Shaun Micallef’s His Generation (As Proper A Review As We Are Capable.) (Of.)

Stealing an image directly from The Vine’s interview with Shaun Micallef to use at the start of this review probably wouldn’t be legal, would it? But what if we took a screenshot of part of The Vine’s website that happened to have a photo of Shaun Micallef on it? Surely that would just be classified as coincidental, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? We’re pretty sure it would. (“Taxi!” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept)

 

Well, we’ve been listening to My Generation, the debut album from one-man comedy renaissance Shaun Micallef, and guess what? It’s really good. As we’ve mentioned, it’s more of a traditional comedy album, taking in specially-written sketches and songs, as opposed to being Just Comedy Songs or Just Live Stand-Up, like other comedians would put out. Here’s a track by track breakdown, containing mild spoilers because copying out lines from the album is much easier than us coming up with ‘opinions’ and ‘being interesting’.

 

Track One/Two: A Welcome / I Remember You

An introduction to the album, followed by a rendition of the Frank Ifield classic. The cover begins as a fairly straight version of the song, before trailing off into silly voices while the backing singers (well, a multi-tracked Susie Ahern) continue stoically with the ‘proper’ version. Interestingly (well, or inconsequentially, depending on whether you’re us or not) it’s a completely different take of the song than that lip-synced by Shaun on the Rove clip we linked to yesterday.

It’s A Bit Like: Vic Reeves, circa Big Night Out

Track Three: Treading The Boards

An second-division English thesp looks back over the career of himself and his top showbiz chums. The first outing on the disc for some of the splendid wordplay we’ve come to associate with Mr Micallef, which is always more than welcome. Plus, any comedy album released in 2009 that uses Kenneth Tynan as a reference is a welcome thing in our book, and not just because already knowing who Kenneth Tynan is makes us feel a bit superior for about three seconds (although after that our feeling of superiority is outweighed by our default setting of ‘self-loathing’, meaning the equilibrium is restored, not least because we’ve just realised we’re the sort of twats who’d use a word like ‘equilibrium’. But hey, this isn’t about us).

“O! If his mouth could talk, the stories it could tell…”

It’s A Bit Like: Peter Cook

Track Four/Five: An Announcement/Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie

Shaun does Bowie’s ‘Fashion’, in the voice of Chris Walken. Brief enough to avoid outstaying its welcome. Previously used as a gag on Micallef Tonight, of course.

Track Six/Seven: Women/Things That You Can Do

A postmodernly faux-sexist ditty about female heads of state around the world (including, as you might expect, multiple references to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), followed about a harpsichord-backed tune from the 1950s about “The Things An Australian Wife Can Do”, performed in the style of Noel Coward. More delightful wordplay on offer, which works much more impressively when listened to, than when merely transcribed on the internet by idiots like us. But still:

“Clever things that you can do-oo / Clever things that you can do-oo / Just keep the lino polished /  your cares will be abolished / you’ll wonder where the daylight hours flew.”

It’s A Bit Like: Spitting Image, then Noel Coward

Track Eight/Nine: An Interview/Accident Medley

In a piece that could have been written then deemed not quite suitable for Newstopia, Shaun meets Neil Brady (played by Shaun), a schoolteacher who has written a heartfelt medley about the Death Of Princess Diana, and other tragedies.

”Oh, they chased her down a tunnel, but she couldn’t get away / if only they had dared to stop and think / But they went snap! Snap! Snap! The crazy pap- / -arazzi were to blame, and her driver who’d had too much to drink.”

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia, like we just said

Track Ten: Medicine Man

Splendid. Micallef performs a monologue in the guise of an old-fashioned doctor from a Yorkshire village, who holds no truck with the modern ways of that fancy coroner from the Big Town.

It’s A Bit Like: Alan Bennett, or Stephen Fry

Track Eleven: They Whisper His Name

Sotto Voce!

