February has been a tremendous month for Australia. Their COVID response has dropped the number of new cases per day to somewhere between one and five. They passed a new law that required sites like Google and Facebook to pay for news and Facebook responded by essentially up and leaving the continent completely. And, in what many — just me — consider the biggest story of all, the Land Down Under now has its own version of America’s finest television program, Holey Moley.
I have discussed Holey Moley many times on this website. There’s a simple reason for this: Holey Moley is perfect. It is, in theory, a mini-golf competition show. People putt the ball and keep putting it until it goes in a hole and the person who gets their ball into the hole in the fewest putts wins. Where it becomes special, though, is its addition of Jackass-level physical challenges that toe the line between unnecessary in every way and more necessary to my survival than water. People go flying everywhere. It’s a good show. You should watch it.
The Australian version makes a few small changes:
- Aussie legend Greg Norman has replaced American legend Steph Curry as the show’s resident golf expert
- Joe Tessitore has been replaced by Australian television personality and former Olympic sprinter Matt Shirvington
- Rob Riggle is still the co-host, which is admittedly not a change but worth including because it is funny to me
- There is now a hole where a man dressed as an angry muscular chicken torments the golfers
We can work with this. The show premiered on February 1st and has aired two or three episodes a week and will already air its finale on the 22nd. This is so powerful. It’s one of the reasons I respect Australia very much. No other country would look at this bozo circus of a television show and say “let’s go ahead and air the full season in three weeks.” I’m so proud of them.
But why am I still typing? You don’t want to read words. You want to see people wiping out on aggressively dangerous obstacles. Buddy, do I and the Australian Holey Moley have you covered. Here’s the first hole of the first episode. It’s the same windmill fiasco as the American version but now, for reasons as unclear as they are delightful, the contestants wear little hats. The hats do not help.
Does this show also feature Hole Number Two, the one where contestants try to race past a row of portable toilets before people dressed in Halloween costumes fling the doors open into their sprinting bodies and send them flailing into a pool?
I am pleased to report that it does.
The hole where contestants cling to a rocket-powered zip line and then try to grasp a large pole they are speeding toward, never succeeding, and then spiraling to a splashdown finish?
Yup. That’s here, too.
But the best part of all of this is that most of the contestants are, like, extremely Australian. Just an incredible cross-section of humanity selected to compete on this show. And this is where I get the pleasure of introducing you to this guy, who appears in the second episode and — spoilers, whatever — wins. This is important. Look at this bearded king.
It gets better. At multiple points throughout the episode, he gets catapulted into a swimming pool after wiping out. And when he emerges from the pool, he does… well, this.
It’s majestic. It’s beautiful. It’s is the only logical conclusion to a blog post about Holey Moley coming to Australia and so it is where I will end. Just a marvelous job by everyone involved. I’m so happy.
Thank you to Paul for this wonderful tip
