When I think of the internet, I think of all the things it has given me. Like when I was 15 and met a faceless boy from Argentina on the now-defunct gay message board Mogenic. We dated via MSN Messenger for a few months and – I’m realising as I write this – he might think we’re still together. Or the time I connected with a conservative Christian contestant from an early season of The Amazing Race and ended up drinking beers on horseback in their deep-red rural Florida hometown before going to a bar called The Rockin’ Ranch where I witnessed both the immediate aftermath of a shooting and some great line dancing.
Full disclosure: putting this list together has me feeling like a self-conscious gay teen at a house party in 2006, holding an aux cord in his hand for the first time, about to show his full arse by switching out the doof-doof for Delta Goodrem.
1. Serial killer documentary takes horrible turn
It wouldn’t be a queer person’s comedy roundup without a Cole Escola sketch (I only say this because I did some research and they’ve been included in this column at least twice before). If you’re not familiar (read: heterosexual), Cole is an American comedian, actor and singer recognised for working on shows including Cole Casserole, Difficult People, At Home with Amy Sedaris, Search Party and Big Mouth.
But it’s their heaving back catalogue of zero-budget YouTube sketches that make them an all-time comedy star. Classics include Pee Pee Manor, Mom Commercial and Joyce’s Politics – but it’s Escola’s hilarious take on the true crime genre (well ahead of the curve six years ago) that I’m going to highlight here.
2. Gay intern Harry Styles
Look, Harry Styles playing a gay Sara Lee intern who accidentally sends horny tweets from the company account isn’t the funniest Saturday Night Live sketch on the internet. But it is a lot funnier when you consider that I commissioned the Melbourne artist Aaron Billings to do an artwork inspired by the sketch, which I then got tattooed on my upper thigh.
Now its comedy permeates my daily life. Whenever someone at the beach or gym or, say, my straight physiotherapist, asks about the tattoo, I get to explain that it depicts Harry Styles on all fours with a Sara Lee tramp stamp getting railed to death by a steam train while screaming “Must get rid of toxic in community!” And, to me, that’s beautiful.
3. Brian Jordan Alvarez
It’s a great privilege to be the first gay person to share a Brian Jordan Alvarez video here. You might recognise him as Estéfan, the funny addition to the not-very-funny Will & Grace reboot. Or for his supporting role in the feel-good box office hit M3gan.
But I love him most for his ever-expanding slate of delightfully stupid Instagram characters, like this bushy-tailed “internt” (intern) who hopes his “interntshit” (internship) will land him a “full tinte jod” (full-time job). Watching his optimistic journey into the guts of corporate America feels like a new kind of appointment television.
4. Freudian Nip’s Wackfest
Freudian Nip are Australian comedy treasures who have written and starred in countless clever, hilarious skits. But, being the grossly earnest double-cancer that I am, it’s their real-life friendship that really tickles me. Each month besties and creative partners Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst take it in turns organising delightfully weird social outings – Wackfests – like a visit to The Authentic Living Centre where they enjoyed something called an Aliens Channelling Session. Or a trip to see a psychic medium and healer, Alicia Bickett, at the Ramsgate RSL.
5. Meteor / meatier
This gentle TikTok sketch from part-time palaeontologist Eliza Petersen is quite simply crack to a wordplay-loving and highly sensitive fan of extinction-level events like me. If God is real, I like to think they are a softly spoken, unclear communicator who has trouble managing their angels and constantly messes up as a result. Basically a version of God that I can relate to on a deeply personal level.
6. Nollsie on Cooked
As a big fan of adult animated comedy, and someone who thinks Australia should be producing more of it, I was so excited to watch Cooked on ABC two years ago. The series follows the ghost of Captain Cook and Mahnra, an Indigenous woman’s spirit trapped inside the body of a goat, as they travel across Australia in search of a cure for a mysterious 250-year-old spell.
As someone who has spoken on the record about Shannon Noll being the first person I ever jerked it to (it was the white singlet in his final two performances of Working Class Man on Australian Idol, if you must know), this clip has a special place in my sad, gross, gay, nostalgic thirtysomething heart.
7. Patti Harrison and Bowen Yang on Ziwe
Having all of these comedians in the one room felt like nothing short of an historical crossover event. Ziwe is (or was, as it was cruelly cancelled this year after two seasons) a satirical late-night talk show hosted by the comedian Ziwe Fumudoh, who became well-known for her Baited With Ziwe webseries where’d she’d interview her white comedian friends with uncomfortable questions about race.
Her Showtime elevation of this concept was sharp, biting, spattered with fun sketches, and included interviews with names such as Gloria Steinem, Phoebe Bridgers, Drew Barrymore, Chet Hanks and, well, Patti Harrison and Bowen Yang. While many of her interviewees struggled to understand the assignment, Patti and Bowen are very much on Ziwe’s level here.
8. Abracadabra television ad
Regional Australian TV ad jingles are an oddly specific special interest of mine – and this one for Abracadabra in Bangalow, New South Wales, which aired in 1999, is definitely up there. The shop still exists, touting itself as an “exciting, fun, colourful and mythical experience”. Which is a pretty big sell, considering it’s a store that specialises in … baskets. But there are just so many layers to appreciate here. Everyone’s blowing bubbles for some reason! Printed T-shirts! The stadium wave! Girls wearing chokers! So much enthusiasm about baskets! And, well, the gorgeously bad lyrics: “Abracadabra Bangalow, west of Byron Bay / Has the biggest buncha baskets under the sun, we’re open every day!”
9. This Deadloch scene
Replaying this scene over and over and over again 🥰 #Deadloch pic.twitter.com/E6xc73neSw
— Prime Video AU/NZ (@PrimeVideoAUNZ) July 5, 2023
From what I can tell, there’s a bit of a consensus on social media that Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan’s Amazon Prime series Deadloch is one of the best Australian TV comedies in years. This line delivery from Nina Oyama – punctuated so repeatedly with the c-word that I cannot quote it here – is a great indication of why. Something about that word’s uptick in usage in the US, given Australia’s long historical embrace, brings me as close to a sense of national pride as I’ve come.
10. Sensitive Gym Bros
In today’s economy one cannot afford to be above self-promotion. And as someone who has been eagerly manifesting an opportunity to sell out, I’m taking my chance. Sensitive Gym Bros is an animated sketch I wrote and directed about some beautiful meatheads trying to have a discussion about mental health using weightlifting terminology. It was inspired by the growing trend of men being earnest with one another in hypermasculine environments and includes voices by one of my favourite Australian TikTokers, Lil Travioli.
Samuel Leighton-Dore is an artist, author and screenwriter based on the Gold Coast. His book Wow It’s All a Lot is out now
