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Frocked up to dress down

In the first few minutes of Gretel Killeen's hosting of the 51st TV Week Logie Awards she 'died' on stage as part of a cop-show stunt.

gretk1In the first few minutes of Gretel Killeen’s hosting of the 51st TV Week Logie Awards she ‘died’ on stage as part of a cop-show stunt. It was to prove something of a metaphor for the night.

Killeen has been an acclaimed live performer over her Big Brother years, dealing with all manner of technical pressures and unscripted moments. Here, she conceded, a return to hosting, particularly for the Logies, was a daunting task.

The opening gags fell flat, the “shooting stunt” as a segue to the first award was perplexing. A “teen angel” lowering from the ceiling, with Bondi Vet’s Dr. Chris Brown was just downright bizarre. Better results came from her visit to the Ladies Room where Ruby Rose threw in an unexpected line and Carson Kressley added a little zing.

Killeen needed better writers and less focus on frock-changing. Her impromptu chat to Home and Away’s Jordan Rodrigues felt awkward.

The Logies themselves desperately needed some guests who could editorialise. It’s the one night of the year when somebody can take give a room of influential people a bit of a report card. Done with wit and discretion this works with the audience in the room and at home. Denton, Bert, Dame Edna -you were all missed.

Even The (usually funny) Umbilical Brothers seemed to drag, and a moment with Humphrey B. Bear ran out of puff quick smart.

Filmed “campaign” sequences by Charlie Pickering and Michael Chamberlin lifted the mood. Myles Barlow’s Review sequence was even better. Lookout The Chaser

Points also to Dave Hughes, Wil (“Farmer Will Settle For A Root Thanks”) Anderson, Shaun Micallef for their punchy spots and to Ian Smith for showing a good sense of humour in several clips.

But the only moment of history will be left to Annie Lennox, whose accoustic performance clearly kept the room spellbound. A moment that wasn’t TV related, and wasn’t even Australian.

As far as surprising wins on the night, how did Border Security win Most Outstanding Factual over a very strong field? Meanwhile the NRL Footy Show defeated its higher-rating AFL equivalent in Most Popular Sports. And viewers would be unlikely to given Seven’s Beijing Olympics a Logie.

After criticism of its many former hosts, the annual Logies gig shows no signs of dropping its mantle as “the toughest job in television.”

50 Responses

  1. This years logies…

    I thourght they were the best since 2005! In recent years the Logies have been an embaressing represntation of talent in Australia as they only focased on one lame show- Home and away! But this year it was great seeing all the awards shared out nicely and it was great seeing new shows like Packed to the Rafters and Underbelly take home main awards. Even though I kind of wanted Ian Smith to get Gold, (And I belive he was robbed of best actor by that talentless Home and away chap!) I am really glad Rebecca Gibney got it, she definatly deserved to win something after all the nominations she’s had over the years and her performance in Packed to the Rafters was fantastic!

    However it wasn’t all good as Gretle proved to be a crap host, her terrible efforts at trying to interest and engage the audince and her poor atempts at comedy just were cringworthingly bad!

    And I’m sorry but I agree with neon Kitten about Annie Lenox, It wasn’t one of her most favarourable performances. Jessica Mauboy and Natatlie Bassingthwaite were fantastic!

    But I am would never want the Logies to come to an end, call me sad but they are one of the highlights of my year! I love the tackiness of some of the guests and I take most things I see with a pinch of salt!! I realy enjoyed watching it and it was lovely to see all of the industry’s biggest stars and shows come together! It was also a good representation of how much Australian TV has vastly improved since this time last year…