It’s A Bit Like: The title theme to series three of Alexei Sayle’s Stuff, but taken in a different direction

Track Twelve: Charlton Heston Reads The Bible

One of our favourite things. Shaun gets another chance to do his brilliant Charlton Heston impersonation, previously heard in the reports by “Pilger Heston” on Newstopia. Charlton Heston is in a recording studio, trying to record a speaking book of The Bible, with amusingly splendid consequences.

”This God-damn Bible is taking forever!”

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia, or Smith & Jones when they were at their peak

Track Thirteen: Love Theme From Roger Explosion

Performed by Susie Ahern, it’s a theme for the Roger Explosion sketches from Full Frontal (the 1990s Australian sketch show that we’re always mixing up with the similarly alliterative Fast Forward, even though Fast Forward was rubbish and Full Frontal was great and had Eric Bana as a cast member and everything).

It’s A Bit Like: They Might Be Giants’ theme for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Track Fourteen: Slap On The Terrorist

Another sketch we presume was originally penned for Newstopia, Shaun interviews Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the terrorist behind the failed 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef clearly has long-held issues with the 9/11 bombers, who had clearly plagiarised his idea, and to compound matters, had carried it out with none of the panache and flair that he’d had. A great sketch, with Shaun putting in good performances in both roles.

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia again

Track Fifteen: Jesus Was A Good Man

A country-tinged melody about how Jesus was really good, and how the devil is rubbish.

It’s A Bit Like: A satire on Toby Keith, or someone, we imagine

Track Sixteen: A Visit

An uncaring son visits his bewildered elderly father at an old people’s home. A brilliant sketch that works best when you hear it for yourself, so less said the better. It’s basically a fleshing out of a certain sketch from Micallef P(r)ogram(me), and the post-credits scene at the end of an episode Micallef-devised sitcom Welcher & Welcher, if you’ve seen those.

It’s A Bit Like: The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), or heck, Monty Python. Probably Cleese as the son, Jones as the father. Maybe even Cook & Moore.

Track Seventeen: Hell Of A Time

Just dandy. A short song from the perspective of a dead man reaching heaven, and being delighted about all the things he can do now he’s there. Oh, if only there were a way you could hear what it was like.

It’s A Bit Like: Eric Idle in full pomp

Track Eighteen/Nineteen: An Explanation/Modern Day Folk Heroes

Shaun muses on how Ned Kelly is Australia’s sole folk hero and how there should be more of them. He duly introduces a song about some more contemporary equivalents to Kelly in the hope they they could subsequently be held in similar regard to old bucketbonce. Said song is then performed in the style of Bob Dylan.

It’s A Bit Like: The Bit In Newstopia Where Shaun Sang A Song As Bob Dylan

Track Twenty/Twenty-One: A Briefing/Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers

Mr Dalgetty, owner of a fruit wholesale firm visits a slick American advertising agency, and tells them all about the background of the family-owned firm, and what they’re looking for. The agency then performs their radio advert for the company. A bit one-note, but hey.

It’s A Little Bit Like: The Songs Victor Lewis Smith Did Between The Prank Calls On Nuisance Calls

Track Twenty-Two/Twenty-Three: A Synopsis/Cahiers Du Cinema

A French actor introduces his song in a near indecipherable accent, followed by his song, performed in something which may not necessarily be in actual French. We’re not sure, as like Girls Aloud, we can’t speak French.

It’s A Bit Like: Don’t know, but the backing music was also used for the menus in at least one of the Micallef P(r)ogram(me) DVDs.

Track Twenty-Four/Twenty-Five: An Early Morning/Tipworks Market

An eager father wakes up his children, because they are all going to… Tipworks Market. A short song about said market is then performed, in the same breathless style as Victor Lewis Smith circa Inside Victor Lewis Smith.

It’s A Bit Like: Victor Lewis Smith, moreso than the Dalgetty sketch

Track Twenty-Six: Poetica Zirconia

Just super. More top wordplay from Shaun, via a look at the work of poet Sir I.P. Whittingslow. Great stuff that we’re not going to spoil by transcribing here, so you’ll just have to buy the album. As the sketch contains several funny poems that work very nicely in isolation, this could be cherry-picked for an episode of The Smith Lectures, if Radio Two still do that. We wouldn’t know, as they’ve stopped putting their comedy shows on Saturday afternoons, because they’re idiots.

