Picture the scene: you kick back to enjoy some silly sketch comedy after a long day. You’re instead invited to play a choose-your-own-adventure game. You make a choice. It’s the wrong one. Now you’re stuck watching an unskippable, 40-minute real-time walk around Melbourne.

This is Bandersketch, the new interactive sketch from Australian comedy trio Aunty Donna.

Bandersketch, an absurd riff on Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018), is streaming on Aunty Donna’s new Australian comedy streaming platform, Grouse House TV.

A self-described home for “cooked” Australian comedy, Grouse House TV is the next step in the company’s quest to create a launchpad for emerging and alternative comedians.

Gatekeeping in Australian TV comedy

In a landscape where the future of broadcast TV is uncertain, Australian broadcast comedy has become paralysed by aversion to risk. Familiar faces and imported formats dominate our screens.

Local “drama” hours — the industry’s catch-all classification for scripted narrative content, including comedy — have fallen by 55% since their early 2000s peak. Adult scripted output on Australian broadcast TV fell from 520 hours in 1999 to 116 in 2023.

The decline of long-running broadcast staples has removed crucial training grounds for........

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