Vale Ground Up

Look, we really wanted to like Ground Up. And often, we did! Just not quite often enough. Which makes it a rare example of a recent comedy that we’re not here to bury or praise. Much like the dead hand of sport across every aspect of Australian life, it’s just there.

So what happened? The scripts had a lot going for them, especially compared to the weak beer we’re used to with local sitcoms. Convoluted plots, a big cast, various points to be made about the silliness of many of the trappings of professional sport and the evils of a corporate culture happy to trample everything in its way. All good things! Just one problem.

The performances were strong as well. Nobody went off the rails. There were no obvious weak links. The scenes usually kept at least one foot on the ground, even when the topic started getting a little out there. The tone across the board was one where even the unlikely stuff was presented in a plausible fashion: sport really is like this was the big takeaway. Only one question there.

The series also played to Sam Pang’s strengths as a performer, which are considerable. Wryly dealing with disasters and idiots, dropping one-liners largely for his own satisfaction, coming across as someone who keeps himself at a bit of a distance – it’s pure Pang. And yet, there remains an issue hanging over proceedings.

Okay, enough waffle: Ground Up just wasn’t funny enough. Every individual part was good. It’s just that none of them stepped up when it came time to get laughs.

The scripts would often underplay a joke, choosing to step back a little and let the audience come to the laugh rather than oversell it. Which is not a bad way to go. But occasionally you do need to make the audience laugh in a comedy. It was the kind of show where if you weren’t paying attention it could seem like a drama. Problem was, when you were paying attention, the jokes were still pretty low key.

The final episode had a subplot where Hugh’s dog was kidnapped. Not all that funny in itself, but you’d think the big laughs would come when it was time to pay the ransom. Only it turned out the kidnapper had reasonable concerns about the effects the arrival of the AFL would have on the lower rungs of football in the state and… that was it? If you found the idea that someone would kidnap a dog to save their local football competition funny in itself, great. If not, there wasn’t much else to laugh at there.

On the occasions when it built up to a punchline, like having one of the players use Hugh’s advice to talk up his own personal achievements (on the field) when giving an interview after rescuing people from a burning building, it was funny stuff. But that was the big joke at the end of an episode. It felt more like a gag for the halfway mark.

At times it seemed like the solution was quantity over quality. Ground Up was a series with a lot going on, and not a lot of breathing space in between. Instead of a handful of subplots that would twist and turn through the episode, there were a whole bunch of subplots. Some of which only had a scene or two.

In the final episode alone we had the following. Hugh’s dog; the father-son rule; the dodgy statue; naming rights for the roof; the clash with the church; hacker attack and ransom roulette, plus various other gags like the logo-less jumpers and the Premier freaking out and fights over the stadium cost blow out. And all that before the big season launch dinner at the end, which had its own run of jokes.

All the performances were strong taken in isolation. Put together, and they never really struck sparks. Maybe Pang’s character Hugh should have been surrounded with people giving bigger performances to create a contrast? While there was a steady stream of wacky outsiders turning up each episode, the core cast (aside from Dylan Murphy as the idiot assistant and Lucy Durack as head of marketing) seemed to be going for heightened realism, like it was important that they were plausible members of an actual AFL club.

Often – too often – it felt like it was designed to appeal to sports fans looking for a peek behind the curtain. If it went too big or too silly, the fans would turn on it for being unrealistic and unbelievable. There’s a strong argument to be made that the best path for this kind of comedy is to stick as close to reality as possible. Unfortunately, the counter-argument is Ground Up.

The opponents of the stadium were wacky cranks (“Save Our Sewers”). The AFL was happy to bulldoze the Governor’s Mansion for a training ground. You need a voice of reason somewhere in there somewhere. A character who lets us know which direction the comedy is going. Destiny was kind of that, except when she wasn’t, while Hugh was kind of that, except when he wasn’t. Is the stadium a bad thing or not?

Eventually they seemed to run out of ways to keep Hugh involved. He was central to a story that increasingly was about everybody but him. The final episode was packed with dramas involving factions around the team, none of which required him to do anything but watch other characters argue. At least he had that missing dog to track down, in a subplot that had nothing to do with anything else.

Ground Up wasn’t a failure by any stretch. Again, and let’s make this clear, it did a lot right. But often it seemed like what should have been background scaffolding for the comedy kept being pushed front and center. This is a sitcom that seemed to revolve around planning rights, nepotism, financial kickbacks, state budgets and land use. Which is fine, so long as you make it all funny.

On the only scoreboard that matters, too often Ground Up kicked points.