George Harrison would be rolling over in his grave

The real appeal of Hamish & Andy is that their comedy is never aimed at the expense of anyone but themselves & their mates. This is a double edged sword, as while it makes them very family friendly it also can mean that their listeners/viewers can be left out of the joke. It also means that their gags can be a bit hit and miss.

Hamish and Andy’s Reministmas Special delivered a sound performance last night of some new gags and a recap of their work throughout the year (although I’m sure they’d have much preferred to have some footage from their around Australia final week tour of their radio show, but I digress). Importantly, once you pushed past the nativity scene and costumes therein, it provided a much more important deliverable for the boys in question – a valid showreel for them to use when shopping whatever ideas they have for a TV show around to the networks.

The Reministmas special rated pretty well – better in Brisbane than The X Factor penultimate show, even though the reality TV singing show beat it over all:

Rnk Description Stn Network Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Adelaide Perth
1 Seven News – Sun Seven 1,383,000 280,000 416,000 362,000 129,000 196,000
2 The X Factor-Sun Seven 1,374,000 404,000 432,000 248,000 141,000 149,000
3 Sunday Night Seven 1,206,000 302,000 351,000 276,000 110,000 167,000
4 Hamish & Andy’s Reministmas Special Ten 1,183,000 271,000 392,000 255,000 97,000 168,000
5 Nine News Sunday Nine 1,115,000 265,000 367,000 218,000 137,000 129,000
6 Modern Family Sun Ten 1,009,000 320,000 285,000 206,000 85,000 113,000
7 Bones (R) Seven 936,000 306,000 282,000 140,000 115,000 93,000
8 Offspring Ten 929,000 201,000 320,000 189,000 83,000 136,000
9 All Stars Twenty/20 Nine 887,000 236,000 264,000 184,000 96,000 108,000
10 ABC News-Su ABC1 868,000 244,000 269,000 142,000 83,000 130,000

Still, upagainst some stiff competition in X Factor and the All-Stars (apparently) Twenty/20 Cricket, 1.18m isn’t shabby for a one off.

It was light, it was funny, we’d seen most of it before in their other specials throughout the year, but it showed that H&A can pull off a pretty decent sketch-comedy style show pretty well. If you put them in a costume or a winnebago. Their gorilla stunt at Weribee Zoo gave them some unexpected publicity from some people who were at the Zoo and were sucked in with their gag. On the whole, it was pretty funny, even if they did stretch the gag a little far.

Whatever Hamish Blake & Andy Lee turn their hand to in 2011, it will likely be a success. There is so much goodwill within the industry for them (and after 5 years killing the ratings on drive for Austereo, no reason why not, they’re pretty good guys) so who wouldn’t hire them? They’ve got the structure in place to own their own destiny, with their production company to be owning and delivering the content, and some powerful friends at Network 10 staring down an entire channel of entertainment to program come 11/1/2011.

As long as they sort out how to host a show with two people they’ll be fine. Hamish was always better with an ensemble cast, Andy has been the anchor of their show. Time, and likely many hours of television to come will tell.

Image/Video sources – Channel 10.