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Watching the first few minutes of Network Ten’s rebooted Talkin’ ’Bout Your Gen, I’m worried it’s lost some of its strangeness. The set is too clean and Instagrammable – far slicker than the chaos Shaun Micallef presided over in 2009. And, with generational warfare now a much more common part of our culture in 2025, the observational comedy risks feeling too familiar.
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But then a giant rat appears. A daggy, human-sized rodent sitting casually in the crowd who’s been sleeping in Sandra Sully’s wardrobe for years and livestreaming its escapades to “perverts in Estonia”. And, as the show’s new host, Anne Edmonds, leads the studio audience in a near-contextless chant of “Hug the rat”, it feels like we’re in safe hands.
When I ask Edmonds about the gag, she laughs with a kind of anarchic glee: “That was an idea I had. I pitched that at a meeting – a studio rat – and then was shocked when everyone said yes.”
But it’s not just a throwaway bit: the privilege of hugging the rat is the prize new team captains Dave Hughes (Gen X), Tommy Little (Gen Y) and Anisa Nandaula (Gen Z) are competing for in this reboot of a once-beloved primetime panel show.
Dave Hughes, Anne Edmonds, Anisa Nandaula and Tommy Little in Talkin’ Bout Your Gen.
“One of the best parts of the first iteration of the show was Shaun’s delight in what was going on,” Edmonds says, before adding ominously: “So we tried to keep that spirit going and do stuff that I found amusing – or kind of cruel.
“It’s a nice legacy that [Micallef] has left: that permission to not be a normal kind of host, to make it more sketchy. If you’ve got an idea that’s a bit left of centre, then you can have a crack. It’s a pretty impressive achievement the original show pushed the boundaries like that in a commercial TV setting.”
‘Anne has that sense that you don’t quite trust her to run it properly ... I think she’ll just be as irresponsible as everybody else.’
Shaun MicallefRunning from 2009-2012 on Ten and then again from 2018-19 on Nine*, TBYG was at its core a pop culture quiz show that pit the generations against each other. First Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y; then Gen Z when the Boomers were retired. But it was the show’s absurdist sensibility that made it really stand out – with the first iteration averaging well over 1 million viewers each night, and at its best toppling the likes of MasterChef Australia in the ratings. The series won three Logies in its first year, including most popular presenter for Micallef. (He was also nominated for the Gold Logie, and team captains Charlie Pickering and Josh Thomas received nods for most popular new talent.)
“I think my contribution to the show ended up making it quite baroque,” says Micallef, who is not involved in the reboot. “My natural tendency is to enjoy the process of getting from A to B as circuitously as possible. So there was a lot of nonsense.”
Shaun Micallef presenting Talkin’ ’Bout Your Generation in the original Network Ten version.Credit: Network Ten
That often included taking fake phone calls from his desk, being disturbed by a pet meerkat named Stuart and having envelopes of game information delivered by disembodied hands, “blinded monks”, his teenage son and a supposedly SBS-famous Japanese spider crab.
“It’s rare for a presenter to have the opportunity on a show to actually muck around,” Micallef adds. And, though he says Edmonds is “brilliant” and “doesn’t owe anything to the original show”, he imagines she’ll approach it in a similar way to her past work – especially her chaotic Helen Bidou on Get Krak!n and her various roles in 2017’s comedy Edge of the Bush.
“Anne has that sense that you don’t quite trust her to run it properly,” Micallef says. “I can imagine the show being like one of the students has been put in charge of the classroom by a teacher. I think she’ll just be as irresponsible as everybody else.”
Right on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y, Edmonds describes herself as a bit of a spiritual millennial. “I started comedy late [at age 28, around the time the original show first aired], so I came through the scene with all the Gen Ys,” she says.
And, though she’s not immune to Hughes and his guests’ “Gen X grumpiness”, the show is buoyed by her excitement to be throwing everything she has at it: from stand-up to sketch to singing (which, yes, she fought to keep in the show).
Little, Edmonds and Abbie Chatfield on Talkin’ ’Bout Your Gen.Credit: Paul A. Broben
“When you start out in comedy, hosting a TV show is the dream,” Edmonds says. “It’s something you always think about: ‘I’d love to get to that point’. Now I’m fulfilling the dream. It’s like, all these years I’ve done in open mics and various comedy settings, it’s just all led to this skill set.”
It’s also exciting for long-time fans of her work (myself included) to see the award-winning stand-up take centre stage. Though she’s previously shown off her talents in guest slots on shows such as Have You Been Paying Attention and Taskmaster, Edmonds has rarely been given the opportunity to take the lead. Even her most popular character, unhinged “fashion expert” Helen Bidou, never quite got there.
“I went on a long journey of pitching a Helen Bidou show to TV networks,” Edmonds says. “It was a bit of a heartbreaker, actually. I had to put her to bed. Poor old Helen, it’s a bit like her life story, actually. She did deserve more.
“It can be extremely confusing when you’ve got something that people in the street stop and talk to you about, or something that you can tell has taken hold, but you can’t get it to translate up the line.”
But, she adds, “it’s all part of the biz” and reflective of an industry that’s become “risk-averse across the board”.
It’s impossible to ignore that TBYG is yet another reboot trying to recapture the glory days of free-to-air. But that doesn’t mean it’s stale. For all its familiarity, the show will also provide more opportunities to young Australian comedians than any other series on broadcast TV.
Of the three team captains, Nandaula is the least well known to a general audience, but the Brisbane stand-up has already built a strong following on social media and will also appear on the upcoming season of Taskmaster.
“That’s one of the most exciting things about it: that there’s a spot carved out for [Gen Z],” Edmonds says. “Anisa Nandaula is a star and amazing. I loved working with her. But then there’s the seat next to her, where younger people can get a chance to be on TV.”
The first episode of the series features Gen Z comedian Will Gibb, for instance, who has been in stand-up for 10 years and amassed 1.7 million followers on TikTok but only made his first TV panel appearance this year on Spicks and Specks – which is another rebooted property.
Will Gibb and Nandaula in the first episode of Talkin’ ’Bout Your Gen.Credit: Paul A. Broben
The one group we won’t see? Baby Boomers. “With the reboot on Channel Nine, at least I was the boomer,” Micallef says. “This will be the first time Baby Boomers are rightly not invited to the party.”
But the former host is the opposite of bitter about it. “I’ve had fun with [this show] twice, and I’m grateful to it. It really did save me,” he says.
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“I had done a talk show on Channel Nine that got axed [Micallef Tonight in 2003], and it took a long time for me to get back on television … I was doing Newstopia on SBS, which was on at 10.10pm on a Wednesday. I’d just come out of an unsuccessful radio gig. Then this revitalised everything.
“If I hadn’t done TBYG, there’s no way I would have done Mad as Hell. Whatever chapter I’ve enjoyed over the last 15 years is entirely down to the success of that show, and I wish nothing but the same for Anne.”
I ask Edmonds if she has a Mad as Hell up her sleeve. Is this the stepping stone to something wild of her own creation?
She pauses, then nervously laughs. “Watch this space.”
* Nine is the owner of this masthead.
Talkin’ ’Bout Your Gen premieres on Tuesday, September 16, at 7.30pm on Ten.
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