Very Small Business: articles


Company men ... Kim Gyngell (left) and Wayne Hope star in the ABC's Very Small Business.

Taking care of business

Wayne Hope's comedy supergroup draws belly laughs from a very small premise.

You've probably met a man like Don Angel. "Don's a fair dinkum," actor Wayne Hope pauses, searching for the perfect word. "Tosser. Yeah, he's a fair dinkum fraud. That's how I'd describe him."

Hope plays Angel in Very Small Business, a six-part ABC sitcom produced by a veritable supergroup of local talent. That group is led by Hope, a veteran of The Micallef Program, Stupid Stupid Man and the award-winning film The Castle, among others.

He co-stars with comedy stalwart Kim Gyngell (The Comedy Company, Full Frontal and Col'n Carpenter). Hope also co-wrote the series with Gary McCaffrie (Full Frontal, The Games, Newstopia) and co-produced it with his wife, Robyn Butler (The Librarians), who also has a small part.

"I play the therapist Don is sent to see by his GP," Butler says. "It's for irritable bowel syndrome and the GP says that he thinks it may all be more in Don's head than in his bum - which Don doesn't understand at all."

Don Angel is a marvellous comic creation. A publisher of niche magazines including Footy Inquest and Railway Union Monthly, Angel is an entrepreneur who's entirely self-made. The problem is, he hasn't made it yet and most likely never will. Aspirational, constipated and thrillingly unaware of his own shortcomings, he is a distant cousin of The Office's David Brent.

Very Small Business charts Angel's efforts to keep his business afloat, pay child support, appease his ex-wife, bond with his kids and unblock his internal plumbing.

He rents an office in a soulless space previously occupied by an IT company. The tea station is a picnic table boasting tea bags and instant coffee. On Angel's desk - beside the information sheet on "reflex points of the colon" - are half-a-dozen phones that substitute for a Commander system. In the corner are piles of undistributed magazines.

"Cats and Doggies at it again," trumpets Footy Inquest. "Boom gates to come down quicker," screams the cover of Railway Union Monthly. "When is a tribute plagiarism?" asks Music, Music, Music, Music (there were meant to be only three "Musics" but there was a stuff-up at the printer).

Unlike Angel, Australian comedy is on a roll and Very Small Business is another winner, largely thanks to its nuanced protagonist, who is in virtually every scene. It's also thanks to Gyngell's character, Ray Leonard, with whom Don forges a prickly partnership in a nondescript outer Melbourne business park.

"I'm sure comparisons will be drawn with The Office," Butler says, "just because of the setting. But what's different is the pendulum of that relationship. Leonard was a features writer for The Australian, a distinguished journalist whose life stopped six years ago."

When Leonard comes to work for Angel, it's akin to Phar Lap taking on a gig as a draught horse. Leonard is bemused to find himself writing an advertorial for a furniture showroom titled, "The bonfire sale of the vanity units".

"Vanity is defined as the act of taking excessive pride in one's appearance," Leonard writes. "Quite how a laminated cabinet contributes to an excess in this regard is unclear. Furthermore, no other room in the house adopts this style of nomenclature. A bed, for example, is not a lust unit."

And Very Small Business is not a vanity project. Hope and Gyngell play characters struggling to surmount serious flaws; as such, they're sometimes unlikeable - especially Angel.

"This is all the stuff we love writing about," Hope says. "The fronts we all have. Then it's prodding away at that."

As with Angel's bowel troubles, Very Small Business was a long time in the making. "We made a pilot in late 2004," McCaffrie explains. "That was the bare bones, simply two people in one space, partly to see how the stuff worked and whether it would sustain a show. We realised that we would have to open it out a lot to make the series work and on and off we've been writing it since then, but it's been stop-start, because we've all had other projects."

Indeed they have. Hope and Butler created and appeared in the subtle ABC sitcom The Librarians, which also featured Gyngell and was recently given the green light for a second series.

"In years gone by we were all competing to make the one sketch show," Hope says. "For years there were only sketch shows and there was only one at a time. But I've always thought the more the merrier. It's good there are all these shows of different types up and running."

Says Butler: "I think it's a sign of sophistication and maturity in the country that all these things can be embraced. I think there's a real momentum and a real sense of excitement that other people are working and all doing these things. There's a real crossover of people and they're all championing each other's work."

Hope adds: "We were talking about influences this morning. And Kim said, 'What were your influences?' I said, 'You! And Norman Gunston before that.' The industry is small."

Gyngell says: "There has been that through-line of comedy. I was a huge fan of [The] Aunty Jack [Show] but there is a whole generation of kids who have never heard of it. That's a shame because it was really interesting humour and very Australian."

One of the benefits of the recent boom in comedy is that the networks are more open to ideas and less fearful about approving new shows. The ABC promptly approved Very Small Business, in part because Hope and Butler had already delivered The Librarians.

For Butler and Hope, part of the joy of making Very Small Business is that it's a family affair. Making her debut is Molly Daniels, Butler's 12-year-old daughter, who plays Angel's daughter, Sam. Ten-year-old newcomer Lenny Lyon plays Angel's son, Alex.

"Molly has grown up with our dry sense of humour," Butler says. "This is the first thing she's ever done; she's not a TV kid at all. And Lenny we know from her school. That's one of Molly's best friend's little brothers."

Don Angel has the potential to become a classic Australian comedy creation, as embedded in popular consciousness as Chris Lilley's Ja'mie King, Mr G or Jonah.

"Don is a true believer," Hope says. "Not in the Labor Party sense but in himself. He's a lover of the fair go. He thinks anyone can make it here. He thinks free enterprise is fantastic. But underneath all that is a man who's a baby, really. He's a baby in chambray, with a haircut dating back to John Farnham."

Butler quips: "We were delighted with the hairdo. It's a bit flicky on the side with a middle part. It's 1973. It's John Farnham. It's Eddy Groves."

Hope says: "I think Don would like a man like Eddy. Don would probably think Eddy is a bit hard done by at the moment because Don enjoys winning in business - by any means at all."

Very Small Business begins on ABC1 on Wednesday, September 3, at 9.30pm.

By Sacha Molitorisz
August 25, 2008
Sydney Morning Herald