Age of competition

Shaun Micallef has returned to host another season of the game show Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation alongside team captains Robyn Butler, Andy Lee and Laurence Boxhall. He tells DANIELLE MCGRANE why this is such a fun show to be a part of.

Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation returned last year after a few years’ hiatus. How has it changed in that time? I’m 57 this year and when I started doing the show I was only 47. I was senior then but we had Baby Boomers represented and I was a bit closer to that generation. Generation X was in the middle and then Generation Y. At that point the Generation Zs were probably about 8 years old and this time around they’re grown up and they’re at least 20.

That’s why we got rid of the Baby Boomers, because it was getting a bit unwieldy and to be perfectly honest I felt that surely we’d heard enough from Baby Boomers. So I’ve ended up falling into the role of a slightly doddering grandfather figure, or maybe an uncle figure. And the Gen Xs are the ones who are a bit slow and can’t remember anything.

Laurence Boxhall has been picked as the Gen Z captain – he reminds me a bit of me in that I was a bit nerdy at his age and also knew a whole lot of stuff from previous generations. I think he’s probably smarter than I am. It’s that fresh voice that’s coming through now from Zs. Why do you think this game-show format makes for such great comedy? Panel shows are where people sit around trying to be funny and I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable on one of those shows as a guest. That’s why I don’t do them, mainly because I don’t like the sense of competition where we’re all going for the same joke. Whereas on our show it’s a different thing – it’s not just sitting on a panel, it’s a lot more risk-involved and I think that makes the improvisation a bit more interesting because you can go to different places. What is it about that format that works so well for the performers? If you’re an actor or a musician, it’s quite nice to just turn up somewhere without having to prepare at all and be looked after. I think a lot of the guests who come on our show feel that if they took some risks that they’d be looked after, either by me there or by the captains, or certainly the editors. As opposed to a liveto-air show where the guests probably won’t take as many risks because there’s no safety net. So you end up doing what people do on those sort of shows, which is just sit there behind the panel and not get up and risk anything. So is the risky comedy what makes the show work? I think so. I don’t think the audience particularly cares whether something is live or not anymore. I think old people tend to pine for the days when TV was live, but anyone who watches old media just wants it to be good and doesn’t care if it’s live or not. And we all know the audience is kind of drifting away to whatever they can dig up on social media or streaming, and that’s why we’ve ended up without variety, with just cooking shows and fake married shows. Whereas people might actually want a bit of drama or comedy occasionally. We’re just trying to blow the dying embers of old media while there’s still a bit of life left in it. But don’t you think there’s still so much value in well-crafted entertainment and that it will always survive? There’s always a temptation, just because of the way TV gets corporatised, to try and build these shows from the top down. But there is room for a show that’s built from the factory floor up, that’s built by the performers or from the writers’ room out, it feels a lot more substantial for that reason. It’s occasionally nice to have the performers in charge or the writers in charge.