The Weekly is a solid show, that follows a well trodden-in format. Charlie Pickering and his crew don’t really make any efforts to hide their influences – and nor should they. It’s a format with a proven successful track record that, up until this point, had solely been confined to US audiences and US topics.
So with an Australian version now on the air, what better way to wear the influences on the sleeve and give a knowing nod than to enlist a former Daily Show correspondent to bring in a little extra flavour?
The Weekly enlisted Wyatt Cenac – who served as both a writer and on-air talent for Jon Stewart from 2008 until 2012 – to help shine a light on the heightened, Australian-centric attention that the current NBA Finals series is garnering, due to the presence of Andrew Bogut, and (in particular) Matthew Dellavedova of the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers respectively.
Wyatt’s dry responses here are absolutely ace, and pointing out the fact that having two Australians in the NBA Finals still isn’t quite as big an anomaly as the fact that both LeBron James and Steph Curry were born in Akron, Ohio is a hilarious bucket of cold water on our current hoops hysteria.
Whilst it’s inevitable that some of you might think that The Weekly is deliberately going after Daily Show personalities to further ape the style, the reality here is that Wyatt (who also was in the country recently for this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, incidentally) is just a damned good comic who knows how to fit this style, and who probably happens to be mates with the cast and crew.
More of this please, Charlie. Much, much more.