  2. The Logies are TV Week property – anyone who remembers the What’s On Weekly court case knows that. Quite simplt, no TV Week, no Logies. And without the mag who would risk a new TV event?
    I agree that between the viewer and peer voted awards everyone is covered. Is there any real problem with the winners and the awards? I thought it was all pretty fair, what I didn’t like was the telecast itself, which was a cinrge-fest (with a few sparse exceptions – thank you Hughesy and Micallef).
    The non-televised portion – that were held during the show, which is on an hour delay – were genius, Next year the awkward news and sports should also be done this way. Awards for televising the olympics – really? – and covering natural disasters are a real downer.
    What defines an A-list actress? Surely Rebecca Gibney, who stars in a show with almost 2million viewers and has proven to be a big enough to carry a ratings hit on her own previously (Halifax), counts as one.
    Also, the event has been held in a theatre before and was widely considered a disaster. Make no mistake: it is a long, long night and everyone is there to party. The year it was in a theatre most of the seats were filled with seat fillers while the “stars” were propping up the bar.

  3. I was pretty un-enamoured by Gretel’s hosting too – she was OK, but the reception was like televisual tumbleweeds 🙂

    Too many ‘skits’ and relying on comedians like the Umbilical Brothers (who i’ve never found funny). The good things were the pre-recorded bits, and Annie Lennox – always had a soft spot for her.

    By the way, how does a s**t show like “Mark & Sharon”, which aired for a total of about 3 weeks and was completely unfunny even get a nomination ? The show was on in 2008 FFS !

  4. Wil Anderson has apologised to Gretel via Twitter, stating that he thinks she’s great and couldn’t do what she does. He said he was in hot water over his drunken tweets last night.

    I don’t see why people are complaining so much about the quality of the awards presented. The public vote for the popular awards and the industry votes for the outstanding awards, so everyone is represented. The Gold Logie is awarded to the most popular personality on Australian TV (not the most outstanding), so if someone is popular enough to have people spend a heap of money texting or phoning their votes in, then good for them!

    As for the nominations themselves, they were pretty strict this year in that you could only vote once and if you wanted to vote more than once, you’d have to create multiple email accounts, use different IP sessions to send them and spend time filling in every category (partial votes weren’t allowed – you had to vote for every single category) – or you had to fill in multiple forms with different addresses. In this day and age, it would be very easy to see if someone was voting multiple times, since every vote goes into a database with details etc. Aside from TV Week actually insisting on the use of a shortlist for each category, the voting is probably fairer now than it has been for a long time.

  5. I watched “The Brothers Warners” first on ABC2 and then turned over for the Logies – it looked like I didn’t miss much.

    I’ve watched the Logies for years and this one would have to be one of the worst. I watched for about 30 minutes or so – Wil Anderson and Shaun Micallief were the only two good things I saw.

    * Gretel in the Ladies Room was toilet humour and it showed.
    * The announcer got the name of the show wrong when he introduced Kerry O’Brien and said he was from TV Report.
    * What was it with that montage of awards presented earlier in the evening? Were these actually shown or was it something done before the telecast even started? I can understand why 9 didn’t show them – as far as I know no channel 9 shows were nominated in any of the categories. Will this be the beginning of new trend?
    * That Network 10 skit was totally pointless and fell flat.

    Like I said I gave up after 30 minutes or so. Maybe the ABC should host it next year – we might get a better show.

  6. Ways to improve the Logies:

    – Hold it in a theatre, not in a cramped little ballroom. The current setup doesn’t exactly make it seem like a big event.
    – Bring the funny! Australia has plenty of good comedians, get a good one and give them several weeks to script and rehearse the whole thing. There is no way we should settle for the sort of lame skits we got this year.
    – Get rid of TV Week, or alternatively get rid of popular voting for the awards. Particularly the Gold Logie. The current situation is that most of the big awards are decided entirely by the televisual connoisseurs who read TV Week, which makes the whole thing a festival of mediocrity where the latest untalented, white-bread Home & Away hottie and the latest cookie-cutter Seven factual are guaranteed to prevail over shows and actors that display actual skill, talent or craft. It’s embarrassing to watch everything that’s actually at all good get passed over every year. The Emmys largely reward quality, why can’t the Logies?

