OPTICS PITCHES PERFECTLY FOR HIGH-RATING REVIEWS
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 infects 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.”
Guardian 4-star Review
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story” may be an old adage – but it’s never been more relevant. When major corporations are bosom buddies with news outlets and world leaders, when celebrities are protected from bad PR at all costs, when product is more important than people – who knows what’s real any more?
Optics, the new series written by Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst (also known as comedy duo Freudian Nip) and Charles Firth, couldn’t be more timely. After the sudden death of the big boss at crisis management PR firm Fritz & Randell, two young female employees, Greta Goldman (Zerbst) and Nicole Kidman (Owen – and yes, that is the character’s name, in a gag that quickly wears thin) are given the top job in a move to shake up the company – or cover an impending PR disaster by a bit of diversity box-ticking.
But their male colleagues, including shunned 40-something company heir Ian Randell (Firth), lurk in the shadows. The women might be running the show on the surface but “board approval” is forever pending, and the men are clearly still pulling the strings. As two of them say in hushed tones: “It’s just optics with the girls – isn’t everything?”
In each of the first four episodes, upon which this review is based, Greta and Nicole take on a new client and challenge: a disgraced football player, a high-flying she-EO accused of workplace bullying, an airline with shoddy business practices (it’s called Qualitus, probably not a nod to any real airline …) and an actor accused of sending creepy DMs with a cannibalistic air (also probably not a nod to any recent headlines).
For their morally dubious clients, the pair must find ways to skate around the truth – or distort it entirely. Unlike the founders of the company, Greta and Nicole do seem to have some moral compass, and their discomfort is evident – but the show must go on.
It’s a smart script, with very funny, zippy one-liners that contain depressing nuggets of truth. An airline executive calls the company’s flight statistics “an aspirational goal, like a new year’s resolution or a climate target”. When a woman is interviewed on the news regarding the lecherous actor, she is asked: “He’s the most famous star in Hollywood. Why should our viewers trust your word over his?” Owen and Zerbst are clearly familiar with this world of long sushi lunches, exclusive airline lounges and conspiratorial agreements; the often ridiculous conversations and scenes within the workplace gave me war flashbacks as someone who also once worked in PR.
As Greta and Nicole, Zerbst and Owen embody the tech-savvy, super-online Gen Z-ers who are rapidly ascending the ranks in the corporate world. They bounce off one another effortlessly, with the kind of easy rapport and banter that will feel familiar to viewers of the same generation. Randell is a great foil for the duo, and the power struggle between him and the two women feels as pulled from the real world as some of the PR crises: they’re whip-smart and he’s bumbling and out of touch (“only wowsers and feminists hate fun,” he says early in the series), but he’s the one with the family ties and the clients’ respect. Firth plays the character well – a slightly sad and pathetic middle-aged man who’s oblivious to the fact that he’s had everything handed to him.
Meanwhile, the women have to constantly prove themselves to their clients and colleagues – and the viewer comes to suspect that they’re pawns in a bigger game.
It makes for a fast-paced, intelligent show that reveals the duplicitous underbelly of public relations in Australia and the way diversity often plays out in the corporate world: as lip service only. Some of the scenarios and characters border on caricature – but when modern life is becoming increasingly cartoonish, maybe that’s not a problem.