★★★★★ 0/5

Genevieve is all Front on Planet Earth

It was Genevieve Morris and her hilarious celebrity interview with Ruby Rose who stole the first episode of Ben Elton's new show.

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If anybody could be said to have stolen the show at Ben Elton Live from Planet Earth last night it was Genevieve Morris and her hilarious celebrity interview with Ruby Rose.

Morris (Comedy Inc., City Homicide) is arguably best known to viewers for her ‘Barbara from Bankworld’ advertisements. But she has a long history in comedy characters, dating back to her teens, and an extensive career in improvisation.

Last night playing celebrity interviewer ‘Elaine Front’ she had Rose in fits of laughter, questioning everything from being a ‘Celesbian’ to whether she played Johnny Farnham in her DJ sets.

At Docklands Studios last night audiences didn’t know what to expect from Nine’s new comedy show. TV Tonight was there as RocKwiz’s Brian Nankervis worked the crowd as warm-up man.

Ahead of the late start (“Clarkson’s run late,” he joked) Elton encouraged everyone to laugh if they felt in the mood.

“We can’t hear a smile,” he said.

He was especially proud of his ensemble team, some of whom were undertaking their first professional gig.

As the sketches he has written played out, Elton watched on from the sidelines, readying for his next stand-up segment. Just getting the show to run smoothly was one hurdle, making people laugh was the next.

The mood in the venue was on side with the host, but as anyone in the biz knows, at home it can be a different story. Last night Twitter users were savaging the show.

Today Nine execs will get their first look at ratings for the ambitious show.

TV Tonight understands it has a guarantee of four episodes with a possible extension to six.

36 Responses

  2. Lets be honest ok. to try and make your audience laugh theres obviously something wrong there.. Your audience needs to laugh by themselves its an automatic reaction..
    Ben gave it a try and thats all he can do.

    I know there is people on here who dont like Hey Hey and thats fine i respect your opinion

    But .. i can tell you this.. at least Hey Hey’s Audience in the Studio’s of GTV 9 always went crazy in laughter and excitement.

  4. I am a huge fan of Ben Elton but this show needs another joke. It is already wearing awfully thin on sex and bum jokes. Black Adder showed that Ben has a wide range, or maybe that was all Rowan Atkinson, and Ben Elton only contributed the sex jokes.
    Ben’s been living in Australia for a while now. Perhaps he hasnt noticed that we like a bit more subtlety than a sledgehammer on the bonce from an over-actor. This show has all the sublety of Julian Clary but without much of the wit.

    This show was the footy show without any football. I kept waiting for some big athlete to appear in drag. . (That didnt even make me laugh when I was a schoolboy)

  5. David, I was in the audience there last night for the show.
    Agree with your comments that the audience was on Ben’s side, but the show itself wasn’t funny.
    There were flashes of humour (Elaine Front) and flashes of beauty (Ruby Rose) but apart from that, it was an hour of smutty TV.

    As Ben himself said, it is good to see Australian comedy live on television, but this just looked like a poor cross between Comedy Inc and Saturday Night Live.

    Time for Hey Hey to step up?

  6. Ben Elton Live From Planet Genitalia Jokes
    I didn’t mind it as much as others here seemed to – but less of the breast, genital, poo jokes would be good.
    Keep the fart jokes though – we mightn’t all admit it – but they are funny!

  7. I’m a fan of Elton’s from way back but I couldn’t stomach more than 40 minutes of this tosh. I agree with the commenters above who said it felt like Comedy Company/mid-80’s flashback. To me it was on par with the woeful return of Hey Hey – all the jokes are old and flat – like Elton himself. I won’t be watching next week.

  8. How many vagina references needed to be made – did they seriously need to resort to that to get a laugh. The Ruby Rose interview was possibly the only highlight. Girl Flat was absolutely horrible and it was at that point I switched off.

    What made me even more angry was realising watching that garbage made me miss Californication which is saying something.

  9. If they instigated a Q&A style Twitter feed on screen this show could just work. I was in fits of laughter as people tore it to shreds.
    I can’t imagine this will be beaten for Worst Show Of The Year title.

  10. I watched a bit of this last night and agree with you David. Genevieve Morris was a hoot! Ruby Rose was a great sport and I had a particularly good chuckle at her intimating that a few of her ex girlfriends resembled John Farnham…

    The rest of the show was a bit hit and miss, although I will admit to having a few chuckles at “Girl Flat”.