  7. From the start, let’s remind ourselves that the Logies (for most of it) is just a glorified People’s Choice Awards… the Gold Logie itself is, in a way, an irrelevant award these days, because now it’s a case of “Who’s got the most phone credit”.

    Meanwhile, I think it’s time we got rid of televising the Logies! Maybe they should shoot it and do a 60-minute highlights show, and that’s it.

    It’s an event that is bland, and has its head up its own backside.

    I’m not blaming Gretel for last night – because I don’t think many people can host the Logies and make it entertaining.

    The only time I can see myself watching the Logies again is if Shaun Micallef hosts.

    Australia has no A-List actors or actresses – let’s stop pretending we do.

    It’s not as if Radio broadcasts the ACRA’s… it’s not as if PayTV broadcasts the ASTRA’s. Why must we do this? Is it just because the US does it? Well if that’s the case, the ratings for those sort of awards nights aren’t great for a good reason – it’s not compelling TV.

  8. Weren’t the actors from Days of our Lives supposed to be presenting awards at te Logies? They said they were in Tv week and the newspapers last week. What happened? Nobody seemed to notice, so no great loss really. 😛

  9. The logies suffers from placing industry people at dinner tables with alcohol. In a room that should stick to weddings and corporate functions. Industry folk are not known for being the best audiences, far from it. Even the ARIAs had to get a mosh pit happening to get over all the folk at the tables. Unfortunately, the stage becomes like TV at some dinner tables …. Just something on in the background. Particularly when sitting at round tables.

    Even back when awards show where at the places like the state theatre in sydney, It was always the public that bought the shows to life. I can still hear the shouts of many directors wanting to electrify the seats in the industry seats just to make sure that they were alive. The logies has always lacked that element of the public audience ( the ones that clap, cheer and laugh) . The ones that genuinely want to be there to see the show. Not folk that are there to represent or fill a company seat at the company table. Or need quality networking time. A show that doesn’t work live will never translate to a TV audience as exciting and fun.

    I understand that many are there for the right reasons, but while the room is filled a lot of pissed diners that don’t care , I don’t think it has a chance of ever being a great show, regardless of who hosts it. I also believe that Crown Ballroom is possibly the worst venue for it. It needs to get out of that little ballroom and grew with the industry.

  10. Gretel was fantastic … the problem is that she is far more intelligent in her comments and humour than the majority of idiots in the room!
    They are mostly only there for the free grog anyway … take away the food and drink and put then in rows like the Oscars … that will fix it!
    Jack!

  11. Yes Gretal struggled, however, in an environment where apparently the live audience couldn’t hear her and talked non-stop while she was hosting, it’s no wonder she flopped. Imagine the reaction if the audience at the Oscars sat there talking at the top of their voices doing the broadcast? As for WIl Anderson, give him the presenters job next year and lets see how well he goes.

  12. Gretel wasn’t that bad – I must say that the crowd was quite hostile – nobody laughed or even seemed to notice that there was a host or any of the presenters. Clearly Gretel felt she had to literally go in to the audience to remind the audience that they weren’t just there to eat and get pissed. On the Today Show Karl and Lisa said that they couldn’t even hear her talking, so that’s hardly her fault.

  13. Next year get Hamish and Andy or Bert and Rove to host. I watch Rove and Bert and they were both funny. Or Hamish/Andy are also funny. For music performance stopping getting artist from overseas to sing, use Kylie who has won Logies Awards at least she know about awards. Get Aussie artists or bands to sings. This year’s show was boring, long and not entertaining at all. It was awful.

  14. Annie Lennox was fantastic – but I really felt like slapping the director every time he cut to some moronic TV type in the audience singing along – I wanted to watch Annie sing, not Kerrie-Anne Kennerley!!!

    As for the rest of it – why do the writers feel they need to try so hard – get a decent host who can ad-lib a little, and the whole presentation would become much more relaxed.

