Anti-woke US commentator Matt Walsh has hit out at Australia again, four months after calling it “the weakest, most progressive, most lame country on Earth”.
His comments at the time were fuelled by his objection to the reality survival show Alone Australia, which he described as “unintentionally the funniest thing on TV right now”.
This time it is the Australian remake of classic British sitcom The Office that has raised the ire of Walsh, who says Australian TV shows “are a crime against humanity” that indulge in “self-conscious, progressive moralising”.
He said that in recent months he had been “at war with the former penal colony that is Australia, which has been transformed in recent years into the weakest and most pathetic hellhole on the planet.”
“This is a country that literally has a Minister for Male Behaviour Change,” Walsh added.
The comment refers to Victoria announcing in May that Tim Richardson would be appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change.
“But even after having criticised Australia as extensively as I have, being one of the few people in the conservative media who follows this story about Australia’s pathos as closely as I do, today I feel compelled, even, to speak out and criticise Australia once again,” Walsh said.
‘And that’s because I learned this week that Australia is currently in the process of dismantling one of my all-time favorite sitcoms, which is The Office.’
The Australian remake of The Office (pictured) has drawn the ire of Matt Walsh, who says Australian TV shows “are a crime against humanity” that indulge in “self-conscious, progressive moralising”.
Walsh was clearly referring to the American version, as he later added that he liked it for the first four seasons. The UK original only ran for two seasons.
He didn’t explain why he didn’t find The US Office funny after the fifth season. And then he kicked it out.
“To be very clear about this, the goal of this (Australian) remake is not to be funny or entertaining in any way,” he said.
‘The goal is to make a political statement, they want to push their ideology and at the same time destroy the original program by association, as far as possible.’
He then showed a clip from the Australian version of The Office to try to prove his thesis that it is an unprovocative, unfunny series and “one banal, apparently HR-approved scenario after another.”
Walsh noted that “normally when you’re making a trailer for a comedy, one of the goals… the only goal really, is to include something funny, maybe a joke or two,” but said the Australian Office did not do that.
He said he could “speak with authority” on this as he had just released a trailer for a comedy called “Am I Racist?” and had spent time selecting funny moments for it.
“But I also speak with authority because I am a human being with a brain and common sense,” he added.
‘This two-minute trailer for the Australian reboot of The Office contains not a single joke or humorous situation.
Anti-woke US commentator Matt Walsh (pictured) has hit out at Australia again, four months after calling it “the weakest, most progressive, most pathetic country on Earth”.
“They had a whole season of material to draw on and they couldn’t find a single moment of real comedy.”
Waslh said the trailer was not only not funny, it didn’t even offer the possibility of being funny.
“Instead, it does the opposite. It sets up another iteration of the same kind of progressive, forward-thinking moralizing that we’re all very familiar with at this point,” he said.
At one point in the trailer, there’s a reference to sexual identity, which Walsh says “is a pretty big clue that this production isn’t going to poke fun at any of the craziness that’s taken over workplaces since the American version of The Office went off the air.”
“Rather, it will reinforce it,” he said.
‘As Steve Carrell himself (who played Michael Scott, the main character in the early seasons of the American version of The Office) said several years ago, this is a trap that any modern remake of The Office was always going to fall into.’
But he went on to say that Carrell is “awake and limping now.”
It later emerged that Walsh’s main complaint was that the two main characters – the boss and his assistant – were now women.
“The biggest red flag in that trailer is that they swapped the gender of Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute’s characters, who are now women,” he said.
‘Still, as we can see in the trailer, the characters are supposed to still retain all of Michael and Dwight’s comedic traits. But it doesn’t work.’
She then said helpfully, “It is possible to create attractive, even funny, female characters, but not when they are pale imitations of beloved male characters.”
“When you see a remake and you see a bunch of women in the lead roles, everyone rolls their eyes. And then they accuse us of being sexist, but it’s only because we’ve seen (the original),” Walsh said.
“If you take characters who are supposed to be male, with their clearly masculine traits, and you just add a woman to them, it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.”
Walsh said: ‘To be very clear about this, the goal of this remake (of The Office, pictured) is not to be funny or entertaining in any way.’
‘Michael and Dwight on The American Office is a distinctly masculine type of humor. They’re male characters and their character traits, the funny things they have, make sense and are certainly funnier when they come from men.’
He ended his speech by saying that he would cancel both the Australian remake of The Office and the entire country.
“The Australian remake of The Office, along with the entire country of Australia, is once again cancelled today,” he said.
Walsh isn’t the only one to have criticised the Australian version of The Office: viewers slammed it after the Prime Video trailer was released.
“This is the Raygun version of The Office,” wrote one commenter, referencing Australian breakdancer Rachel Gunn, who shocked the world with her viral dance routine at the recent Paris Olympics.
“Dear Prime, it’s not too late to delete this,” wrote another YouTuber.
Meanwhile, another critic compared the trailer for the workplace comedy to a school play.
“This is like one of those embarrassing school parody projects… someone actually thought this was a good idea.”