Track Twenty-Seven/Twenty Eight: A Tribute/My Generation

Shaun introduces and performs an electro cover version of the The Who classic, before waxing philosophical on matters historical.

“If history teaches us anything, it’s that we learn nothing from it. It’s a valuable lesson that’s worth remembering, and unless we do, we’re doomed to repeat it, or at least sit a supplementary exam during the holidays.”

Track Twenty-Nine: Happy New Year

Shaun’s celebratory tune designed to create global togetherness just after 11.59pm on every December 31st, by way of impersonating residents of several trouble-stricken nations forgiving their tormentors. A nice end to the album, and one we’ll hope to see performed on Shaun Micallef’s New Year’s Eve show on Australia’s Channel Ten. Or more specifically, the following day, if we can find a (“wholly legal advertising-supported streaming video of it. Where’s that bloody taxi?” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept).

It’s A Bit Like: Spitting Image, again

 

So there it is. Much more of a ‘lazily-compiled breakdown of the tracks alongside a bunch of facile comparisons’ than an actual ‘review’, admittedly, but that’s just how we roll. In summary though, it’s really good, save for a few duff tracks like “Cahiers Du Cinema” or “Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers”, which we didn’t really rate that highly. In a nutshell: the good tracks more than outweigh the bad, and if you don’t buy it we don’t think you shouldn’t legally be allowed to vote.

 

To round things off, how about offering a sample track? After all, it’s what successful music blogs do, it would genuinely help promote the album as people can hear for themselves what the contents are like, and probably won’t end with a harshly worded cease-and-desist letter being fired off at Broken Industries Inc. Yes. That’s what we’re going to do. it’ll be a good thing to do. A nice thing. An honourable thing.

MP3: Shaun Micallef – Hell Of A Time

Buy a copy of His Generation from here if you’re in the UK, or from here if you’re in Australia. If you’re from neither, both links are probably equally applicable.

(“Thank God you’re here. Driver – the airport please. We want nothing to do with this.” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept.)

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YouTube Thing And Album Of The Day

We've been listening to the new Shaun Micallef CD plugged in the above Rove interview. Except, Micallef being Micellef, he instead plugged a wholly fictional album, and brought with him a copy of The Best Of The Smiths to display.

The actual proper album is a really rather splendid "old-school" (if you will) comedy album like what Peter Sellers or Monty Python used to make, containing a few comedy songs ("Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie's Fashion") and a load of enjoyable sketches. Favourite so far: "Charlton Heston Reads The Bible". You can buy it here. Or elsewhere, probably. Like iTunes if you're in Australia, we shouldn't wonder.

(Yes, this is a bit of a placeholder update until we come up with something else. Still a great album, though.)

Update: It's also available from Amazon Marketplace for under a tenner. Thanks to Paul from Hot Cuss (which should be updated more frequently. Tsk) for the heads up.

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A Collection of Measured Dissent

Here's a sobering thought for you. Using a hugely conservative estimate that at least 60% of them are over the age of 18, for every ten people leaving comments on YouTube, six of them can vote in a general election. And their votes counts exactly the same as yours. No matter if you read The Times, The Guardian, The Mirror, The Sun and The Beano each morning to take in all perspectives, peruse Hansard frequently, visit impoverished areas, small businesses, schools and colleges to connect with real people, the vote you make in the next election counts just as much as the person who'll vote for whichever candidate mentions asylum seekers the most, or who seems like 'a nice bloke'. This is why we'd happily lobby for voting slips to contain short current affairs quizzes. Get all five questions correct, and your vote is multiplied by three. Cracking idea, hey?

Part of the reason for our latest dose of despair for the future of society is that we've been unable to get the tune of the marvellous "Paul McCartney's version of Imagine" from Newstopia out of our heads for the last few days.

 

This means we've been dipping back into the above YouTube video occasionally, and while listening to the music (which is crying out to be remixed, we hasten to add), we dipped into the comments for the video. A mistake.