    Speaking of ad-lib (or lack of it) – what was with many of the presenters reading hand-held cue cards instead of the autocue? – very odd!!!

  15. Those calling for an end to the Logies, prepare to be disappointed. The industry is hardly likely to scrap a show that usually wins its timeslot each year, pulls in around 1.5m+ viewers for two separate shows and acknowledges the popularity and efforts of one of the biggest industries we have. Love it or hate it, the fact is that just about every one of you watched it last night and have an opinion on it. While Gretel is being trashed (unfairly – even Ruby Rose tweeted that the crowd was being way too harsh on her), the extra publicity given to the show is invaluable. It wouldn’t be a Logies show if the host wasn’t being torn to shreds, because everyone thinks someone else will do it better, no matter who they are.

  16. I find it hard to believe that some people didn’t enjoy Annie Lennox…she was at her sensational best and showed that all the glitz and glamour is no comparison to shear raw talent. Just Annie and a piano easily created the highlight of the entire night.

    As for the perfect host…Shaun Micallef fits the bill perfectly. The Logies needs a presenter who clearly realises the insignificance of the whole night and is prepared to take the piss out of everyone and everything. I fear that the networks are too scared to allow their so called ‘stars’ to be mocked by such an intelligent comedian.

    Vote 1 – Shaun Micallef – Logies 2010

  17. I think Richard Wilkins summed up last night’s show really well this morning on the Today show when he said that the 51st Logie Awards certainly won’t be in the top 50.

  18. The whole show was just cringeworthy – From the moment Gretel came out (and I actually like her) to the last yawn inspring moment when Gibney was announced the winner I couldn’t find one thing to like about it – apart from Dave Hughes giving everyone a serve.

    The whole Loge thing has just become an embarrasment – its a confusing, unnecessry awards night that could be cut back to 90 minutes if it didn’t have all the ridiculous categories and ‘d’ list wannabes who are amongst the nominees – some of them I’ve never even seen or heard before.

    And why the need for a host – open the show with a big opening number – use the Nine voice over guy to introduce the Award presenters and sprinkle the show with a few cleaver comedians. It would much better and far less of a clunky humiliating yawn.

    The jokes were just so bad and the skits even worse – and I’m sorry but even in an economic downturn we can do a lot better!

    And what was with Gretel’s hair – was she doing a free promo for Star Trek and why all the secrecy – maybe because she knew it looked so bad!

    Please next year either call it quits and just forget it all together or completely revamp the whole format and then we could have something to celebrate!

  19. It just gets worse year after year, and the posing on the red carpet by z listers is laughable. I so wish Australian TV would get a big shake up it needs it. Some really good shows didn’t even get a nom.

    Why not be done with it and let Kyle sandelanders or what ever his name is host next year then they might axe it! LOL

  20. Didn’t anyone else hear Underbelly A Tale of Two Titties when Matthew Newton and that fat guy were introduced? I swear thats what i heard, and the crowd were laughing.

  21. sorry david you’re right i have heard that it just slipped my mind. i do withdraw that criticism but still cannot support the interview with the ‘cast’ of homerun.

    @Jed- are you joking ‘Noni Hazlehurst and Aaron Pederson should have got acting noms.’ i love C-Ho and was one of the first to kick up a stink at the lack of a nom but these to aren’t the ones who deserve to be up there. they are both briliant actors yes but compared to the rest of the excelent cast the are wooden. although Noni did prove herself at the end of the last seson but that is for next years logies not these ones.

    also i don’t know why everyone is cricising rove and rachel griffiths part it was one of the things that actually worked the bounced off each other well and were genuine. i think she is very underated and last night proved herself.

    @Andrew B – those days are long gone and with the way they (9) treat their audience at the moment i feel as though they will never come back-and at least unlike the last couple of years it hasn’t all been about home and away.

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