Category: TV Shows

Shaun on his characters

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While at a recent recording night, Shaun was asked about which of his old Full Frontal characters might also make a return, on the back of Nobby Doldrums being in the Vox Pops of Mad as Hell. As far as I can recall, here was some of his comments:

Milo Kerrigan, of course made a few appearances on TAYG, but Shaun recalls that a senior person at Channel Ten did say something to the effect of “he doesn’t really work, we can’t really understand him. It would be better if he could be understood.” And so Milo stopped making appearances.

Fabio – age was Shaun’s main reason for not resurrecting him, but did indicate they once planned to bring him back a few years ago. He would have been living in Rosebud and be known as the “most beautiful man… in these pants.”

David McGahan – Shaun feels that this character really got merged into the TV personas he’s portrayed as “himself”. Besides, Gary (McCaffrie) would probably put a stop to any re-appearance – as he did during the P(r)ogram(me).

But he certainly still gave some great impressions of Billy Connolly, Michael Cane and Jimmy Stewart.

More seriously, he even commented: “Hidden away on SBS, with Newstopia, I got to play Kofi Anan, and no-one complained. It was beautiful makeup, I would have defied you to [guess it wasn’t me], in fact I went home wearing it…. If you’re playing a person, and you can play that person, I think that’s OK. But if you’re playing just a character of ethnicity, and that’s the joke, I don’t know if that’s defensible.”

Recap: Shaun hosts Rage, June 9th 2012

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Shaun likened hosting Rage to plugging his MP3 player directly into the camera, and although he didn’t have the Rage theme, they dug it up anyway.

THE RAMONES Pet Sematary – Shaun noted that Stephen King was a huge fan of The Ramones, so exercised his creative control to ensure their song was included in the movie version of Pet Sematary.

THE CLASH London Calling
THE ROLLING STONES Undercover Of The Night

DEVO Freedom Of Choice – The brothers from Devo are now responsible for the music of Rugrats, but this song from them contains some hidden philospohy, so get your notes – there will be a quiz!

YELLO Oh Yeah
THE B-52S Rock Lobster
IGGY POP and KATE PIERSON Candy

DUCK SAUCE Barbra Streisand – He can’t explain his fascination with this song, but it was (obviously) used during TAYG, and the production company ended up paying over $50k of royalities – which was ok, because it was commercial television. On the ABC, you get paid in used stamps.

DAFT PUNK Da Funk
THE DOORS Hello, I Love You (Adam Freeland remix)
THE CURE In Between Days
ELVIS COSTELLO Pump It Up
ELVIS vs JXL A Little Less Conversation
EDWYN COLLINS A Girl Like You

DURAN DURAN A View To A Kill – In Shaun’s opinion, A View To A Kill was the last best James Bond film, not least because of the music. He just hopes that the line “My name’s Bon, Simon Le Bon” is kept at the end of the clip. (It was.)

A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS I Ran
DEAD OR ALIVE You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)
BILLY IDOL White Wedding

YES Owner Of A Lonely Heart – The LP cover is quite boring, and so is the rest of the album according to Shaun – he bought it based on the single, and assumes the rest of the album was produced by someone else. The orchestral jabs are good though.

THE CARS Hello Again
EURYTHMICS Would I Lie To You?
HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS The Power Of Love

BILL WYMAN Je Suis Un Rock Star – Shaun has so many songs he would love to play, including the Rolling Stones, so for a perverse reason he chose Bill Wyman’s solo song.

PSEUDO ECHO Funky Town
NEW ORDER Blue Monday
MI-SEX Computer Games
LEFTFIELD/LYDON Open Up
SEX PISTOLS Pretty Vacant
THE PRETENDERS Message Of Love
MIDNIGHT OIL U.S. Forces
THE JAM A Town Called Malice
THE STYLE COUNCIL Walls Come Tumbling Down
THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES The Impression That I Get
TOM JONES Sexbomb

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN Heart Attack – Shaun’s a little embarrassed he bought Olivia’s best of – forgive him? He decided on this rather than Physical, seems like a natural progression.

MARILYN Calling Your Name
PLASTIC BERTRAND Ca Plane Pour Moi
TOTO COELO I Eat Cannibals
HAYSI FANTAYZEE Shiny Shiny

PETER GABRIEL Shock The Monkey – There was a movie called “Project X” about Matthew Broderick rescuing a monkey from the space program, and this song was used in the opening credits. Shaun warns that the original film clip was “very weird” just like Peter, and Genesis was better off without him.

ART OF NOISE Dragnet
A-HA The Living Daylights
ENYA Orinoco Flow
EUROGLIDERS Heaven (Must Be There)
SADE Smooth Operator

SKIPPING GIRL VINEGAR Chase The Sun – Shaun walked past the edit suite just the other week while the band was putting this together, commented how good it was and promised to put it on Rage when he programmed it…

SPLIT ENZ Message To My Girl
THE STRANGLERS Golden Brown
KATE BUSH Babooshka
THE BANGLES Walk Like An Egyptian
STEPPENWOLF Born To Be Wild
METALLICA Enter Sandman
NINE INCH NAILS Closer
CLIFF RICHARD The Millennium Prayer
ELTON JOHN I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues

There was also a sneaky 1 hour preview on Saturday morning (which I missed), but the following songs were played which weren’t repeated that night:

DEPECHE MODE Just Can’t Get Enough
FATBOY SLIM Weapon Of Choice
FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS She Drives Me Crazy
ABC Poison Arrow
DAVID BOWIE Fashion
KASABIAN Fire

How many songs can you link to Shaun’s previous work?

