Satire-day Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week

Australia is a country you can barely trust to deliver the news, let alone make fun of it. Once upon a time there was something of a vague commitment by news organisations to be balanced and informative, which happily also provided a rock-solid foundation for satirists to bounce off. Now our news is a mix of barely coherent partisan shouting and smug condescension, wrapped around stories that are either tabloid horror porn or naked attempts to bully one side or the other of politics. How could it possibly get any worse? Hey, isn’t that Mark Humphries?

Seven nightly news recently announced they were considering introducing a short astrology segment to their evening bulletin. Maybe if they had they could have predicted that getting Mark Humphries in to do an end-of-week comedy segment was going to suck. Or, you know, they could have just asked around.

Humphries has spent a good chunk of the last decade or so hosting satirical news segments with varying results. His efforts on the ABC were helped by the fact that the ABC takes news seriously, thus providing the kind of backdrop and contrast news comedy needs to work. But being embedded in a serious news program meant that taking the piss was, well, taking the piss out of the program he was on. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Seven news presented a very different challenge. The trashiest of the commercial network news services (and that’s saying something), it’s a natural home for outraged talkback radio hosts, not someone who wants to be funny. Seven news is also a good deal more right-wing than Humphries’ previous gigs (watch out for those crime gangs!), removing a lot of his usual targets.

So we got “oh no, Joe Biden is old”. That was it. Just a straight news report on a bunch of Biden gaffs with a few “Joe Biden reassured voters with a confident and assured performance… is what I wish I could say” lines thrown in.

It’s tough for us to say this as we’ve never been huge fans of Humphries’ work, but: this felt beneath him. This was a segment almost anyone could have done; his work might not be for us, but there’s usually a level of thought put into things that was lacking here.

Sure, it was his first night, it’s a difficult line to walk, once he settles in blah blah blah. There’s only two things we ask from these kind of segments, and we don’t even expect the first: be funny, and provide a new angle on old news. Tonight we didn’t get either.

Meanwhile, there’s this. Press release time!

Jenna Owen, Vic Zerbst and Charles Firth are the masters of spin in ABC’s new comedy series Optics

​

ABC and Screen Australia are thrilled to announce filming has commenced in Sydney on Optics, a new six-part comedy series from the brilliant creative minds of Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst (The Feed, Nugget is Dead: A Christmas Story) and The Chaser’s Charles Firth.

Written by and starring this dynamic trio, Optics is an Easy Tiger and Chaser Digital production, directed by the award-winning Max Miller (Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café, Australian Epic), executive produced by Firth, Easy Tiger’s Rob Gibson and Ian Collie (Colin from Accounts), Owen and Zerbst, and produced by Paige Wharehinga.

Optics follows two whip-smart 20-something women (Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst) who are unexpectedly promoted to run crisis management PR firm Fritz & Randell, after the death of office patriarch Frank Fritz. As they battle weekly public relations crises from celebrities, sports stars and corporate titans, and power challenges from veteran PR flack Ian Randell (Charles Firth), they slowly come to realise that their firm might have a scandal brewing of its own, and start to wonder: have they been set up to fail?

It’s a fast-paced, laugh-out-loud workplace comedy that lifts the veil on everyday office politics and on the corporate spin that inflects all the news we consume.

ABC Head of Scripted Rachel Okine said, “We’re thrilled to be working with such an incredibly talented team to bring this fast-paced and bitingly funny comedy to ABC. As well as being dazzled by their sharp comic minds, we know audiences will also be gobsmacked to learn what goes on behind the scenes in the often murky world of PR.”

Rob Gibson and Ian Collie said, “Jenna and Vic are among our brightest new comedy talents, and their intergenerational sparring with the always-hilarious Charles Firth – the middle-aged man’s middle-aged man – is comedy gold. We can’t wait for Australia to see them all practising the dark arts of PR in the halls of Fritz and Randell.”

Owen, Zerbst and Firth said, “When we started, we were worried that there weren’t enough PR crises in Australia to sustain 30 minutes of television each week. As it turns out, there’s enough material for about 30 years of television each week.”

Screen Australia COO Grainne Brunsdon says, “Optics is clever, high-energy and perfectly poised to elevate Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst’s careers. With their unique style and Charles’ hilarious touch, it’s an exhilarating ride that highlights the absurdities of our digital age. I can’t wait to watch it on the ABC.”

Head of Screen NSW Kyas Hepworth says, “Jenna and Vic are two of the most exciting and refreshing voices in comedy and I can’t wait to see them join forces with Charles Firth to put their own unique spin on the world of crisis PR. Screen NSW are thrilled to support the entire team, including Easy Tiger and Chaser Digital, in bringing this hilarious series to ABC next year.”

Optics will premiere on ABC TV and ABC iview in 2025.

Press releases are funny things. Not “funny ha-ha”, mind you. More like “funny how anyone thought we wanted to know this series was ‘perfectly poised to elevate Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst’s careers'”. No shit getting a show on the ABC is a step up for them. But does their workplace promotion mean shit to anyone else?

Then there’s this gem: “Jenna and Vic are among our brightest new comedy talents”. Not “two of our brightest new comedy talents”; just “among” the brightest. Possibly somewhere up the back, we’re not sure. Guess they’re hoping Charles Firth is going to be the big drawcard here, what with his ability to be a middle-aged man for middle aged men, that most prized of television viewer demographics.

To be fair (really? – ed) at this stage this show barely exists. Somehow Charles Firth is back at the ABC, despite spending a decade or more calling them cowards for not paying him to project a cock and balls onto the Opera House or something. But this 110% feels like a project pitched as “what if we did a Gruen… but as a sitcom?”

What these kind of shows always always always forget is that the thing that makes a comedy funny? Almost never anything to do with the subject matter. Usually we’d gesture towards Seinfeld here, but take your pick. Fawlty Towers wasn’t comedy gold because it was practising the dark arts of resort hotel management, Kath & Kim wasn’t a classic because Kel lifted the lid on the seedy world of shopping mall butchers. You’re not getting an in-depth look at the inner workings of suburban law firms on Fisk.

Even The Games, which seems like the closest thing to this in recent Australian history, was about bureaucracy in general. Anyone who’s ever worked at any large organisation knew what was going on, and the only thing about it more specific than that was the niche subject that is [checks notes] sport.

Fortunately, there’s enough buried in this press release to suggest a comedy that isn’t just “hey look, we’re re-doing that sports star’s media meltdown only with the names filed off” each week. Here’s hoping.

And in the meantime, there’s this to look forward to: