The Rise of Interactive Comedy and the Future of Australian Broadcast TV
Picture this: after a long day, you settle down to enjoy some light-hearted sketch comedy. Instead, you’re thrown into an interactive choose-your-own-adventure game. You make a choice — and it’s the wrong one. Now you’re stuck watching a 40-minute real-time walk around Melbourne. This is Bandersketch, the latest interactive sketch from the Australian comedy trio Aunty Donna.
Bandersketch is an absurd take on Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018), and it’s now streaming on Aunty Donna’s new Australian comedy streaming platform, Grouse House TV. The platform describes itself as a home for “cooked” Australian comedy, marking the next step in the company’s mission to create a launchpad for emerging and alternative comedians.
Gatekeeping in Australian TV Comedy
In a landscape where the future of broadcast TV is uncertain, Australian broadcast comedy has become paralysed by an aversion to risk. Familiar faces and imported formats dominate our screens. Local “drama” hours — the industry’s catch-all classification for scripted narrative content, including comedy — have fallen by 55% since their early 2000s peak. Adult scripted output on Australian broadcast TV fell from 520 hours in 1999 to 116 in 2023.
The decline of long-running broadcast staples has removed crucial training grounds for early-career practitioners to hone their craft. Australian comedians have no choice but to build their own stages.
Broden Kelly of Aunty Donna describes getting a show commissioned as an exhausting “Lord-of-the-Rings-style odyssey.” And that’s from someone who has done it twice, with Aunty Donna making shows for Netflix and the ABC.
In previous research, head writer Sam Lingham said working with global streaming platforms promises creators a more hands-off, creatively liberating environment compared to the risk-averse structures of Australian broadcasters. Yet neither pathway guarantees career sustainability; neither the Netflix nor ABC shows received second seasons.
When emerging comedians have no access to sustainable careers, the cultural deficit is inherited by the next generation of audiences and creators.
The Dropout Blueprint and Genre Immersion
Aunty Donna first amassed a global fanbase on YouTube. But they warn the platform remains a fundamentally unstable environment. Creators who rely on video-sharing platforms are vulnerable to black-box algorithms and unpredictable ad revenues.
Grouse House TV adopts the blueprint of independent United States subscription services such as Dropout and the HEI Network. These platforms have established a successful model of hyper-specific, community-driven comedy. With this approach, Grouse House TV aims to fund boundary-pushing art on its own terms.
At launch, the catalogue is a diverse mix of scripted and improvised shows featuring established and emerging comedians including Frankie McNair, Lena Moon, Ashley Apap, Jordan Barr and Alistair Baldwin. Instead of prioritising algorithmically personalised access to a wide catalogue of content, genre-specific services curate “deep cuts” for genre enthusiasts.
Interactive features such as Bandersketch extend the genre experience beyond show content, immersing viewers within — and sometimes beyond — the platform interface. At the service’s public launch in April, fans could participate in a live craft-along with Madi and Isaac, hosts of the show Crafternoon. Or, they could read Greg Larsen’s potty-mouthed tirade at the state of Australian television in Grouse Zone, a limited-edition zine we collaborated on.
As self-described “genre specialists,” Grouse House TV is targeting hardcore fans who want to be immersed in comedy as active participants.
Reclaiming Nostalgia and Generic Experimentation
Independence is not just important to the sustainability of Australian comedy. It also allows creators to push cultural boundaries and reclaim spaces increasingly hijacked by bad actors with toxic political motivations.
Aunty Donna’s career has been sustained through the long-term success of their self-titled podcast, which just celebrated its 10-year anniversary. However, podcast comedy is a fraught cultural space. It is increasingly defined by a “right-wing comedy complex,” with comedians who stoke division, push public debate rightward, and drive young men down misinformation rabbit holes under the guise of comedy.
In his debut solo show Comedy, Aunty Donna’s Zachary Ruane satirised the inanity of the right-wing comedy complex with absurd performance art involving a motion-capture suit and an animated Joe Rogan singing, via Ruane, James Blunt classics.
American comedians Tim Heidecker, Rajat Suresh and Jeremy Levick have similarly skewered the rambling self-importance of the Rogan podcasting sphere through a 12-hour-long parody.
With Grouse House TV, Aunty Donna harnesses nostalgia for pop cultural oddities to foster inclusion through genre experimentation and play. Bandersnatch once carried Netflix’s illusory promises of the TV of tomorrow. Bandersketch shows us how the comedy TV of today offers an alternative path to the future that side-steps major gatekeepers.
