Past Programs
Comedy and Humour - 2007
The Librarians
31/10/2007
Most institutions are ripe for satire, though the humour is often as much based on myth and stereotype as it is on reality. But there's usually enough truth in the fiction to keep the story interesting.
Well the latest candidate for a good old mocking is the glorious institution of the library, with a new series starting tonight on the ABC called The Librarians. The series is set in an inner suburban community library, staffed by an odd mix of the remedial and the nefarious -- and with a head librarian, Frances O'Brien, who's racist, sexually repressed, deeply insecure and an organisational tyrant.
But we're not going to attempt any comparisons with our guest, Victorian State Librarian Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, CEO of the State Library of Victoria.
Anne-Marie speaks to Ramona Koval.
Jon Ronson: Edinburgh International Book Festival
12/09/2007
Journalist, writer and broadcaster Jon Ronson has written several funny books about the world of conspiracy theorists. In Them: Adventures with Extremists and The men who stare at goats, he takes us around jihad training camps, to Ku Klux Klan meetings, and inside American militia groups. Out of the Ordinary is his new book; a collection of pieces from The Guardian charting the rise of more domestic madnesses.
Creating Big Characters
03/08/2007
If you're in the business of writing stories, it's a fair bet that you'll be needing to populate these stories with characters. Sounds easy! You just need to plonk a few people in there -- a couple of cats, a budgie -- not a problem. But who are the people? What colour's the cat? Has the budgie got issues? Now it's starting to get really complicated. Where do you start?
And is it enough to create characters that are perfectly to scale? Without exaggeration, either physically or emotionally? Is an utterly 'true' character actually interesting on the page or the stage or the screen? Does a story in fact demand something different? Something bigger and more dramatic?
At the Byron Bay Writers Festival last Saturday, some creative folk pondered these questions, and so we thought that we could assemble our own focus group to enlighten us.
Stephen Sewell was on that panel in Byron Bay. He's one of our great playwrights and screenwriters, having constructed some very memorable characters for stage and screen. And even if you haven't seen any of Stephen's plays (his 2004 work Myth Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America - A Drama in 30 Scenes is the most awarded play in Australian history), you'd have been hard pressed to miss the AFI Award-winning film The Boys, a story full of violent ordinariness, cast on a terrifying scale.
Mary-Anne Fahey has been well known as a comedian and comedy writer for TV, and of course her character of the chewing gum twirling schoolgirl Kylie Mole is, quite simply, an Australian archetype. And Mary-Anne debuted as a novelist this year with her children's book called I, Nigel Dorking, about an unhappy young boy who escapes his suburban misery by rewriting his own life as the story of a brave knight.
And our third character artisan, writer Shane Maloney, is the man who brought us the scary and squalid world of state politics in the fabulously funny series of mystery books starring the rather inept, but strangely likeable character of Murray Whelan.
Sucked In, by Shane Maloney
13/05/2007
For fans of Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan series, the wait is over. Number six in the series is here. Sucked In. No – that's the title.
It's 1997 in Victoria and the premier of the state is lording it over everyone and everything – standing tall at the opening of a big new casino.
And Murray Whelan himself? The ALP member for Melbourne Upper is enduring the long lonely slog of opposition – and within a page or two of his new adventure, he is indeed sucked in – this time into a mystery about some human remains that have turned up in a dried-up lake.
If you're already addicted to these very funny books, then your new fix has arrived. And if you're new to the Murray Whelan books, why not start here?
Murray Whelan's creator (and winner of the wonderfully named Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel) Shane Maloney joins Michael Gurr for a natter.
Ronnie Corbett's It's Goodnight From Him (review)
07/05/2007
Ronnie Corbett, comedic partner of actor Ronnie Barker, has written a warm, personal memoir of the duo's partnership and friendship during the hugely popular British television show The Two Ronnies. Polash Larsen reviews And It's Goodnight From Him: The Autobiography of the Two Ronnies for The Book Show.
Sucked In, by Shane Maloney
07/05/2007
For fans of Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan series, the wait is over. Number six in the series is here. Sucked In. No – that's the title.
It's 1997 in Victoria and the premier of the state is lording it over everyone and everything – standing tall at the opening of a big new casino.
And Murray Whelan himself? The ALP member for Melbourne Upper is enduring the long lonely slog of opposition – and within a page or two of his new adventure, he is indeed sucked in – this time into a mystery about some human remains that have turned up in a dried-up lake.
If you're already addicted to these very funny books, then your new fix has arrived. And if you're new to the Murray Whelan books, why not start here?
Murray Whelan's creator (and winner of the wonderfully named Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel) Shane Maloney joins Michael Gurr for a natter.
