Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. As of Friday night Tonightly With Tom Ballard is officially dead and the Australian comedy showscape will be the poorer for its absence.
It’s going out at the height of its powers, which is both glorious and also heartbreaking because a bunch of enormously talented people are out of a job they were clearly nailing. As the internet demonstrated when everyone you knew shared this:
And there’s an argument that the show became truly magnificent once they knew they were axed and decided there were now no more consequences.
Although it’s also true that that decision coincided with the show expanding its writing and performing team and got comedy maven Dan Ilic in as showrunner, so maybe it wasn’t so much that the show had been holding back as that it was finally properly resourced. Or maybe it was that they killed that evil wizard and broke his dread curse. Look, it was a mix of things.
I’m going to take a punt and say that Tonightly will be looked back upon the way that we now look at another rollicking live ABC ensemble comedy: The Late Show.
Where that show brought the likes of Rob Sitch, Mick Molloy, Tony Martin, Judith Lucy, Santo Cilauro and Jane Kennedy out of the comedy and community radio backwaters and into people’s homes, Tonightly will be hailed as the first time that most Australians met future superstars Bridie Connell, Ben Jenkins, Greta-Lee Jackson, Nina Oyama and Greg Larsen – seen here demonstrating the quiet dignity which was his trademark.
And there’s another comparison: both are shows where the undisputed highlights enable one to forget the ropier moments. It’s going to be an Australian comedy touchstone for years to come.
Also, apropos of nothing, Connell’s got some goddamn pipes on her.
(And no-one ever gives props to writers, so let’s take a moment to add that Rebecca Shaw, Kara Eva Schlegl and Jazz Twemlow are goddamn comic geniuses and should be given their own shows, please. Actually, just hand ’em out to the whole team.)
And let’s take a moment for Ballard himself, since he’s the one being targeted with most of the sorrow at the cancellation-slash-personal glee of Cory Bernardi.
He was never not good, but again, he really came into his own in the last few months which, not coincidentally, was also the era where the show had to move into a larger studio to accomodate the increasingly large live audience. As insightful observations go, saying “the comedian did better with more people reacting to the comedy” is up there with “the sun’s not nearly as damp as you’d think.”
And there were some hard times. The Ballard assault allegations. The ACMA investigation over their love of hardcore swears. The claims that the show mocked new PM Scott Morrison’s faith.
Regardless, I’m one hundred per cent certain that the axing is going to looked at in the future with utter bafflement: “they were doing WHAT sort of numbers on social shares? What sort of idiot cancels a show with this reach?”
And also in that it was perhaps too early, coming out during a time when real-time viewers was still the main metric of measurement despite barely anyone (and certainly barely anyone in Tonightly‘s demographic) consumes television that way anymore. I love the show and I think I’ve watched it “live” about a dozen times.
And yes, it’s just a show – but great comedy shows are rare and wonderful things, and deserve to be celebrated.
Tonightly might be gone, but while it lives on iView, Mr Oily will be with us still.
