ABC and Screen Australia have confirmed that filming has commenced in Sydney on Optics, a new six-part comedy series from Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst (The Feed, Nugget is Dead: A Christmas Story) and The Chaser’s Charles Firth.
Written by and starring Owen, Zerbst and Firth, Optics follows two whip-smart 20-something women (Owen and 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?
The ABC said: ‘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.’
‘When we started, we were worried that there weren’t enough PR crises in Australia to sustain 30 minutes of television each week,’ Owen, Zerbst and Firth said. ‘As it turns out, there’s enough material for about 30 years of television each week.’
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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.
‘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,’ said Rob Gibson and Ian Collie. ‘We can’t wait for Australia to see them all practising the dark arts of PR in the halls of Fritz and Randell.’
The series is being made with major production investment from Screen Australia and the ABC. It’s also financed with support from Screen NSW, and is produced in association with and distributed by ITV Studios.
As ScreenHub critic Anthony Morris wrote recently, scripted comedy on the ABC has been sparse of late, so hopes will be high for this one.
Optics will premiere on ABC TV and ABC iview in 2025.
