Ep 175: Doug MacLeod, Janet A. McLeod, Dead Set

Doug MacLeod has written everything from The Comedy Company to Dogstar, and joins us to look back on his career. Janet A. McLeod is our special co-host, Josh Kinal makes a special phone call, there’s special news, special letters and no pork. No pork at all. Oh, all right, there’s a bit.

Also we review the UK horror series Dead Set.

Contact us by sending us email or send us an SMS on 0458 288 837 (0458 CUTTER)

You can buy Dead Set at Amazon UK.

See Doug MacLeod discuss his golden career at Axed! at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

This is what the Boxcutters look like when they appear in The Age – warning! Photo!

14 Comments

  1. ActualChad says:

    Apropos of nothing (hope that's the right use of that term – not 100% sure… like “got his job cut out for him” – does that mean it's hard or not, never known for sure… man this bracket just goes on forever, donut?) something that really annoys me is 20 to 1: Adults Only.

    For a show that brands itself Adults Only, it's extremely G-rated. If it's for adults only, why blur out nipples and the like? Why not have swearing and nudilty and drug-taking for all to see? After all, it is only for adults. And if you're an adult who doesn't like these things, why are you watching something called “Adults Only”?

    Umm… haven't listened to the show yet… keep up the good work… like your tie…

    Chad

  2. ActualChad says:

    OK, that was weird…

    Great interview with Doug MacLeod. Is it possible to get him in for another interview, maybe an extended interview as part of Chapisode Epsilon or whatever it will be called?

    It always seems like the interviews finish all of a sudden when I'm engrossed with whatever stories the guests are telling. Guess I'll have to go see Doug in Axed!

    It's interesting to hear stories from people who worked on the shows you grew up with, ala Comedy Company, Fast Forward etc. It always seems like the current generation of television production is nowhere near as fun/interesting as the past. Looking at “The King”, it made the early days of Australian television look brilliant fun (although apparently there was always homoerotic sub-context in everything, who knew?). The same with the new Golden Age of Television comedy, with Comedy Company and Fast Forward.

    The present always seems so bleak, with budget concerns hobbling creative endeavours, and yet suddenly a “Kath n Kim” or “We Can Be Heroes” appears and everyone is stunned and/or joyous, and then 12 months later everyone says “You'd never get something like that up THESE days…”

    Enough Babble.

    Found “Dead Set” a couple of months back through recommendations from the Horror Etc podcast, a great podcast for horror fans. And fans of “etc” as well, I guess. Watched it via youtube, but it still was amazing.

    ActualChad

  3. I saw Dead Set a little while ago. While I liked the story, I wish they paid for some lights. It seems like it was set in an England in mid-winter, after the island got moved above the Arctic Circle. Even the outdoor scenes appear to have been filmed in the few minutes before dusk.

  4. Can't wait to see Dead Set – and to find this Hulu site of which you spoke. On the undead front, I read somewhere today that the Anita Blake vampire books by Laurell K Hamilton are to be made into a TV series.

    And speaking of vampire TV shows, it was sad to read this week of Andy Hallett's death of heart disease this week. I listened to the last few shows very carefully and found no sign of Josh mentioned his name, so perhaps this time he's blameless.

  5. Look at that segue, which I forgot to explain. Andy Hallett was, of course, the actor who played the demon Lorne in Angel.

  6. I've just gone and bought Dead Set thru sendit.com. You guys are Enablers of my obsessions. I see that the first season of Being Human is on pre-order at that site too. This need to collected stuff about the Undead is going to send me broke.

  7. I've just realised a post I made a day or two ago isn't here. Is this because I accused Josh of killing Andy Hallett with his mind?

  8. @Chad: On listening back to the ep, I found Doug very funny – it was just a pity I was concentrating on the quality of the mics rather than what he was saying while we were in the studio – you get weird leakage that doesn't sound great if you have to pump one particular mic.

