Caffeinated Clint
”Bargearse” and ”The Olden Days” are both still piss funny, and present Tony Martin, Mick Molloy and Santo Cilauro (who you’ll remember from ”The Panel”) at their comical best.
Tony Martin, Mick Molloy, Lucky Grills, John Waters
A few years back I was lucky enough to interview Tony Martin, and we got onto the subject of ”Bargearse” and ”The Olden Days” – specifically when they might be appearing on DVD. “That’s a bit of a sore point for me,” he said, going on to explain that he had been lobbying the ABC for years to bring them out. The suits didn’t think they would sell, even though their release on VHS set new sales records for ABC videos.
Well, Aunty has finally listened to sense and here they are – both on the one DVD, no less. For those who don’t know, ”Bargearse” and ”The Olden Days” were side projects put together by The D-Generation, a group of Melbourne uni students who put together a weekly comedy show on a shoestring. They re-dubbed an old cop show called ”Bluey” (1976) to invent the flatulent fatso known as Bargearse, and added new voices to the mini-series ”Rush” (1976) to create ”The Olden Days”, which showed the stupid hats and false moustaches of Australia’s 19th century ‘mudfields’.
The prevailing belief on their original release was that ”Bargearse” was the funnier of the two, but watching them over again through 2007 eyes, it has aged the poorer of the two. This is not so much due to the fart jokes (which are of course timeless; Chaucer was making them back in the 14th century) but the multitude of topical references dating to 1992. ”The Olden Days” relied less on this and more on verbal wit and clever dubbing, and as a result works better for a younger audience who might have been three years old in 1992.
But so much for analysis – ”Bargearse” and ”The Olden Days” are both still piss funny, and present Tony Martin, Mick Molloy and Santo Cilauro (who you’ll remember from ”The Panel”) at their comical best.
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Reviewer : Kris Ashton
