The necessary conditions for great entertainment can be counter-intuitive.
The classic cinema that Hitchcock and Kubrick produced, mainly by torturing their casts, is proof that a harmonious off-screen experience isn’t always the best way to generate on-screen brilliance.
But in the realm of comedy, few things bring as much joy as watching funny people having the time of their lives.
It’s a Date (ABC1, 9pm) relies heavily on the formula of translating fun for the participants into fun for the observer.
Mostly it works, thanks in part to the fact that creator Peter Helliar has access to most of the big guns of Australian comedy.
On Thursday, in an episode themed around the question ‘‘Is it OK to date your mate’s ex?’’ we are privileged to see two of the more high-profile comic talents of modern Australian TV striking sparks off each other, as Rove McManus’ nervy singleton goes on a date with the ex of eccentric dinner theatre impresario Shaun Micallef.
The latter proceeds to manoeuvre the couple into conducting their date at his theatre restaurant, where they watch him sing and dance woefully in the part of Dracula, and as you’d expect in a comedy based around dating, things go from bad to worse to even worse than that.
The theme, of course, is incidental. This section of the episode is all about Micallef and the obscene amount of fun he is having putting on an outrageous vampiric accent, waxing lyrical about his ‘‘ex-luffer", and putting on the worst show of all time while sabotaging his ex’s new relationship.
Experienced Micallephiles will recognise echoes of old sketches Dracula Seachange, and Indiana Ghost and the Temple of Gloom. It’s spectacularly silly, and a good illustration of It’s a Date’s strength: the format allows the show to run the gamut of comedy stylings; now cute, now touching, now Micallef-as-Dracula.
The weakness with parallel storylines is you run the risk of unevenness, and this week’s second story doesn’t quite match the Micallef-Rove face-off. A nice enough set-up with Mad As Hell’s Veronica Milsom and Dan Wyllie going to an ‘‘arty French movie’’ that isn’t quite what they expected provides some amusingly awkward moments, but struggles for focus.
I'm not sure there’s as much fun being had on Beauty and the Geek Australia (Seven, 8pm), where the beauties become tour guides at the Powerhouse Museum, as Channel Seven continues to moonlight as a provider of cheap labour.
