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3 new comedies stitch up ABC funding

Three comedy projects that were developed under a Film Victoria / ABC TV comedy initiative will receive further funding from the ABC.

Three comedy projects that were developed under a Film Victoria/ABC TV comedy initiative STITCH will receive funding from the ABC.

The projects were selected from more than 200 applicants and rewarded with a three-day workshop last year
with comedy writing mentoring from Steve Kaplan (whose graduates have worked on Sex and the City, Ugly Betty, Big Love and The Daily Show) and insight from Andrew Knight (Full Frontal, Tripping Over, SeaChange) and and Mike Bullen (Cold Feet).

The three projects are:

Next of Kin – Josh Thomas (Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation), and Todd Abbott (producer), a comedy about a boy who would like to be an adult and do adult things, like moving out and sleeping with girls. But his mum has other ideas.

Bruce – Warwick Holt, Mat Blackwell (Good News Week ), Jason Byrne (producer), and Tony Rogers (director), a gritty black comedy about life in an ordinary Aussie share-house, that just happens to be a convict tent in 1788.

TwentySomething – Josh Schmidt (writer/performer), and Jess Harris (writer/performer), a comedy series about best mates, Jess and Josh, who never went to uni, never had a clear talent and never really had a drive to grow up.

The teams now get the opportunity to develop their projects further and get them ready for potential production.

Film Victorias CEO, Sandra Sdraulig, said, “Film Victoria is delighted with the results of the first STITCH workshop, which gave our local producers and writers an opportunity to hone the tricky craft of scriptwriting under the guidance of industry experts.”

7 Responses

  1. Anyone know if the STITCH initiative is even running this year? The announcement of last year’s was well and truly made by May. Hmmm. Obviously a raging success then.

  2. I’ve seen the first series of TwentySomething – it was a 6x30m shown on Channel 31 a few years ago. It was gold: funny, vital, real and compelling. The character of “Jess” in particular was like no other woman you get to see on Australian TV. She was hilarious, appalling, unkind, loyal and full of tough love … like women you actually know rather than the one-dimensional clones often shown on screen. The series needed a lot of tightening and was done for very little money (they often wore lapel mics) and I can’t wait to see what they can do now that they’ve been given twenty bucks. Looking forward to it.

  3. Problem I find is, i think they are lazy uninspired premises.

    S**t I even wrote a script about being in my mid 20s living at home, hanging out with friends just for fun. All being incompetent lazy people with annoying parents, just kind of failing and bumming around through life getting into mischief screwed over by own personal issues.

    It’s the default idea for a guy in his 20s trying to think of something. Everyone thinks they’ll add a great larry david take on it.

    So that’s idea and idea 2 really, except one has a more over bearing parents element.

    The middle ones the same thing but in a share house with the crazy twist of being set in the past. That would be so hard to pull off, they’d have to be creative geniuses to pull it off. So it’s a lazy writers idea who lives or lived in a share house in his 20s.

    People who want to be writers but don’t have talent, people like me, the first thing that comes to mind is something based on your own experience not getting much further beyond the concept besides this very basic idea shows a real lack of imagination and so there for I have little hope for these shows.

    1. Execution is everything, not a few sentences here. There are people behind these projects who have put in many years of work and have beaten 200 others under industry scrutiny for this opportunity. Those who are quick to criticise might like to submit their ideas to the next Stitch workshop or a similar one in their state. We should be encouraging writers and hard work, not making rash judgements based on a few sentences.

  4. I dispute those premises and swap them for my own…

    premise one has some potential conflict and ‘smother love’ that could work for the characters. The other two sound like there’s nothing at stake.

    Please, when you’re writing this, give us something to care about, to make us come back each week.

  5. It’s great to see new shows being made. I understand that Josh Thomas is Australian born and lived in the UK for a short time. Would someone please get him a dialect coach and knock out that distracting accent that he has.

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