Optics, ABC review: strong comic chops and social media spin

When the CEO of PR firm Fritz & Randall drops dead during a business meeting, the middle-aged and aggressively clueless Ian Randell (Charles Firth) assumes he’ll be stepping into the top job – he is the son of the original Randall, after all. The firm’s owner, Bobby Bahl (Claude Jabbour), has other ideas.

Greta Goldman (Vic Zerbst) and Nicole Kidman (Jenna Owen) are young, driven, and socially aware – well, aware of social media at least. They’ve already got their hands full dealing with the fallout from a dim-witted footy player (Will McNeill) who punched out a priest during a boozy fight, but they’re keen to take charge when Bobby offers them control of the firm. If only they knew the real reason why he’s put them behind the big desk …

There’s a strong comedy pedigree behind Optics. Zerbst and Owen are a comedy double act who’ve knocked out some solid sketches in recent years (they also wrote and starred in last year’s Stan Christmas movie, Nugget is Dead). Firth is a long-time member of The Chaser, which has been behind much of the groups online work. The three of them have worked together on satirical material for a while now; no surprise the moments of intergenerational bickering are well polished.

That said, the humour here is largely of the ‘this is how the world really works’ variety – much loved by shows like Utopia and every political comedy since Yes, Minister – where characters explain to each other why various schemes will or will not work, followed by their schemes working (or not).

How funny you find this stuff depends a lot on how familiar you are with how these things play out in the real world, which is why this first episode is largely about covering up an AFL players’ wild night out.

Future episodes feature other familiar scenarios such as covering up workplace harassment, airlines accepting bookings for flights they’ve already cancelled, and a phone network going on the fritz. Ian’s got the old school PR side of things covered, Greta and Nicole are across social media, and between them there isn’t a problem they can’t fix – though not without a few stumbles along the way.

All this is decent comedy material, and some of the best moments in the first episode involve the lead trio getting the job done. Well, one of the trio: of the three, Ian is the only one that’s an actual comedy character.

Overconfident, unable to read a room, out of touch with today’s technology and happy to turn a eulogy into a sales pitch for himself, he’s a blustering buffoon – so when it turns out that he actually does know his stuff as far as legacy media goes, it makes him more than just a one-note bungler.

Greta and Nicole, on the other hand, are playing the same character twice over, and there’s not much to that character beyond talking fast and sounding confident about social media. Their rapid-fire delivery does give things a caper movie feel at times, only the caper they’re trying to pull off is one where they get a moronic football player to successfully read a sentence off a piece of paper. They’re clearly meant to be the protagonists, but – outfits aside – everyone else makes more of an impression.

Optics often feels like the ABC had two warring concepts for a comedy set in the world of PR and decided to just smash them together: one show is about an ageing, overconfident flack who suddenly has to get his act together when he’s passed over for a promotion; the other is about a pair of young women unexpectedly bumped up to the top job who may or may not be in over their heads.

They’re both good ideas, and while this kind of ‘explainer’ sitcom isn’t exactly groundbreaking it’s still a reliable format. But the whole thing feels less than the sum of its parts. It’s a comedy where removing one element would have given the others more room to breathe; that’s a tough problem to spin your way out of.

Optics premieres on 29 January 2025 at 8.30pm on ABC TV. All episodes available to stream on ABC iview.

Discover more film & TV reviews on ScreenHub …