New Zealand Listener – August 03, 2019

AUGUST 3 2019 LISTENER 71

TV REVIEW

G

o, the Silver Ferns. The glori-

ous win at the Netball World

Cup – by, yes, one goal

against, yes, Australia –

couldn’t compete for commotion

with the Black Caps’ loss in the

Cricket World Cup final. The

Ferns got nothing like the $3 mil-

lion the Black Caps got for losing.

They got ... nothing, not even

much support from some quar-

ters. “This has not aged well,”

went a gleeful Silver Ferns tweet

after the win, quoting an earlier,

confident prediction – “The

Silver Ferns won’t win” – from

Newstalk ZB’s Martin Devlin.

Fortunately, that station’s Mike

Hosking was able to Mike-splain

why we get “confused” about

the lack of well-deserved reward:

it’s nothing to do with gender.

Netball is simply “globally insignifi-

cant”. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

begged to differ. “As a general prin-

ciple, I think New Zealanders would

like to see fair acknowledgement of

our sports people when they reach

the top of their code,” she said, citing

gender as an issue.

New Zealand is celebrating this

Netball World Cup as a globally sig-

nificant win, as would have England,

Australia or any of the competing

nations. As I write, Silver Ferns spon-

sor ANZ has agreed to contribute to a

fund to reward the team.

Eliminating sexist

bunkum from our

society is a slow but

sometimes hilarious

process.

Steadying the ship

“She would

look at him to

just see if he

was laughing

• asking

permission to

laugh.”

I

t’s slow progress, though, and it can get a bit

depressing. So, the first episode of TVNZ 1’s new

documentary series, Funny As: The Story of New

Zealand Comedy, made for heartening viewing.

Women’s Comedy: A Secret History kicked off with

the globally significant Rose Matafeo, who won

the comedy equivalent of a Netball World Cup –

Best Comedy Show at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe

Festival – for her show Horndog, at the tender age

of 26. Not bad for a comedian who first received

international attention for a show about death,

which required her to bring her own coffin.

Good news from Urzila Carlson, too. She’s not

so keen on equal pay, she said, “because I don’t

want to take a pay cut”. The episode packed a lot

in, from Ginette McDonald’s pioneering Lyn of

Tawa to The Jaquie Brown Diaries by way of such

stand-out stars as Michèle A’Court, the Topp Twins,

Rima Te Wiata, the Funny Girls troupe and the Flat3

web-series crew, who started out putting $200 each

into a jar as a budget.

This left little time for analysis of our dry,

pretension-busting comedy style in general and

comedy by women in particular. But deft cutting

of entertainingly acidic anecdotes meant there

were insights to be had on the hop about why

so many women might make the potentially

punishing arena of stand-up a

career choice. A’Court talked about

the challenges of breaking into a

previously male-dominated game

and audience reaction on the rare

occasion a woman took the stage:

“She would look at him to just see if

he was laughing – asking permission

to laugh.” But along with limitations

came the liberation of sisters doing

it for themselves. “I’m a control

freak,” said Matafeo, of the upside

of stand-up. “If anything goes

wrong, you’re in charge,” said

Carlson. “You can change the

direction of that ship.”

Thank goodness some things

have changed. Maybe. Writer

and cartoonist Rosemary McLeod

recalled writing 1978 feminist-y

sitcom All Things Being Equal.

McDonald was cast. “It was

felt, not by me,” said McLeod,

pointedly, “that she needed to

lose weight.” McDonald spoke of

signing a contract that required

her to lose 2½ stone (16kg) and

discovering bulimia. “No requests

for a better hairstyle from Bruno

Lawrence,” noted McLeod. Cut

to a shot of Lawrence looking

like he’d stuck a finger in a

light socket.

“I was almost deaf and blind with

terror,” said McDonald, of Lyn of

Tawa’s still quite brilliant outing at

TVNZ’s 1981 Royal Variety Performance

Show.

It took courage, then, to stare down

a tsunami of limiting stereotypes. It

still does. Funny As mostly sat back

respectfully and let the comedians

speak for themselves. In the end,

it was quite inspiring. Go, the

funny girls. l

DIANA

WICHTEL

Urzila Carlson:

equal pay would

mean a pay cut.

FUNNY AS: THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND

COMEDY, TVNZ 1, Sunday, 8.30pm.