Australian comedy is open for business once more

Australian comedy – on television at least – experienced two peaks in popularity. In the late 1980s, with shows like The D-Generation and Big Girls Blouse, and in the late 1990s, thanks mainly to Kath & Kim.

Now, several familiar faces from those original series have united, along with fresh comical talent, to present the very funny Open Slather, to air Sunday nights on Foxtel.

An hilarious hodge-podge of high-brow and slapstick comedy, Open Slather casts a satirical eye across the political and pop cultural landscapes, poking fun at MPs and icons who keep the political and entertainment wheels turning.

Expect to see the talented likes of Magda Szubanski, Gina Riley, Marg Downey and Michael Veitch taking the right piss out of everyone from Gina Rinehart to Hilary Clinton, SBS news readers to the cast of Downton Abbey.

Magda Szubanski does an awesome job of impersonating mining magnate Gina Rinehart, for example, while Gina Riley does her darn-best impression of The Real Housewives Of Melbourne’s Gina Liano.

These Aussie veterans will be joined by 12 rising stars including Ben Gerrard, Ben Lomas, Demi Lardner and Emily Taheny in a show that is sure to provide more Monday water-cooler moments than anything else currently on telly.

Produced by Laura Waters (who gave us Summer Heights High) and Rick McKenna (Kath & Kim), Open Slather provides a platform for political and pop cultural critique that hasn’t been seen since the halcyon days of Aussie comedy.

Says Gina Riley, “There hasn’t been a mainstream sketch comedy in a long time where you could parody what was going on in popular culture and politics. Nobody was parodying Tony Abbott, for example.”

The time is right, agrees Riley, for such icons to be parodied, and Open Slather is the platform to do so on.  Antonino Tati

‘Open Slather’ is on The Comedy Channel, Foxtel, Sundays 7.30pm.