    Looking back at golden age comedy, I think the early days as seen in The King had such a dominant viewership that everyone would be talking about the shows, with people without their own TVs going to friends' houses to share. Comedy Company was a juggernaut – knocking off 60 Minutes – and Fast Forward was also a quotable series amongst the schoolies. I don't think we have anything up near any of those now or in at least the last decade. Kath & Kim had major buzz and cultural influence in its first couple of seasons but then experienced somewhat of a backlash.

    @Ian N: I'm pretty sure Dead Set was specifically colour graded so that, as the country was progressively taken over by zombies, the light became bleaker and bleaker.

    @Narelle: You're welcome. We'll try to keep the enabling up. Strangely, we're scheduled to be having a look at Being Human next week. I don't want to give anything away but it's really not your usual rule of 3 type series. I think I'll have to see the whole series before Monday.

    On your missing post, there seems to be something going on with Disqus. The followup was showing in the back end and you can see it in the list of latest comments in the sidebar – on the right near the top. The first one was picked as spam for some reason. Josh is our resident Disqus guru so I'll leave it to him to see what we can do about it.

    In the meantime, here it is again for everyone else:

    Narrelle http://www.narrellemharris.com

    Can't wait to see Dead Set – and to find this Hulu site of which you spoke. On the undead front, I read somewhere today that the Anita Blake vampire books by Laurell K Hamilton are to be made into a TV series.

    And speaking of vampire TV shows, it was sad to read this week of Andy Hallett's death of heart disease this week. I listened to the last few shows very carefully and found no sign of Josh mentioned his name, so perhaps this time he's blameless.


    Look at that segue, which I forgot to explain. Andy Hallett was, of course, the actor who played the demon Lorne in Angel.

  9. Oops – looks like I fixed it by touching it.

  10. Leechboy says:

    How could you mention Charlie Brooker's other works without mentioning Screenwipe or Newswipe ?

  11. @Chad: On listening back to the ep, I found Doug very funny – it was just a pity I was concentrating on the quality of the mics rather than what he was saying while we were in the studio – you get weird leakage that doesn't sound great if you have to pump one particular mic.

    Looking back at golden age comedy, I think the early days as seen in The King had such a dominant viewership that everyone would be talking about the shows, with people without their own TVs going to friends' houses to share. Comedy Company was a juggernaut – knocking off 60 Minutes – and Fast Forward was also a quotable series amongst the schoolies. I don't think we have anything up near any of those now or in at least the last decade. Kath & Kim had major buzz and cultural influence in its first couple of seasons but then experienced somewhat of a backlash.

    @Ian N: I'm pretty sure Dead Set was specifically colour graded so that, as the country was progressively taken over by zombies, the light became bleaker and bleaker.

    @Narelle: You're welcome. We'll try to keep the enabling up. Strangely, we're scheduled to be having a look at Being Human next week. I don't want to give anything away but it's really not your usual rule of 3 type series. I think I'll have to see the whole series before Monday.

    On your missing post, there seems to be something going on with Disqus. The followup was showing in the back end and you can see it in the list of latest comments in the sidebar – on the right near the top. The first one was picked as spam for some reason. Josh is our resident Disqus guru so I'll leave it to him to see what we can do about it.

    In the meantime, here it is again for everyone else:

    Narrelle http://www.narrellemharris.com

    Can't wait to see Dead Set – and to find this Hulu site of which you spoke. On the undead front, I read somewhere today that the Anita Blake vampire books by Laurell K Hamilton are to be made into a TV series.

    And speaking of vampire TV shows, it was sad to read this week of Andy Hallett's death of heart disease this week. I listened to the last few shows very carefully and found no sign of Josh mentioned his name, so perhaps this time he's blameless.


    Look at that segue, which I forgot to explain. Andy Hallett was, of course, the actor who played the demon Lorne in Angel.

  12. Oops – looks like I fixed it by touching it.

  13. Leechboy says:

    How could you mention Charlie Brooker's other works without mentioning Screenwipe or Newswipe ?

  14. Dead Set is brilliant. I must rewatch it. John is absolutely correct about Land of the Dead, it’s a massively under-rated film and the parallels with Dead Set are clear. Brilliant social commentary.

Leave a Reply to Brett Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.