  12. I think the show was ok, but for me there were too many rude/crude/sexual jokes. I’m 30 and i was watching it with my parents and i was uncomfortable…. i can only imagine what my parents thought.
    The highlight was the Ruby Rose interview but the rest was turn offable.

  13. I was unfortunate to skip to Nine and leave it on long enough to see the Lady Gaga, Beyonce sketch. It was woeful. If this is what the rest of the show’s like, don’t expect it to last long.

  14. Gee the warm up guy must have been good because the show that went to air certainly wasn’t.
    Morris was probably the best character but constantly beating on about Rose’s sexuality was becomming tiresome, although it must besaid it appears that this is about the only string to Rose’s bow.
    Was looking forward to McCarthy but his character was appalling, stick to the wonderful impersonations you do.
    Girl Flat was bearable but they have used up all; their jokes in the first week and if the show is meant to be so edgy light the cigarette or don’t have it dangly from Winehouse’s mouth for several minutes, maybe a crack pipe or a couple of lines would have been more realistic.
    The remainder of sketches were awful, even Arj Barker seemed off his game.
    As for Elton, never fancied his smug delivery but his writing can sometimes be brilliant, didn’t see it last night.

  15. More misses than hits. Most of the character were over-played and extremely annoying (the school girls; snobby couple; American sex guru). Usually it takes a while for that to happen, but it doesn’t look good when it occurs immediately.

    I agree that Morris was one of the better skits, but she did lose it a bit when forced to adlib. Plus, is Ruby Rose the best guest they could find? And what happened to the guest taking part in sketches? I’d hardly describe sitting there giggling as being part of the sketch.

    Elton’s stand-ups were the highlight, but by the end of the never-seeming-to-end hour, it was all wearing a bit thin. Even Arj Barker looked like he wanted to be elsewhere.

    I can’t beleive Elton wrote the whole show himself (he was the only one credited). Much of it seemed left over bits from Comedy Inc. It was pretty obvious what he wrote (his stand-up; Girls Flat; Elaine Front). If he did write the rest, then he needs some help.

    Maybe they also need something to break up the “comedy skits”. A comedy cabaret act of some sort, not some scantily clad bint miming to her latest hit.

    Despite being an Elton fan, I can’t see this show lasting. Usually the first episode of a live show has the best material of the season. The demands of live tv then means that ideas soon run out. And if it’s the same characters every week, my patience will run out before the first ad break next week.

  16. Yes, it was ambitious.
    Yes, some of the characters were cleverly conceived.
    But, yet again, the show was let down by inconsistent quality of writing and cheap production. Many of the sketches went way longer than the quality of writing could support – the only way this format could work is if each sketch is short and sharp and thus if you hate a sketch, there’s another one coming up quickly to take its place. Sketches like the excruciating Pop Star House went on way too long (whether you liked it or not)

  18. Terrible, appalling television. A throwback to 1987. I felt like I was watching The Comedy Company re-runs.

    Nine should’ve just given Ben Elton a half-hour stand up show, with Elaine Front thrown in for good measure. There’s not enough good material to pad out to an hour.

  20. Here’s how it can work. It had potential. Get rid of the sketches, have more of Ben’s standup. Make it like a tonight show. Guest interviews with Genevieve Front worked, Arj worked, Girl Flat bombed as did most of the sketches. It was cringeworthy. I felt sorry for Ben, he’s such a talented comedian but this was Let Loose Live hosted by Ben Elton.

  22. Like a drowning man grasping for a straw so I enthusiastically went after this very rare thing – the Australian television comedy program.

    Overall, it was not too bad. I think it was a mistake for Elton to do three lengthy monologues – one as the opener would have sufficed with him then doing intros for the other performers.

    Most of the short sketches were quite funny, especially the take on Nigella Lawson and the ‘female’ body builder. I think brevity is the best virtue here. The things that did not work for me (the excruciating and unending Ruby Rose interview and the female pop stars sitcom) gave the show unfortunate longeurs.

    However, like the extraordinary Let Loose Live (sadly cancelled after two episodes but well remembered by a lot of people) this has potential. If they can keep up the speed of the program and not repeat too many characters and scenarios then this could be something really special.

  23. It was pretty bad, with a rehash of characters we’ve seen before. Not five minutes in and I was having Kylie Mole flashbacks, others have mentioned characters that were reminiscent of others from that era.

    By the time it hit ‘fat chef’ it had to go and I switched off.

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