{"id":633080,"date":"2026-04-27T01:09:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T01:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633080\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T01:09:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T01:09:34","slug":"bad-company-art-and-big-business-collide-in-new-anne-edmonds-kitty-flanagan-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633080\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Company: Art and big business collide in new Anne Edmonds, Kitty Flanagan comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anne Edmonds was performing a show with the Melbourne Theatre Company when she was struck with the idea for her latest comedy series Bad Company \u2014 an unfettered satire of the arts world.<\/p>\n

Fast Facts about Bad Company<\/p>\n

What: A sharp comedy with heart featuring two of Australia’s comedy greats going head-to-head.<\/p>\n

Starring: Anne Edmonds, Kitty Flanagan, Angella Dravid, Cameron James, Will Gibb, Kira Puru and Ben Pfeiffer.<\/p>\n

Where: On ABC iview.<\/p>\n

Most likely to make you feel: That no-one could satirise the arts world quite like Eddo.<\/p>\n

Edmonds says her musical debut as a wily aged care manager in Tom Gleisner’s 2023 production of Bloom was an “amazing experience”.<\/p>\n

“But, after spending a lot of time in that building, I was like, ‘[The theatre] feels like the perfect place to set a sit-com,” she laughs.<\/p>\n

The AACTA-winning comedian didn’t just create and write Bad Company. She also stars in the six-part series as artistic director Margie Argyle, who’s run her beloved “Papa’s” avant-garde theatre into the ground in her six short years at the helm.<\/p>\n

This is unsurprising, given Margie Argie is more interested in gyrating across the floor and putting on insufferable one-woman shows starring herself than anything real audiences would pay to see.<\/p>\n

With the future of The Argyle Theatre in peril, the board installs restrained chief executive Julia McNamara (Kitty Flanagan) to turn things around. Of course, J Mac is a “neoliberal wet dream” of a corporate robot who’s never even heard of Henrik Ibsen (ahem, the father of modern drama).<\/p>\n

\"Kitty<\/p>\n

Adding insult to Margie’s injury, one of Julia’s cost-cutting ideas involves axing the costume department and buying ready-made get-ups from Spotlight. (ABC\/Guesswork Television: Sarah Enticknap)<\/p>\n

Cue clashes over everything from the merits of having a dedicated perruquier (AKA wig-maker) on staff, to whether or not they should stage a production of Grease to keep the lights on.<\/p>\n

At the mercy of each of their whims is a supporting cast including comedians Angella Dravid, Cameron James and Will Gibb, musician Kira Puru and actor Ben Pfeiffer (as the aforementioned perruquier).<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

Facing The Argyle’s closure, will the ensemble find a way to work together despite backstage chaos and their differences? Will Margie learn to listen to other people, and Julia to express herself freely?<\/p>\n

You can probably guess where the story’s going already.<\/p>\n

\"Angella,<\/p>\n

Edmonds and Flanagan had good company on set, supported by comics Angella Dravid and Cameron James, along with quietly hilarious actor Ben Pfeiffer. (ABC\/Guesswork Television: Sarah Enticknap)<\/p>\n

But Bad Company was never about reinventing the sit-com.<\/p>\n

“Characters are what I’m interested in most of all,” Edmonds says. “My vision was: ‘How do I make these characters as strong as they can be?'”<\/p>\n

In many ways, the series feels like the culmination of all the painstaking persona work she’s done her entire career.<\/p>\n

\"Will<\/p>\n

Rounding out the comedian-heavy cast is Will Gibb, who brings to life Julia’s lost, naive son Ryan. (ABC\/Guesswork Television: Sarah Enticknap)<\/p>\n

It all started with the Melbourne comedy circuit<\/p>\n

Bursting onto the stand-up scene during the 2010 iteration of the Melbourne Comedy Festival’s RAW open mic competition<\/a>, it didn’t take long for Edmonds to gain notoriety for her cutting observations of the inner-city suburban Australian psyche.<\/p>\n

Stream Bad Company now on ABC iview<\/a><\/p>\n

Margie, the unstable artistic director of the iconic theatre company, The Argyle, is up for the fight of her life, when Julia is hi-jacked from her corporate career to save the place from financial ruin.<\/p>\n

By 2017, she was winning awards for her portrayal of unhinged fashion and beauty expert Helen Bidou, who featured on breakfast TV satire Get Krack!n. The comic returned to our screens that same year with The Edge of the Bush, an original miniseries Edmonds created, wrote \u2014 and played a casual four characters in.<\/p>\n

