Always Was Tonight review: smart, funny and committed to a point of view

Even if you’re a fan of local satire there’s a good chance you missed Always Was Tonight when it aired Wednesday night. Satire has been on the ropes for so long that these days, fake news headlines that just accurately describe what the rich and powerful are openly doing also qualify. The idea that the ABC, of all places, would put to air something funny that has something to say about anything serious feels like the real joke. 

And yet here we are, at a point where it’s safe to say in mid-January that Always Was Tonight is the best satirical comedy the ABC will air in 2026 by a very wide margin, and not just because the only other satire the ABC will air in 2026 is The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.

Smart, funny and proudly committed to having a point of view about the topics being tackled, it manages to feel both firmly up-to-date and a dispatch from a time when the ABC would air comedy that wasn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers.

A familiar format that delivers plenty of surprises

A one-off special to tie-in with the national conversation around 26 January – the press release says it ‘brings a fearless First Nations lens to the stories that are shaping the country’ – Always Was Tonight takes the tried and tested satirical form of a tonight show.

It’s hosted by Gamilaroi man Tony Armstrong, who’s mostly there as a straight man to a string of comedy guests, though he also turns up in one of the sketches. But if the format if traditional, the content – at least by ABC’s 2026 standards – is anything but.

Being a single-issue satire without pressure to respond to the latest headlines allows Always Was Tonight to mix things up a little. A planned welcome to country stumbles when the Aunty hired turns out to be the comedy group Aunty Donna and a future news segment (hosted by Noongar-Yamatji woman Brooke Blurton) has Sky News announcing a rival station to Triple J named Triple K, while the news ticker at the bottom of the screen says ‘Tony Armstrong so overexposed he’s technically white’.

Even stronger are the interview sketches, and not just because Armstrong is clearly struggling not to laugh through many of them. (The special was ‘filmed live’, which is as close to live as non-news and sports shows get on Australian television.) An interview with the Rainbow Serpent (about cost-of-living issues, of course) constantly threatens to derail because the serpent – as you would expect from a snake – rolls her ‘sss’s’.

Ambassador for White Australia Clancey Whitley explains that being blak actually makes him more qualified to talk about white people – after all, they’re constantly talking about blak people on all-white panels. ‘Talking about them without them is just about the whitest thing I can do.’ And Professor Batcho, an expert brought on to talk about Indigenous issues, finds herself constantly talked over and explained to by some random white woman who’s ‘just a huge fan’.

Satire with something to say

There are some more serious points to be made. One early sketch – which shifts from a guide, to a long weekend barbeque preparation, to outlining the case that the First Fleet brough smallpox with them to deliberately infect the Indigenous community – makes it clear that this isn’t going to let white Australia off the hook. And the final musical number on the recent lowering of the age of criminal responsibility – sending 10-year-olds to jail – doesn’t mince words.

The whole half-hour package isn’t so much a breath of fresh air as it is a full-blown gale after the last few years of the ABC’s retreat from anything remotely topical and funny. And this really is both; the jokes may be pointed, but they’re jokes first and foremost. Which is yet another reminder that there are a lot of satirical targets out there that a decent comedy could get laughs from.

Airing this after The Weekly makes sense from a scheduling point of view, but the direct comparison isn’t flattering to Charlie Pickering’s day job.

There’s never going to be a political climate in this country welcoming to satire. The point is to do it anyway. Here’s hoping Always Was Tonight signals a more welcoming approach to satire on the ABC that goes beyond running a news story then saying ‘what’s going on there?’ in a puzzled voice.

Still, there’s one trick the Always Was Tonight team have picked up from The Weekly. Every year, Pickering ends the series by letting us know that The Weekly will be back the following year; Armstrong ends Always Was Tonight by saying they’ll also be back next year ‘…unless the ABC’s racist’.

Always Was Tonight will be repeated 22 January and 25 January, is also available to stream on ABC iView.

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