Cabaret Fringe

Cabaret Fringe Festival Review: Box Set Blues

Matthew Trainor & Libby Parker in Box Set Blues

Matthew Trainor & Libby Parker celebrate their favourite TV serials in song in an amusing look at our TV viewing habits now they’re released in boxed sets.

 

Matthew Trainor & Libby Parker in Box Set Blues

Matthew Trainor & Libby Parker in Box Set Blues

Presented by The Whitmore Hotel
Reviewed 7 June 2014

An interesting concept with lots of potential which is not quite realised, Box Set Blues needs a little more work.

Who among us has not sat down to watch a series we have missed, only just discovered, or just want to see again… and watched more episodes than we intended? The opening song was a version of Four Seasons in One Day and they were not talking about the weather. While the audience is settling in, there is an episode of the TV series Mad Men projected on a wall.

It seems that Mad Men is one of their favourite television shows, along with Breaking Bad (beware the spoiler) and several other series. Everything gets a serve, good or bad, and it seems they have a song to suit: the Game of Thrones song is Blame it on Joffery, Doctor Who gets Talking about Regeneration, and Mad Men has I See Red (reference to Joan) and Nobody Does it Better (dedicated to Don Draper).

In song, we learn they don’t like Sex in the City and they celebrate ‘jumping the shark’ (the term used when a show goes too over-the-top, first coined when Fonzie waterskied over a shark in Happy Days). They also bemoan the fact that America takes (and frequently spoils) some of Australia and Britain’s best shows with the song Sold in the USA. Following that, by admitting that if Sons of Anarchy was made here it would Sons of Apathy, and the song for that is, of course, Born to be Mild.

An amusing look at our TV habits which have changed with the availability of the ‘boxed set’.

Reviewed by Fran Edwards
Twitter: @Franeds

Venue: The Whitmore, Whitmore Sq Adelaide
Season: season ended

 

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