It was almost two years ago that the ABC announced Fran Kelly would host a new Friday night chat show, Frankly . In response to this news, I wrote an opinion column in this masthead with the title, “Fran Kelly is fine and familiar, but she’s not the future of the ABC”. The piece sparked a conversation about ABC’s risk-averse nature and unwillingness to embrace and trust a younger generation of creatives.
It also led to accusations from some senior ABC staff of ageism and sexism. Fran Kelly began her life as a chat show host by inviting Shaun Micallef onto the couch. Credit: ABC This brings me to ABC’s latest announcement: the new chat show Eve of Destruction, hosted by Shaun Micallef and set to premiere on August 14.
Micallef, who left the ABC in 2022 after 10 years and 15 seasons o f Mad As Hell, was the very first guest on the first episode of Frankly . Sitting on the couch, Kelly asked Micallef why he had decided to call it a day when the show was still rating its socks off, to which he replied: “I genuinely wanted to give the microphone over to someone who was perhaps younger, or some different voices.” Today it appears we’re back where we started: same voices, same ABC.
Let me go on the record and say, just as with Fran, this has nothing to do with Micallef. I’m a longtime fan of his work; I think he is a funny and incisive comedian with a history of producing some of our most original TV. I grew up watching Full Frontal , laughed along with Mad as Hell , and am excited to watch his other new travel show , Odyssey of Origins, set to screen on SBS later this year.
But Micallef knows better than anyone that there are very few vehicles for emerging comedic talent in this country, so much so that he makes reference to it in a clip promoting Eve of Destruction : “Two years ago, I resigned from television to make way for bright new young talent here at the ABC; as it turns out, there wasn’t any, so I am back doing a new show.”.
