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Is it goodbye and goodnight for The Noose?

SINGAPORE — The episode of The Noose that airs tomorrow night might just be its last.

Is this the end of The Noose?

Is this the end of The Noose?

SINGAPORE — The episode of The Noose that airs tomorrow night might just be its last.

Now in its eighth season, local TV’s most successful comedy show since Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd has won multiple Asian Television Awards since it debuted in 2007; it was even nominated for an International Emmy. But the curtain may be coming down on the satirical news-report mockumentary starring Chua Enlai, Michelle Chong, Alaric Tay, Suhaimi Yusof, Judee Tan and Siti Khalijah Zainal.

“The murmuring so far is that they want to pull it off air,” The Noose’s creator and executive producer Prem Anand told TODAY. “A couple of months ago, Channel 5 and my boss came to me and said, ‘This could be the last season of The Noose because the channel feels that it’s not holding its weight any more. It’s kind of losing its relevance and it might be time to look for a new comedy concept to replace it.’”

Admittedly, this was the lowest-rated season of The Noose, but ratings have fallen across the channel, Prem said. “This, I think, has got to do with the fact that the audience has completely changed their viewing pattern. Everyone’s watching online, on catch-up, on their mobile devices.”

No firm decision has been made either to cancel the show or to renew it. But he added that the team had taken it upon themselves to say “yeah, this could be it” when they were producing the last episode for the season. “We allude to the fact that this could be our last episode ever. There’s a bit of a cliff hanger at the end, where we don’t say anything, and hopefully, that will say a lot.”

For Prem, to end The Noose now would be premature. “Having put my heart and soul into the show for the past eight seasons, I would like to see it continue. I think it’s a concept that lends itself to longevity because there are always issues and social causes to talk about and things to confront,” he said. “I think it has some regional appeal as well — I mean, the show has been bought by Comedy Central Asia for the past few seasons. I think it has legs to do what Saturday Night Live is doing in the US — it has run for (over 40) seasons. It’s just a matter of refreshing the content, refreshing the cast once in a while and getting a bigger team of writers.”

Having said that, he added: “I’m all for taking a break because it’s not the easiest show to do in terms of content, in terms of creative control, in terms of being heavily scrutinized — every script of ours is looked through by our censor. And it just happened that this year was incredibly difficult because so many events took place.”

But there is no chance of the concept itself growing tired because “material is all around”, Prem added. “There is no shortage of topics to make fun of. I think The Noose is an outlet for us to talk about issues that mainstream media would not touch with a ten-foot pole. And, at the end of the day, it’s not malicious. It’s just good fun, lah.”

In any case, we haven’t quite seen the last of The Noose. A stage show is planned for March next year, Prem revealed, featuring the cast performing together with local and Malaysian comedians including Kumar, Fakkah Fuzz and Harith Iskandar. The Noose’s last stage show was a collaboration with The Muttons held at music bar TAB in 2012; they sold out on all three nights.

Catch the season finale of The Noose tomorrow (Oct 7) at 9.30pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 5.

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