“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.
Optics premieres Wednesday 29 January at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