Even though it's a perfectly jolly tune in its own right, and nothing more than an affectionate parody of Macca's melody-over-lyrical-content songwriting style, from many of the comments you could assume it was performed while Micallef danced around a bonfire of Abbey Lane acetates topped with a meat effigy of the late Linda McCartney. Here are a few of them:

 

Yeah, branding a comedian an “animal” for making a family-friendly remake of a 37-year-old song. That’s a considered opinion, right there. Thanks, “Ponchocv”.

“Got a great sense of humor”, have you Mr so-called-“davesharon5747”? We beg to differ there, but note you say you “didn’t appreciate” the choice of song by Mr Micallef. That could be because you’ve changed your mind since your first viewing and have since accepted it wasn’t getting that worked up about, but it could well be some sort of post-vengeance gloat. Maybe you jetted over to Melbourne and rubbed snot onto the windscreen of Shaun Micallef’s car, or flipped him the bird at some traffic lights. Your comment has that sort of air about it. You nutter.

It seems your account has since been suspended. Presumably if you got that worked up over a parody of a song you like, you’ve probably starting making gallingly specific threats to the children of someone you really disagree with, like someone who posits that your favourite sports franchise might not be the greatest ever to grace the conference in which they play.

Tell ‘em, Steve-Dave! A quick look at this user’s account reveals they’ve uploaded just two videos. One of them is a camera phone video of them punching a punching bag repeatedly (4 months ago, 71 views). The other one is called ‘freestyle’, and has spent the last four months notching up a total of five views. Five.

So, there’s a critic who knows what the public want, right there. We haven’t watched ‘freestyle’, coincidentally. That would sully the efforts of the five people who’d already seen it.

Presumably Miss Lizzy hasn’t been listening to the barrage of weak “Paul McCartney and Heather Mills” jokes trotted out by jobbing Mock The Weekers over the last half-dozen years, or she’d have been able to put that song into some kind of perspective. And anyway, it’s Sir Paul now. Show some tossing respect.

Yeah, that jhon lennon. Always fcukign poswing around like he pwns the joitn.

A collection of measured dissent, there. “Motherfucker”, “scum”, “son of a bitch”. Was there a subliminal flashframe of Micallef taking a dump on The White Album that we missed or something? Oh, and stoberto06 – if you want to elongate the word “shite” in text form, adding multiple letter Es on the end just makes you look, well, a bit shitty.

Yes, well spotted.

Indeed. Why, Darfur is like getting a spot of jam on your T-shirt compared to this abomination. Interestingly enough, sergeev1989 actually finds The Holocaust deserving of as many as seven frowny brackets, so they’re not doled out lightly(((((((.

“It.s a crap or shit”? PICK A SIDE, YOU PUSSY.

Really? Really? By the way, we’ve seen the full episode of Newstopia this is from. That actually is the end of the song on that clip up there. There wasn’t, say, an extra bit at the end where Francis Greenslade sneaks onto the set dressed as Mark Chapman and shoots a pistolful of blanks into “Paul McCartney”, no matter how much these comments make it seem like that was the case.

Actually, fuck it. As soon as we get around to it, we’re going to get some video cameras together, and do our own parody of ‘Imagine’. We’re going to drive up to Matthew Street in Liverpool, we don’t live that far away. We’ll even pay the toll for the Mersey Tunnel to get there a bit more quickly. We’re going to dress up as John Lennon (circa Sgt Pepper, only the uniform will be emblazoned with embroidered penii), and roll around in dogshit outside The Cavern Pub while singing a version of Imagine where all the lyrics are made up of the words “poo”, “bum” and “willies”. In a Joey Deacon voice*. And then, we’ll go home, and upload it to YouTube, but before clicking “complete”, we’re going to DISABLE COMMENTS FOR THIS VIDEO, so all the self-important prudes will be denied their pissy little way of stamping their little internet feet at the nasty thing the rude men done. What will you do then, PixieDust1996? WHAT THEN?

(* Except we’ll do it really early in the morning, so we don’t get our faces stabbed in.)

