Warnie Wobbles: Well, What Were You Expecting?
After what seemed like hours and hours of build-up and anticipation across Australia, the premiere of Warnie cricket pun into our lives. Most slammed it as cricket pun while others cricket pun.
Obviously the show was never going to succeed critically. Even if- in the biggest lighting-strike revelatory moment since Lee Harding awakened this country’s passion for soft-punk- Shane Warne turned out to be a four-syllable spouting toff, he still wouldn’t have been spared the usual cyber-ribbing on Twitter.
But was it really that awful?
Well yes, but only sporadically. In short, it wasn’t short enough. The interviews were probably the best part merely for their unique oddness. Warne is supposedly friends with these people- which seemingly excuses him from asking them anything which might touch upon any semblance of a nerve. However, the use of a clipboard seemed to jar in such a casual conversational setting, just as a jar would seem to clipboard in similar circumstances.
And speaking of award-winning word-play, the constant mention spinning and spinners won’t really do much for Warne in terms of breaking out of his crickety shell.
The questions were of course as shallow as the shallow-end of a pool. The filler segments which consisted of a Billy Birmingham sketch acted out by puppets which I hope cost Nine a fortune to make, were basically racist.
A token female was added somewhere. Also a moustache growing a big man made some vague appearance.
But seriously, what did you expect?
This is CHANNEL NINE we’re talking about here. It is a TALK SHOW hosted by SHANE WARNE. This is a place where TWO AND A HALF MEN is the pinnacle of comedy and where it took over half a year to discover that the title of HEY HEY IT’S SATURDAY might actually make more sense if it aired on a SATURDAY (now to see if they have realised the whole concept made more sense in the 80s).
In this context, Warnie was always going to be bad… The question was just: how bad?
The calibre of the guests actually manages to lift it above Nine’s usual pap and makes Warne largely irrelevant, but if you still need a dose of Vitamin W- something I’ve heard is noticeably lacking somewhere else- you can still bask in the lunar glow of his chompers. At risk of becoming too derisive, I shall just raise these three points for you to mull over: tan, botox, hair.
But by this time next week, we will be well and truly entrenched in the viewing wasteland known as “Summer”, and it will suddenly become a fresh, viable alternative to repeats… well, maybe.
Highlight: The James Packer interview, if only for the fact that Warne almost convinced me for a moment that they were genuine friends.
Lowlight: Almost unanimously agreed upon as being the Billy Birmingham “sketch” with “funny” jokes. Racism disguised as comedy arguably remains the scariest kind as usually its creator and audience are not aware of the cumulative prejudice being established. Whew. Happy viewing.