Shaun to host Rage

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Will wonders never cease? In another ABC cross-over, Shaun is to guest program music video show Rage next Saturday night, a role usually filled by fellow musicians.

They must have been impressed with Shaun’s songs on ‘His Generation’ or his opinion on ‘We Built This City (on Rock and Roll)’ – “a flimsy construction method if ever I heard one”. Perhaps we’ll get some Sade? Or Duck Sauce?

It starts 11:25pm this Saturday night – the playlists will be posted on the Rage website on Friday.

Preview of Mad As Hell

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I was privileged to be at the taping of the first ever episode of Mad As Hell, and am pleased to share some details – in summary, it was very funny, clever and exceeded all expectations.

Spoilers ahead!

After arriving at the ABC Studios in Gordon Street (aka. ‘the dream factory’), we waited outside, before waiting in the canteen, before finally making it to the studio. We got seats in the front row!

Here’s the set:

Shaun looked great in a three-piece suit and red tie, throwing in his glasses for good measure. (Sorry I didn’t get any other photos)

The show is delivered a little bit in the style of Newstopia, throwing to pre-recorded topical news pieces which were more in the style of a skit than Newstopia. He also interviewed the cast as different characters. But Shaun seemed more personal than in his SBS show, perhaps the TAYG experience rubbing off on him.

There was the welcome return of the faked ads, including a series about Kevin Rudd in a sitcom about his backbench antics – reminded me of this fantastic sketch from The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) days.

A very different side was an almost straight interview with the author of Putin – The Man Without A Face, which I found truly engrossing. Shaun admitted to us that it was a little bit of a new direction, a bit experimental, so hopefully you get to see it.

It was all shot fairly sequentially, and took just under two hours. A few re-takes, but the crew didn’t muck around. The writing crew was confirmed as almost the same as Newstopia: Gary McCaffrie, Michael Ward, Stephen Hall and Tony Moclair.

The cast was all excellent, each getting about 3-5 minutes screen time.

Shaun was very friendly, and interacted with the audience the most I’ve ever seen. By the end he started to mock Michael Pope, who was again the warm up guy, rolling his eyes with his strange suggestions about the background fish and other things.

A great night, I’m looking forward to seeing the final product on Friday at 8pm. Anyone else who went, feel free to add your favourite moments!

Mr and Mrs Murder announced

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The secret acting role which Shaun discussed in early March has been announced – a TV show titled “Mr and Mrs Murder”. It’s a comedy/drama to appear on Channel 10 later in the year, and Shaun will star along side Kat Stewart.

A clean freak with a heightened sense of justice, and a misfit with an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about everything, married couple Nicola and Charlie run an extreme cleaning business which specialises in crime scenes. Armed with wit, smarts and the invisibility that cleaning brings, the duo solve the crimes the cops can’t in a murder mystery with a smile.

Shaun isn’t writing the show, but it came from an idea he came up with Jason Stephens, and will consult on the script. The writing team will include John Banas, Jonathan Gavin, John Hugginson, Doug MacLeod, Christine Bartlett, Katherine Thomson, Marieke Hardy and Glen Dolman.

It’s possible Shaun agreed to the fourth season of TAYG partly to ensure the pick-up of this project. Which is a good thing, because that gives us plenty of Shaun for the year!

Recap: Shaun on In Gordon Street Tonight

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Appearing on the Season finale of Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight, Shaun was his hillariously rambunctious self.

He gave Adam a bottle of Adelaide water, which was splashed all over the set, tried to take over the show, played an old Roger Explosion clip and sang The Lady is a Tramp, in memory of Tony Bennett, who he believes was beaten to death at the end of the Logies…

Watch it here. See Shaun backstage before/after the show.

Unfortunately, he didn’t share much about Mad As Hell. But it was still pretty good watching.

Shaun in Gordon Street..

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Quite often actually, as Shaun has produced a number of shows at the ABC Studios in Elsternwick. But in this case, he’ll be on the series final of Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight next Wednesday at 8:30pm on ABC.

We expect there to be some talk about Mad as Hell… yippee!

Laid Series 2 starts May 2nd

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Returning for a second season is Laid, a black comedy written by Marieke Hardy and Kirsty Fisher. The focus of the show is Roo, a woman who finds out that all her previous ‘partners’ are dying, one by one, and with her friends, tries to determine why.

Shaun played the character of ‘G Bomb’ (ie. Roo’s gynocologist) in the first series, appearing in two episodes, and is back for the second season. How often he’ll appear, we’re not sure, but Kirsty assures us 4.75 times – or thereabouts.

Laid Series 2 starts May 2nd at 9pm.