Do you know the really funny thing about all these comments? Aside from the fact that the vast majority of people making the comments up there are unlikely to vote in elections because it’s unlikely they’d be able to spell ‘X’? It’s that the song “Imagine”, by John Lennon, is a song about, hey, peace. About putting differences to one side, to admitting that while Person/Country/Religion A might not necessarily get along with Person/Country/Religion B, we should all just chill the fuck out, and try to get along as best we can. Come on, give it a go! It’s easy if you try!

Sigh.

Note: We actually do like the Beatles, and Paul McCartney, and John Lennon. And yet, we’re able to display a modicum of tolerance for others. Zany.

 

Thank Ringo for the occasional voices of sanity in the comments for that video, that’s all we can say. Cheers, Applemask.

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Twitter: The Acid Test

So, you could claim that Twitter has achieved quite a lot for a glorified text messaging service. Facilitating dissent over the re-election of a corrupt government in Iran, giving Fox News a black eye over its unwarranted criticism of the NHS, Stephen Fry getting stuck in a lift, Twitter has helped it all. But, can Twitter achieve real change? In short, can we get #GetNewstopiaOnBBC4 to be a trending topic*?



While the programme itself may have ended about a year ago, which may well be considered something of a problem for a semi-topical news-satire comedy, we reckon the campaign still has legs. Polio-stricken legs with untied shoelaces, admittedly, but legs nonetheless. Surely, if a couple of hundred-thousand followers join us on this, we must surely get our way. It's that simple.



Any readers paying proper attention at this point may like to point out the @brokentv Twitter account is being followed by just 300 people, a largish proportion of which are flangebrained spammers, and that we attract between 50 and 150 visitors per day (most of which have Googled "lesbian vampire killers torrent", which we rank highly in, for some utterly unfathomable reason). With those figures in mind, how could our campaign be expected to register on any sort of scale?



Shut up, that's why. And Barack Obama is technically 'following' us, so if he retweets us, it's in the notional bag. Fingers crossed! Until then, here's a clip of Shaun Micallef, being Paul McCartney, performing a special tribute version of "Imagine". This is why the show belongs on BBC Four*, dammit.



(*Or More4. Heck, even Comedy Central Xtra+1 would do.)

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New Shaun Micallef Programme!

There’s a new Shaun Micallef programme! There’s a new Shaun Micallef programme! Here’s a screen grab of him playing chess against a toaster from it!

Sadly however, it’s not a new Shaun Micallef P(r)ogram(me). Instead, it’s a new primetime panel-based game show, transmitted every Tuesday at 7.30pm on the Ten network (in Australia, as we’d hope you’d all know by now). It is called Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation.

The format runs thusly: three teams representing the three generations (Baby Boomers, Generation X, Gen Y) must answer a series of pop culture related questions, and undergo a series of culture-related tasks. Whichever generation has the most points by the end of the show is the best for a whole week.

We’d sooner a ‘proper’ comedy show, but hey, it’s a comedy panel show, and it’s hosted by Shaun Micallef. What’s not to like. Here comes our extensive review, using our time-honoured “good things get points, bad things see points deducted” system.

GOOD: It is hosted by Shaun Micallef. +5 points.

GOOD: Due to the pre-watershed timeslot, Shaun vows to “subtract points for filth”. This means Shaun gets to be all schoolmasterly when banter slides into smut, which is always a good chance for him to be amusing. +2 points.

GOOD: Some of the guests are people we recognise, like Arj Barker from Flight of the Conchords. +2 points.

BAD: Despite many of the panellists being comedians, much of the show is run along strict quiz-based lines. So, if someone buzzes in with an amusing but clearly wrong answer, Shaun has to quickly move on and ask someone else, instead of riffing with them on the likelihood of the Qantas logo being a farting dog (or whatever) in the ‘identify a corporate logo after seeing just a tiny bit of it’ round. –2 points

BAD: While it’s a nice idea for a round (especially as we’re graphic design sluts who can’t get enough of rounds based on corporate idents), Ofcom would surely frown on such things being shown over here without going into Pizel Frenzy mode. Not that there’s more than a 0.0005% chance of it getting shown in the UK anyway. –0.0005 points

