{"id":93158,"date":"2025-08-24T21:20:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T21:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/93158\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T21:20:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T21:20:06","slug":"theres-no-room-to-grow-aunty-donna-on-why-australian-tv-comedy-needs-a-massive-shake-up-australian-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/93158\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018There\u2019s no room to grow\u2019: Aunty Donna on why Australian TV comedy needs a massive shake-up | Australian television"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Broden Kelly, comedy is like an orchid; it needs the perfect conditions to grow. That\u2019s why, five years ago, his comedy trio Aunty Donna established Grouse House<\/a>: a YouTube platform launched to support up-and-coming comedians, who can leverage off Aunty Donna\u2019s existing fanbase rather than getting stuck in the weeds of promotion and distribution.<\/p>\n

Grouse House has been ticking along ever since, hosting absurdist, experimental comedy that shares the Aunty Donna DNA, such as Gocsy\u2019s Classics<\/a> \u2013 a nostalgic TV parody series from Aaron Gocs, sending up retro TV faves like Round the Twist and Heartbreak High; quizshow The Most Upsetting Guessing Game in the World<\/a>, featuring names like Daniel Sloss and Nick Cody; and comedy sci-fi series Descent <\/a>from Millie Holten, Madi Savage and Ella Lawry.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s crunch time. If Aunty Donna and their production house, Haven\u2019t You Done Well<\/a>, want to seriously provide a leg-up for comedians, they have to independently invest in their development rather than relying on grants, which means stumping up production costs and a modest salary for everyone working on their next wave of shows. That\u2019s why much of the proceeds of Aunty Donna\u2019s Drem World Tour<\/a>, which has just kicked off in Hobart, will go toward Grouse House; and it\u2019s why they\u2019ve also added a commercial arm to Haven\u2019t You Done Well, creating sketches, podcasts and creator partnerships for brands.<\/p>\n

In the UK, the BBC has always had a culture of experimentation … The ABC just doesn\u2019t have that culture<\/p>\n

The three members of Aunty Donna \u2013 Kelly, Mark Bonanno and Zachary Ruane \u2013 are talking to Guardian Australia at their HQ in Brunswick, Melbourne, in a meeting room filled with lollies and coloured Post-It notes. Since forming in 2011, their success has spanned tours, TV shows and viral videos. Netflix US commissioned a series, the Big Ol\u2019 House of Fun<\/a>, in 2020, as did the ABC in 2023 (Aunty Donna\u2019s Coffee Cafe<\/a>), but their focus now is on forging a new model.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could feel the writing was on the wall with network comedy in Australia,\u201d says Kelly. \u201cThere are two that do it \u2013 10 and ABC2 \u2013 but it\u2019s Lord-of-the-Rings-style odyssey shit to get commissioned. Our experience is that when we were given the green light to either go make a pilot or a proof of concept, it needed to be everything to everyone, and we\u2019d receive heavy rounds of notes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aunty Donna\u2019s Coffee Cafe, the trio\u2019s show on the ABC. Photograph: ABC<\/p>\n

Aunty Donna\u2019s relationship with the ABC started with the network\u2019s Fresh Blood initiative in 2014, when they were selected to create sketches for ABC iview. One sketch, Bikie Wars<\/a>, garnered 1.5m views on YouTube and a pilot was commissioned, but not a series (it is now on 4m). That\u2019s one of the main problems in their view: networks will often take a punt at the beginning, but there\u2019s little long-term nurturing or risk-taking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the UK, the BBC has always had a culture of experimentation,\u201d says Bonanno. \u201cThe Mighty Boosh got three seasons; they got to play. The ABC just doesn\u2019t have that culture. It did in the 90s and even the early 00s, then it became super safe. In my dream scenario, the ABC is a playground \u2013 and it should be, because they\u2019re not having to satisfy advertisers.\u201d<\/p>\n

We meet a week after the Logie awards, at which the ABC had a strong night<\/a> \u2013 but Aunty Donna have something to say about awards, too. \u201cWith the Oscars, if you win best director or best picture, you can have a career because there\u2019s an industry there to support it,\u201d says Bonanno. \u201cWhat frustrates me about the Logies, the Awgies and Aactas is we give these awards out, but then what? There\u2019s no room to grow. I won an Awgie for sitcom writing, and it did less for my career than before I had one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023, the ABC screened the six-part series Aunty Donna\u2019s Coffee Cafe, but the overall viewing numbers were eclipsed by one real estate sketch<\/a>, shot over a few hours for $500, which Aunty Donna uploaded to YouTube.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to forget what 14-year-old you would want for your career, because all we wanted was an ABC2 show,\u201d says Kelly. \u201cBy the time we got one, we put it out on a platform that was inept and did a bad job of promoting it.\u201d (The ABC did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s request for comment.)<\/p>\n

