enough – I’m betting many people turned over at this point thinking they were watching Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.

Every comedy routine was painful to watch, and I think Matthew Newton said it best when he, after yet another pre-scripted routine failed, turned to the camera and quipped:

Who said Vaudeville’s dead?

If only The Logies were dead.

Out of Sync

Ok, here is my biggest whinge. Watching the presentation on 9HD, the audio and video were out of sync. Only minor sync issues with the live presentation, but whenever there was a pre-recorded segment, the segment was totally out of sync. It was painful to watch, and I know of someone who changed to another station completely because he couldn’t handle it.

Now, it could be my TV tuner (inbuilt Sony HD tuner), but the commercials were in sync, and shows before and after the logies were in sync. So the question is, why can’t Channel 9 get this stuff right? Do they not have someone who watches their stuff on a normal TV so they can tell them when things aren’t working? My guess is that everyone at 9 was watching Borat on Channel 10.

So, I may have been unjust in dismissing Jessica Mauboy as having mimed her song. It could have just been a sync issue. Sorry Jessica.

Highlights

This is tough. I would say this was the worst Logies I have ever seen, and I’ve seen some shockers. But the highlights were probably:

• Kerry O’Brien sober.
• Don Lane’s son PJ looking quite unhappy when Rove referred to him as “gorgeous”.
• The Cadbury ad during the commercials with the two kids with dancing eyebrows.

Maybe my first comment on this review said it all.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Australian free-to-air television is absolute rubbish. The latest promise is “Freeview”, which apparently is nothing like the “Freeview” in the UK, and is instead some crap repackaging of what we have now, with PVRs that can’t skip ads or use the EPG if they want the “Freeview” logo on them.

Anyway, here’s a great spoof of the Freeview TV commercials. Thanks Grant for sending me the link. As I’ve said before, time to revoke the free-to-air licences and let some new blood run the system!