Happy New Year, Crikey readers! 

We hope you had a good break, ate far too much, and managed to momentarily forget the broken world of #Auspol. To help you out with the latter, we’ve compiled a lesiurely guide to Crikey‘s best arts, culture and comedy reads over the past 12 months. 

Your regular Crikey emails will be back from January 14, as we’re busy right now making plans for 2019. This is a great time to get in touch and tell us what you’d like to see! What did you like in 2018? What could we be doing better? 

Let us know your thoughts at boss@crikey.com.au. It’s going to be a great year.

BEN ELTHAM 4 minute read

There's a dense web of influence between our finance sector and cultural institutions. After the royal commission, does it make sense for bankers to head arts organisations anymore?

CRIKEY 5 minute read

In this bumper edition of Side View, the Crikey team curate their favourite pieces of writing, talking, reporting or filmmaking of 2018.

CHARLIE LEWIS 4 minute read

Vale Aretha Franklin, the greatest singer of the 20th century.

REBECCA VARCOE 3 minute read

Pod Save America is the go-to podcast for people who reply “You should be ashamed of yourself, Sir” to Donald Trump's tweets.

HELEN RAZER 3 minute read

This is not an ambiguous comedy about pain and alienation; it’s an unambiguous comedy about pain and alienation.

BEN ELTHAM 4 minute read

The ABC really is Australia’s most important cultural institution. But is it meeting its charter responsibilities to the arts? Beyond Aunty’s undoubted strengths in contemporary and classical music, the ABC’s commitment to drama and to the arts more generally is eroding.

MEG WATSON 5 minute read

Claims of sexual assault were the flashpoint at a successful and wide-ranging Sydney Writers' Festival.

PATRICK MARLBOROUGH 5 minute read

The promise of the ABC is the promise of Australia. That is: potential. When the ABC recognised potential and gave it a push it led to places both new and strange. But as Australia rescinds on its promise, so does the ABC.

CRIKEY 5 minute read

“This isn’t really a question but…” Anyone who has heard those immortal words at a panel, talk or festival event has at one point questioned the whole damn thing. Do we really need to dedicate paid time to audience members’ gushing praise of a speaker?

HELEN RAZER 4 minute read

For comedy to work, here in this country, it must be truly Australian. It must evoke the minutiae of a time and place, be unashamedly local.

ELLA DONALD 4 minute read

As tensions rise around cuts to local funding, questions remain unanswered on murky deals for Hollywood blockbusters. It's time to reckon with what we want on our screens.

MARGOT SAVILLE 4 minute read

Claims of sexual assault were the flashpoint at a successful and wide-ranging Sydney Writers' Festival.

3 minute read

There’s nothing quite so virtuous in Australian literature as the naifs and curmudgeons who spring from provincial Australia. Is Tim Winton's blockbuster novel really as good as Australian culture collectively remembers?

GUY RUNDLE 4 minute read

Tom Wolfe will be remembered as one of the pioneers of "New Journalism", but how did this journalism age and where does it stand today?

HELEN RAZER 4 minute read

Back In Time For Dinner gets 1000 neoliberal humanist points for simulating (and believing) the rosy history of 1950s Australia.