Ruane, Kelly and Bonanno with Kia Stevens on Aunty Donna\u2019s Big Ol\u2019 House of Fun, their show with Netflix. Photograph: Adam Rose\/Netflix<\/p>\n

And so, Aunty Donna aspire to be \u201cplatform agnostic\u201d, or as Bonanno puts it: \u201cNever build your house in someone else\u2019s back yard.\u201d If they had put all their eggs into the YouTube basket, they might have suffered when advertising revenue dropped for many creators<\/a>. If they had focused only on touring, Covid could have been their death knell. \u201cDefining yourself by your means of distribution is a strange thing to do,\u201d says Ruane.<\/p>\n

And even YouTube doesn\u2019t seem as sturdy as it once was. No one\u2019s clear on whether the Australian government\u2019s ban on YouTube accounts for under-16s<\/a>, which kicks in on 10 December, will be effective or enforceable<\/a>. Will young Australian subscribers suddenly disappear from Grouse House\u2019s tally? They\u2019re not too worried. Enough of their audience is over 18, or comes from overseas \u2013 and they\u2019re about to launch their own platform anyway.<\/p>\n

In the next few months, Grouse House will trial a subscription service (hard launching in early 2026), similar to the independent streaming platform Dropout TV, which arose out of CollegeHumor. Most of the content will still be available for free on YouTube, but they\u2019re confident that a percentage of fans will be happy to pay, say, $6 a month for exclusives and a community.<\/p>\n

The top-line goal is to make Australia\u2019s comedy identity as pronounced as it was when they themselves were growing up, glued to Full Frontal, Kath and Kim, Lano and Woodley, and Big Girl\u2019s Blouse.<\/p>\n

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Behind the scenes on the Grouse House show The Most Upsetting Guessing Game (MUGG). Photograph: Grouse House<\/p>\n

\u201cAnytime we tour overseas, people talk about Australian comedy like it\u2019s a genre,\u201d says Kelly. \u201cAustralia has a really interesting, distinct voice. Our biggest exports outside comedy are things like Baz Luhrmann and Mad Max, King Gizzard, Amyl and the Sniffers \u2013 weird, tasteless [or] crazy. The rest of the world knows that about us, but we need to learn that ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March this year, Lee Naimo joined Grouse House as head of creative, from Screen Australia, where he had been instrumental in funding Grouse House\u2019s first series, Hug the Sun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to build out shows that we could take on live tours or move into video games,\u201d Naimo says. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to get that brand recognition. Like when you see something that\u2019s from Adult Swim, you know exactly what you\u2019re going to get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grouse House does pay the talent it nurtures (\u201cnot enough to quit your day job,\u201d Naimo warns), but the current focus is on small-budget \u201cshiny-floor\u201d productions: gameshows, improv and interview shows, rather than long-form scripted shows with big crews.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Demi Lardner\u2019s new game show with Grouse House, titled So You Wanna Win a P*nis Pump (SYWWAPP).<\/p>\n

One such shiny-floor show is Demi Lardner\u2019s newly launched So You Wanna Win a P*nis Pump? (SYWWAPP), described as \u201cwhat happens if you leave Taskmaster and Game Changer too close to the heater and they melt\u201d. The first four-episode season was recorded over two days, with guests including US comedy stalwart Paul F Tompkins as well as locals Tom Cardy and Becky Lucas.<\/p>\n

They trust me completely and I trust them. They\u2019re a lot more willing to take risksComedian Greg Larsen on Grouse House<\/p>\n

Grouse House provided financial and moral support, Lardner tells Guardian Australia, allowing her to take the show from her Twitch channel to a much larger audience. She\u2019s frustrated that TV networks tend to stick to the same faces: \u201cWe\u2019re also working very hard. We\u2019ve been provably successful, and we have a following.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in September, Grouse House will host six pilot episodes from Greg Larsen<\/a> \u2013 a project that can itself be read as commentary on the importance of pilots in Australia. They range from an interview show where he and guest comedian Michelle Brasier play video games and talk about trauma, to a show called Mark Bonanno Shows His Anus. Grouse House is putting \u201ctime, effort and money\u201d into getting projects up, Larsen says. \u201cThey trust me completely, and I trust them. They\u2019re a lot more willing to take risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aunty Donna\u2019s agility will probably keep them safe amid shifting landscapes. Kelly attributes their nimbleness to the fact that they never became household names. \u201cOur secret recipe is that we were never actually that big,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were big enough to sustain, but we never blew up. I was talking to someone who was very famous in comedy in their mid-20s, and he said every week he worries about being irrelevant. And we\u2019ve genuinely never felt that. We\u2019ve seen enough ebbs and flows to know that it comes and goes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Broden Kelly, comedy is like an orchid; it needs the perfect conditions to grow. That\u2019s why,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-93158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}