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Couh Potato: Gluteus To The Maximus!

Friends, Romans, Countrymen; Lend me your hot guys wearing nothing but leather loincloths! Your beloved Caesar was out walking the streets of our humble little Empire the other day, casing the finer violin shops (not that I’m thinking of fiddling whilst I set the city on fire or anything hahahaHAHAHA) and trying to find some of that delicious new dessert, Baked Pompeii (it’s like Baked Alaska, only with less ice-cream and more potash) when it occurred to me that chakram-throwing Amazonian princess Xena hasn’t really gotten much work of late (save jumping out of her millionth cake at a lesbian corporate event last week); and despite the fact that our grandparents (or at least Sophia on THE GOLDEN GIRLS) used to routinely warn us that watching Gladiator movies would turn us Gay, the only desire I got whilst watching GLADIATOR was to keep Russell Crowe as far away as possible from any script I didn’t want thoroughly mangled. So I decided to kill two Christians with one Lion, as it were, and throw together a project that featured Xena (or at least the actress who plays her, anyway) and enough blatant homoeroticism to make Caligula choke on his horse (assuming he wasn’t already). So oil up your favourite eunuch, shove an olive branch or two behind each ear and beware of strange drag queens named Ida Smarch as we cross swords, spears and other implements with the boys and grrrls of SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND (Wednesdays, Go! 9:30pm). (more…)

Couch Potato

HOT WEDGES!

HORNE AND CORDEN (Thurs Sept 2, ABC2- 9pm)
Fairly amusing little sketch comedy series with Matthew Horne (THE CATHERINE TATE SHOW) and James Corden (last seen sharing a flat with the titular Time Lord of DOCTOR WHO) in which the geekily cute Horne and the corpulent Corden present a variety of skits and sketches which tend to be only moderately funny (at best), but which are almost always highly homoerotic (the sketch about the gay BBC correspondent covering the Gulf War has to be seen to be believed) and involve either Horne and/or Corden getting fully naked so many times that if you tune in halfway through you’d be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of variety show set at a Gay Nudist Resort…

THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK (Tues Sept 7, SBS- 10pm)
Oscar-winning documentary about the closest thing the gay community has had so far to a Dr. Martin Luther King. Covers the brilliant gay activist’s early life, his determination to bring equality to San Francisco’s gay community, and his assassination at the hands of City Supervisor Dan White. Required viewing, preferably back-to-back with Gus Van Sant’s MILK (and preferably whilst in bed with MILK co-star James Franco; hey, a guy can dream, right?!)

EMBARASSING BODIES (Wed Sept 22, Nine- 10:30pm)
You can tell this ‘medical documentary’ program is more about titillation than turbinectomies by the fact that a] far more male patients are featured than female and b] the injuries and/or diseases featured invariably centre around the sexual, giving the camera an excuse to get lots of shots of hot naked men (albeit with parasitic candiru catfish hanging from their gonads). Still, if you’re looking for a late night program that flashes flesh, this is quicker than bunging on your old VHS tapes of BIG BROTHER UNCUT…. (more…)

Couch Potato

THE MAKING OF MODERN AUSTRALIA- ‘THE AUSTRALIAN HEART’ (Thurs Aug 5, ABC- 8:30pm)
Despite ‘The Australian Heart’ suggesting some kind of E.R type program with surgeons trying and failing to find an ounce of compassion in the withered cardiac chambers of most Aussie politicians, it’s actually an excellent, multi-part documentary about Love and Sex Down Under, in which ordinary Australians from various generations (1930’s onward) are interviewed about their sexual experiences in the changing decades and social climates. Awesomely, ‘ordinary Australians’ includes both Gays and Lesbians- some of the stories told are harrowing, some sad, some heart-warming- all are vitally important parts of our history.

THE REAL GRAHAM KENNEDY (Sat Aug 7, ABC- 7:30pm)
Revealing portrait of the legendary Australian ‘King of Television’ which goes into his comedic genius, his friendships- and his homosexuality, which was not mentioned often by Australia’s media after his death in 2005. (more…)

I Know What You Did Last… Um… Winter

Salutations, ski bunnies and ski bucks! Well, Australia doesn’t have much in the way of skiing attractions. Asides from the occasional exception like Mount Kosciusko, if you want ski resorts that come with extras like snow and an actual vertical surface to ski down then you’d be best advised to move next door to New Zealand. This might not be as much of a bad thing as it first appears, since according to this month’s chilling little chiller, the traditional broken leg on the ski slopes is getting off easy. Apparently skiers in Norway have to contend not only with broken limbs and embarrassing skinny-dipping related frostbite injuries, but also hulking great homicidal maniacs appearing out of nowhere and hacking into them like Edward Scissorhands making an ice-sculpture. So grab the snow shoes, some winter jim-jams and a double-barrel shotgun and brace yourself for as many atrocious cold-weather related puns as my editor can take before she gets snow madness as we admire the Northern Frights (that’s one!) with COLD PREY (Friday July 9, SBS2- 11:35PM) (more…)

Couch Potato - July

HOT WEDGES!
KING CRAB ATTACK! (Mon Jul 5, SBS- 9:20pm)
Bizarre, fun little French comedy-horror short (10 minutes) in which giant Tasmanian King Crabs are fed up with being fed upon and rise up against the unwary patrons of a seafood-dependant community. You’ve got crabs - run!

THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW (Fri Jul 9, ABC-11:15pm)
Queer antics abound as the gay comic Norton (FATHER TED, ANOTHER GAY MOVIE) is unleashed upon the chat show format with outrageous results that are camper than a caravan park at Christmas. (more…)

WE ARE FAMILY!

Families are the one thing all of us people on this little blue planet have in common - unless you’re one of the clones of non-threatening, clean-cut, perfect-smiling, asexual boys that the Disney Corporation genetically splices from the sperm of Peter Pan and the ovum of a unicorn every few years (notice that Zac Efron has birthdays, but never grows up, doesn’t seem to have genitalia and has a marked fear of pirates and crocodiles). (more…)

Couch Potato - June

HOT WEDGES!
CURIOUS AND UNUSUAL DEATHS (Thurs Jun 3, Crime & Investigation Network- 7pm)

Fascinating Forensic documentary that shows the Grim Reaper may have a serious job but he’s not above trading in the scythe and hourglass for a rubber chicken and hand-buzzer every now and then. The show looks at people who have shuffled off this mortal coil in bizarre, coincidental, weird and just plain embarrassing circumstances- from a bible salesman struck by lightning on a cloudless day, a man who died of exhaustion after laughing continuously at a joke for almost a half hour (clearly he wasn’t watching HEY HEY IT’S SATURDAY), to the Ancient Greek philosopher Aeschylus, who died when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head and whiskey maker Jack Daniels, who died after kicking his safe when he forgot the combination, the program brings a much needed sense of slapstick to a very serious subject. (more…)

Lock Up Your Hamsters!

Greetings, Attractive Twenty-Something Terran Males! Well, we’ve managed to get the mother-ships to achieve a low Earth orbit despite all the floating junk surrounding the planet; for a species that hasn’t walked on the moon since 1972, they’ve certainly cornered the market in airborne space-crap. Anyway, now that our huge spaceships have squeezed into Earth’s sky space (sure, a fleet of twenty-six spaceships each three kilometres long impresses the bejeebus out of the natives, but they’re a bitch to parallel park) remember, we’re supposed to be nice guys; so everyone put on your best face (if you’ve yet to be assigned a face to wear, see our makeup department) file down your fangs, and if anyone asks you ‘are you actually conquest-minded alien lizards in cunning human disguises?’ remember to say ‘No’. And absolutely no abusing of small rodents in front of the humans- we can’t keep using the same cover story, people - Richard Gere can’t be everywhere at once. So let’s all sit back with a nice glass of stolen Earth water, order a pizza with extra mice and surreptitiously take over the planet as we review V (Sundays, NINE- 9:30PM). (more…)

Couch Potato - May

HOT WEDGES!

ROBIN HOOD (Sat May 1, ABC2- 7:30pm)
Series three of the successful series about the legendary outlaw hero and his (ahem) merry men in which a whole bunch of pretty male actors flit around Sherwood forest in various states of undress (mostly undressed) so often you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an all-Gay version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Also adding to the homoeroticism and the dubious adherence to legend was last season’s death of Maid Marion, who is replaced tonight with Friar Tuck (David Harewood)- in a further (though welcome) departure from canon, Friar Tuck in this series is African, but things are soon back to the homoerotic status quo when he ties a shirtless and wet Robin (Jonas Armitage) to a tree… (more…)

Take Two And Call Me In The Morning!

Don’t you just hate it when despite the fact that you eat enough citrus to have your own newly discovered species of Fruit fly follow you around, and that you nightly smear your skin with garlic cloves like someone attempting to ward off Count Dracula or a slumber-party’s worth of tweenage girls holding a TWILIGHT-readathon, and then some kind of walking vector decides to cough in your face in the line at the grocery store, or sneeze all over you whilst you’re in a movie theatre not-watching NEW MOON? It’s amazing that we’re in Twenty-Ten now, and not only do we not yet have personal rocket packs and robot sex droids, we still have to put up with our not-so-fair-weather-friend, acute primate viral pharyngitis, otherwise known as the Common Cold. Some little bastard decided to share their snot with me a week or so ago, and although my favourite orifices are now almost mucous-free, I’m still saving up my used tissues in case I find out who did it, so I can reinfect them and run like hell. Yes, colds are a nuisance- but what if they were much more than a nuisance? What if a rhinovirus came along that was so virulent it made the 1917 Spanish Influenza Pandemic look like a case of the Munchies? Well, mainline some cough-syrup, put some chicken soup on to boil and stock up on hankies, as we look under the microscope to see just how contagious SURVIVORS [Sundays, Nine, 9:30pm] is. (more…)