Is there a funnier Australian than Shaun Micallef? If you’re an Australian millennial who convinced your parents to switch over to ABC one fateful Monday in 1998 and watch the premiere of The Micallef Program (later Programme, then Pogram), the answer is obvious. Micallef’s 90s run taught me a lot about what I find funny, and he’s continued to churn out gold ever since.
This list is a mix of individual sketches, moments, ongoing bits, books, and the entire run of one television show spanning a decade. Keeping the list chaotic feels like the only appropriate way to honour Micallef’s legacy, and boiling down his Full Frontal run to one sketch simply wouldn’t be right. Warning: Milo Kerrigan, perhaps Micallef’s most iconic character, didn’t make the list. Don’t think of that as a slight against the battered boxer – I just think everything else here is funnier.
14. On the Sauce
This insightful documentary series about Australian drinking culture makes the list not because it’s a laugh riot, but because it manages to be funny all the way through without ever taking its subject matter lightly or straying from its more serious objectives. As a host, Micallef is gregarious, witty, and occasionally goofy – which makes his moments of genuine emotional vulnerability hit much harder.
13. The Micallef P(r)ogram(me): Attentione il est Myron
This ongoing claymation series, which would pop up during The Micallef P(r)ogram(me)’s three season run without much in the way of context or preamble, is perfectly janky and infectiously cheerful. It’s hard to say how directly involved Micallef himself was in the making of these things, but his croaky delivery of the little dude’s lines is delightful.
12. His Christopher Walken impression
When it comes to impressions, less is more. Micallef’s impression of Walken singing Bowie is funny, but this single word and gesture make for a perfect result.
11. His 2010 Logies acceptance speech
Making fun of the awards shows that laud you can come across as tacky or stuck-up, but the Logies, Australian television’s night of nights, have always felt cosmically irrelevant in a way that makes them difficult to take seriously, no matter how worthy the winners are. Micallef is a Logies mainstay, and when he won most popular presenter in 2010, he found a way to perfectly thread the needle between irreverence, excessive grandeur, and genuine gratitude. Even his run up to the stage is funny.
10. Preincarnate
My original plan was to highlight one particular passage in Preincarnate, Micallef’s wild time-travel novella, about a messy transcription practice that I remembered greatly enjoying. But flicking back through the book trying to find a specific part made it impossible to narrow things down – it turns out that you can flick to any single page in Preincarnate and find something funny, regardless of how well you remember the plot or the characters (who include Tom Cruise and Sherlock Holmes). More novels please, Shaun.
9. His appearance on the interminable Breakfast morning show
I never watched Breakfast, Channel 10’s short-lived attempt at taking on Sunrise and Today, beyond the clip above; a quick check of the “controversies” section of the show’s Wikipedia confirms that it was not worthy of any more respect than Micallef paid it when he visited. Micallef’s lively dismantling of the “Gen Y v Gen Wise” segment he was booked onto, and his utter unwillingness to engage with the question of whether or not technology is “bad”, is delightful to watch – as is host Paul Henry’s clear irritation.
8. Thank God You’re Here: children’s presenter sketch
Micallef is not an improv comic, and you can see the fear in his eyes at times in this sketch. But 16 years on, I still occasionally think about “Alfred Gurns” and start laughing.
7. Full Frontal: his Billy Connolly impression
Look at that impression. It’s fuckin’ brilliant. Look at it! Fuck!
6. Full Frontal: Roger Explosion sketches
The secret to this wonderfully chintzy James Bond parody, which consists of nine separate Full Frontal sketches and a chapter in his book Smithereens, is that it bares almost no resemblance to James Bond. The Roger Explosion series gets very specific with its weird line readings, repeated Easter eggs, botched stage cues and increasingly convoluted mythology. Watch every sketch in a row and you essentially get a full saga, which is a wild thing for a pre-DVD sketch show to accomplish.
5. Mad as Hell
Mad as Hell, a spiritual successor to Micallef’s also-great Newstopia, has been keeping us mad with good humour for 10 years now. The show is built on his energy and rapid-fire delivery (and the eponymous undercurrent of his anger), but this isn’t a show where you can point to one specific sketch or moment as a standout. Micallef’s longest running show feels like a pure force for good – but more importantly for this list, it’s also very funny.
4. Micallef P(r)ogram(me): an open letter to the prime minister
This sketch is very simple, but it’s also perfect. It has the awkward, recognisable sincerity of the young girl and her cloying letter to John Howard; the winking reference to South Australian suburb Reynella; Micallef’s uncomfortable straight man. But the real genius is making a gross-out gag this funny.
3. Smithereens
Smithereens has the energy of a book written by someone who thinks they might never get the chance to write another. This collection of short, irreverent essays, scripts, and stories is funny on the sentence level. The “About the Author” page is funnier than most whole comedy books. Even Smithereens is a funny word.
2. Full Frontal: David McGahan’s World Around Us: Cats
There is a kind of powerful magic flowing through this Full Frontal sketch. It’s in the uproarious audience reactions; the timing of the cat that falls over behind Micallef in the opening monologue; the line “cats are brown, as this exception to the rule proves”. The world could be ending, fire raining down from the sky, and watching this clip would still make me feel good about being alive.
1. The Tilted Room sketches
Micallef is often celebrated for his mellifluous voice and deadpan delivery, but he’s also a hugely talented physical comedian. Nothing exhibits his talents for pratfalls and funny body language better than the five separate tilted room sketches he did across Full Frontal and The Micallef P(r)ogram(me). The premise – a man enters a room, but the room is at a tilt and moving through it is difficult – is deceptively simple, but part of the fun is in trying to figure out the logistics of what is happening, which way is down, what is or isn’t going to fall. Micallef slides and capers through these things like he’s Harold Lloyd clutching at the giant clock, playing both his frustration and his desperate need to maintain control so deftly that the same punchlines can land again and again without ever diminishing. It’s a perfect bit.