GOOD: Even in the 7.30pm timeslot, Shaun still finds time to indulge in plenty of avant-garde tomfoolery. Such as: introducing an episode while playing chess against a toaster (see top image), and holding the clue cards at strange angles for the contestant at the easel in the “sketch the TV show’ round. +3 points

GOOD: Also, Shaun announces that while Ten aren’t offering any prizes, he’ll give one of his own awards to the winning team, such as the Aria received for his ‘Expurgated Micallef Tonight’ DVD ,or his prize for winning an edition of Thank God You’re Here. This is good, because it reminds us of the high esteem in which Micallef is held in his native country, and hopefully he’ll keep getting work. +3 points

HOWEVER: It also means that he’ll be kept too busy to try his luck on UK television, which is a crying shame. –2 points

MIND YOU: The bit where Shaun announces the final round is worth a ‘secret number of points’, then reels off a load of examples as to what that secret number could be (“it could be worth five points, could be worth five thousand points. It could be worth seventeen points. It could be worth three hundred and eleven points. It could be worth three hundred and twelve points”). To move on, an envelope is lowered down on a piece of titanium wire by some 'especially blinded monks', containing the number of points that the round is worth. REDEEMED. +2 points.

GOOD: The final round is a Generation Game (hey, that could be another name for the… oh, you’ve guessed) type affair, with the teams asked to do cross-generational tasks like wallpapering a room…

…or building sandcastles. This might be a bit generic, but it’s helped along by Shaun reading out some relevant ‘facts’ (“In England, by 1806, falsification of copyrighted wallpaper stamps was punishable by death”). Plus, the cackhanded jobs done by the teams also add to the fun, much as in The Generation Game When Jim Davidson Wasn’t Doing It. +2 points

GOOD: Harold Bishop! +3 points

GOOD: No credits at the end, just a message and a URL of where the credits can be found. This prevents annoying broadcasters from ‘credit squeezing’ and doing annoying voiceovers along the lines of “You like Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, so we’re assuming you’ll also like Horne & Corden”, so we are in favour of it. +1 point.

BAD: It’s a Granada show. By the final episode, this is likely to have become an ‘ITV Studios’ show, which isn’t as impressive. –2 points

GOOD: But then we think about how good Granada used to be, in the good old days of Bob Greaves being sexually assaulted by an elephant on Granada Reports. +2 points.

BAD: And then we remember how long ago that was, and how age has withered our once youthful looks. Damn. –1 point.

FINAL SCORE: 17.9995 POINTS

While it’s certainly a bit of a disappointment as a Shaun Micallef vehicle because there’s not really enough of him in it, we’re nothing if not optimists. It’s a moderately entertaining game show in its own right, and on top of that, it’s hosted by Shaun Micallef. That’s a good thing, if you’re asking us. As long as the full series of Inspektor Herring isn’t too far away, that is.

Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation is possibly available to watch online here (we’re not sure, as our install of Firefox hates Ten’s webplayer). Failing that, diwana.org is your best bet.

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"No Pun Intended. Or, Indeed, Delivered." MASSIVE NEWSTOPIA PICTURE SPECIAL

Well, it looks like that is that. Shaun Micallef introduced the most recent midweek portion of antipodean lampoonery with the words: "This is the last Newstopia. Let's make it the best one ever." And if the SBS messageboard is anything to go by, he possibly ain't messing. That really is it.

Having cruelly neglected our campaign to raise Britain's standards by allowing Britons to legally view Newstopia without having to move to The Rubbish Hemisphere, we were dismayed to discover that new hard-hitting Dave show "Argumental" aims to improve our satirical lot by attacking such topically thorny issues as "Simon Cowell, is he a bit of a dick?" and "ooh, that global warming, eh?" The time couldn't possibly be more right for a MASSIVE picture special on why Newstopia simply HAS to be shown on BBC Four, or More4, or Paramount, or Dave, or ITV4, or even Open Access 3. Come on, television controllers of Britain. Don't cock this up. You all sat on your hands long enough to miss out on Mr. Show, DO NOT allow that to happen again.

