Aunty Donna: ‘Improv is a bit like tomato sorbet and anchovy toast’

The Aunty Donna trio sat down to talk about their ABC series Coffee Café, why they aim for divisiveness in comedy, and ... Smorgy's Bundoora.
ABC comedy Aunty Donna.

Aunty Donna are at a perplexing zenith in their career. On the back of touring their live comedy shows and making a series for Netflix, they’ve now finally landed a sitcom on ABC. It’s called Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café, and is loosely about the three friends – Zachary Ruane, Broden Kelly, and Mark Bonanno – trying to run a trendy café in the heart of Melbourne.

We also got to work with crew and cast that we’ve worked with a lot over the last ten years, so we knew them all really well. The costume designer on this series was the costume designer on our very first web series that we made for community television ten years ago. She’s moved up alongside us over the last ten years, and it’s such a thrill to see her now making costumes for a show of this scale.

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Silvi Vann-Wall is a Melbourne-based journalist, podcaster, critic and filmmaker who loves frogs and improv comedy. They were the ScreenHub Film Content Lead from 2022 to 2025. Twitter (X): @SilviReports / Bluesky: @silvi.bsky.social‬ / Website: silvireports.com