Here are some, or more specifically twenty-six, reasons why Newstopia would go down a storm with the ABC1 demographic who just maybe would rather see something like Yes, Minister on their screens than "Fuck Off, I'm A Hairy Woman". It's an update so packed we haven't even got time to ruminate on the fact that while the most desirable viewer demographic used to be "ABC1 adults", it's now the "25 to 34 year old idiot" market that is now courted most enthusiastically, because it's a lot easier to do so. On with the jpeg-o-rama!

(Editors note: please note that in the following update, we've deliberately avoided including anything from the Final Ever Newstopia, save for a couple of quick bits, because it really is worth building up to. A pre-emptive thank you for your time.)

Reports from Africa Correspondent, Sir John Gielgud. Despite him being a British actor, and all impersonations of him in the early episodes of Spitting Image being automatically hilarious, it's now left to current affairs based comedies from the colonies to provide us with our RDA of Gielgud-based whimsy. Our own home-grown glances of a newsily sideways nature are restricted to hackneyed comments about Amy Winehouse and cramming in any unused Bush/Brown based snickers while they still can. Oh, and Prescott, yeah? He's, like, fat and that! GUFFAW.

A spoof advert about the Dutch government bailing out financial institution ING which allows Micallef to do his excellent Billy Connolly impersonation previously seen here.

A spoof of a German-language canine-based crime drama that is quite improbably broadcast in Australia? Only swapping Germany for Russia, and dogs for ghost fish? But surely we'd want comedy that merely confirms our own prejudices? We'd rather have a naughty little snicker about Polish people being good at plumbing, wouldn't we? Wouldn't we?

A kitchens firm run by the baddies from Superman II? Yes, please!

An interview with Ariel Sharon that gives Shaun a perfect excuse to do a piece in his New York Jewish accent? Heck, yeah!

A during-credits monologue by Shaun, dressed as Pope Benedict XVI but in character as Doctor Strangelove? All of these questions are wholly rhetorical, because all of these bits are brilliant.

The Bunnings Warehouse price cards have now quite wonderfully spiralled out of control, and now pop up throughout episodes with a cocky impunity.

A post-US Election piece where Shaun speaks to the Democratic Party's Campaign Manager Bryte Viper, desperately keen to find out if Barack Obama likes, or has mentioned, Australia yet, or at least if he laughed at Kevin Rudd's joke in the G20 summit.

A song about Australian current affairs, done through the medium of Shaun's Bob Dylan voice. As with any of these selections you may be pulling unimpressed faces in front of, we can assure you it's the performance that truly makes it worthwhile, and it is only our cackfingered ineptitude that fails to do them due justice. Why, we don't even know if "due justice" is a proper phrase.

Post-show instructions on how to find Newstopia on the SBS website, delivered by a hologram.

A piece about the sentencing of British loyalist paramilitary Michael Stone for breaking into the parliament buildings at Stormont while armed, and his subsequent attempted murder of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Hmm. Don't remember seeing much about that on Have I Got News For You.

A report on the latest computer game madness in London by Newstopia's Youth Correspondent, Sir Alec Guinness, delivered "with all the exuberance of Chaucer". But is it too much of an obsession? Ripped straight from the BBC coverage of the World Of Warcraft thing, then given a wry Newstopian sheen.

A brilliant bit (that we're in the middle of ruining for people who haven't seen it yet) where Shaun is joined live by satellite from Buckingham Palace by himself from fifteen years earlier, in a piece recorded for another show on another network that was never used.

A story about a since-banned invention that will assist people in Britain finding out how pissed they are.

On the anniversary of Waco, an interview with the relentlessly cheery FlavorAid salesman who'd landed the contract to supply David Koresh with a really big order. "It didn't really plan out, because of the... thing."

Alien Kitchen, with Barada Nikto. "So too, the banana, offering at first token resistance, then off it comes, the SLUT!"

Funny captions mask the pain of incalculable levels of human suffering.

Hitler's Diet. Again, these comments are our fault, and the performances really do make etc.

Brilliant attention to detail, such as blurring out the CNN logo on a report about obsolete computers in Ludlow, Maine being buried in a pet cemetary once the local landfill is full, leading to undead technology making it's own way home, in a pretend attempt to cover their news gathering tracks. Although we may well have thought about this too deeply as usual, and they've probably just been refused permission to use the CNN trademark after the piece had been put together.

Repeated references to Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, because she's so lovely. At this point you may wish to make your own joke about Sarah Palin. To us, she's like a one-woman political Tatu.

The spoof "tomorrow's headlines" piece including - majestically - The Beano, which according to Shaun is "giving us it's usual crypto-fascist take on events".

A mad commentator woman with foliage sprouting from her nose peers into shot.

Shaun Micallef finally gets to interview Mrs Tymoshenko, and so tries to impress by dressing up as Robert Smith from The Cure.

And yeah, that really is it for Newstopia, or so it seems. With the cast performing a special death dance as the final (and brilliant) episode closes, we're left to reflect on a marvellous little programme. It operated with what seems to have been a fairly modest budget and a small team of writers (50% of the episodes were penned by a core of just four writers, with another six pensmiths contributing to the remainder), from a network which isn't especially popular in it's own country. Having clocked up thirty (thirty!) episodes over three series (three series!) in around fourteen months (fourteen months!), Newstopia really was way better than it had any right to be.

While The Daily Show has vast warehouses full of writing talent on the payroll, and pads out half of every episode with an interview and Jon Stewart's smooth affability, leaving the scripted minutes culled almost wholly from US-centric affairs, programmes like The Half Hour News Hour and This Hour Has Twenty-Two Minutes proved just how difficult a science this sort of thing is. Newstopia is tightly scripted, to a largely agreeable standard, from start to about thirty seconds after it finishes. And beyond that, it will happily spend one-sixth of it's runtime riffing on a story about elections in Africa or Eastern Europe, or three times that on various stories in the good old U of K. And if nothing else, when there are subjects in the UK news being whimsically tickled by a comedy show on the other side of the planet, yet which remain untouched over here in the land of Jonathan Swift, then something is quite wrong. Something which can only be remedied by putting out Newstopia on UK television. Probably at about 11.30pm in a slot usually reserved for repeats of The New Avengers. We're nothing if not realists.

(Readers voice: "Hang on, wasn't Jonathan Swift Irish?")

Ah, shut up, we're busy watching BBC Three anyway. It's just really refreshing to see a new comedy programme from outside the USA making such a concerted effort. See all those bits we've screenshotted above? Those are mainly from the second half of a single series. No single ideas are merely repeated (or at least, in the few places where they arguably are, as with reference to Yulia Tymoshenko, something new and worthwhile is added each time). If a shot could be better served by driving to a boxing club to record ten seconds of Shaun Micallef talking about someone for a spoof trailer, it was done. If an ominous looking subterranian cavern would better illustrate the delivery of a short segment of narration, it would be visited. They didn't need to. They could have blue-screened it in. But they didn't. They cared. They gave a shit.

It's the same sort of work ethic that made shows like Monty Python that extra little bit of special. The "New Cooker Sketch" didn't have to have all those extras queueing up in a suburban street merely to illicit just one more laugh, but they did it anyway, and it improved the bit tremendously. Do you see? Putting in 60% of extra effort to elicit 20% more enjoyment from the audience is a hugely worthwhile endeavour, and (not-quite literally) fuck any beancounter who says otherwise. In this case, it only adds to the alluring majesty of Newstopia. It's this kind of thinking that elevates a show from being "good" to "great". Furthermore, it's this kind of ethic that spurred us on to make this very update another "took way too long to compile" mini-epic rather than the collection of lazily embedded YouTube links you'll be getting tomorrow.

The Pythons giving a shit, even if they do so over the course of a long, sweeping shot, meaning we can't accurately portray their givedness of said shit in a single YouTube screen grab. Bah.

IN THE KINGDOM OF THE COMEDICALLY BLIND, MICHAEL MOTHERCHUFFING MCINTYRE IS KING

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