But the critically acclaimed absurd tale of a calisthenics dynasty rocked by an incest scandal was constrained by five episodes that were 10 minutes long, and saw just one season.<\/p>\n

Margie and her colleagues are given significantly more time to develop in Bad Company.<\/p>\n

\"Anne<\/p>\n

Edmonds based Margie on a mix of people she’s met in the arts, with a bit of herself thrown in: “My partner would probably say going from ‘fine’ to ‘not fine’ very quick.” (ABC\/Guesswork Television: Sarah Enticknap)<\/p>\n

And in dedicating herself to the complex artistic director \u2014 who is simultaneously the embodiment of cringe, deeply irresponsible, deceptively manipulative, and a good person who is struggling \u2014 Edmonds was able to extend herself in new ways.<\/p>\n

“Margie is deluded, [it] is her main feature. [But] to give a character depth, you can’t be silly the whole time. The hardest thing for me was to try and be earnest,” she explains.<\/p>\n

“My instinct as a comedian is to go for laughs always \u2014 trying to go for pathos makes me uncomfortable, but I’m glad I did it.”<\/p>\n

That pathos \u2014 combined with a measured, confident supporting cast of familiar characters like Julia \u2014 is what elevates this show from a slapstick-lite series to a sharp comedy that centres human, complicated characters.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

“Even though [Margie is] loose as a person, I worked really hard on keeping her in the real world as much as I could,” Edmonds says.
\n\u00a0 (ABC\/Guesswork Television: Sarah Enticknap)<\/p>\n

The Flanagan factor<\/p>\n

Edmonds says she asked Fisk and Utopia star Kitty Flanagan to act alongside her in Bad Company before she started writing back in 2024.<\/p>\n

Flanagan didn’t even question what it was about before agreeing.<\/p>\n

\"Kitty<\/p>\n

Julia was familiar territory for Flanagan, who quips the hardest thing about playing her was pretending to be good at finances: “That was some excellent acting from me.” (ABC\/Guesswork Television: Sarah Enticknap)<\/p>\n

“I’m happy to work with Eddo on anything. She’s one of the funniest people I know,” explains the comedian, whose 2026 Melbourne Comedy Festival hour was nominated for the Most Outstanding Show award<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I love her style of comedy. Unpredictable, slightly unhinged and with occasional bouts of random shouting \u2026 She’s like Will Ferrell.”Kitty Flanagan was initially told Fisk was too unlikeable. Now, her sitcom is an international fave<\/a><\/p>\n

The much-loved Australian comedian speaks about the hard road to getting her ABC TV sitcom Fisk made, and its international success.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, Edmonds still thinks herself “extremely lucky” Flanagan said yes.<\/p>\n

“It’s obviously a real thrill for me, because she’s one of my heroes,” she continues.<\/p>\n

“She and I have a similar background in wanting to make people laugh, and I’ve loved working with her [in the past].”<\/p>\n

The success of Fisk, and all of Flanagan’s experience making TV herself, also helped.<\/p>\n

“She was very understanding of what I was trying to do, and going through.”<\/p>\n

‘You’d think I’d have learned’<\/p>\n

Producing a TV show you’ve created, written and starred in couldn’t be more different to the comedy world Edmonds started in.<\/p>\n

“The incredible thing about standup is you have an idea in your head and then you just say it into a microphone without a million processes in between,” she laughs.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot of people in the mix when you’re making a TV show, and especially when you’re making the first season of a TV show; everyone’s got their own anxieties about it [and] wants it to be a certain way.”<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

Edmonds says she was in a “bit of shell shock” after making The Edge of the Bush, struggling to come to terms with the differences in the final version of the show.<\/p>\n

She was more open-minded with Bad Company, but it was still quite an experience.<\/p>\n

“You’d think I would have learned. Writing something on your own is hard. I seem to have done it again, and on a bigger scale.”<\/p>\n

Flanagan echoes this.<\/p>\n

“One of the things I’ve learned is that it’s a miracle any TV show ever gets made,” she says.<\/p>\n

“You need to really believe in your idea and trust you know what’s funny. That’s why Eddo is so good; she knows what’s funny, you can trust her.”<\/p>\n

The comedian’s faith in Edmonds was so unwavering that she made a point of asking her to show her exactly what she wanted from Julia.<\/p>\n

“If I wasn’t getting it right, I’d ask Eddo to say it for me,” Flanagan says. “Some actors don’t like a ‘line read’, but I love it.”<\/p>\n

A delicate balance<\/p>\n

There’s little about the performing arts world that goes unskewered in Bad Company \u2014 from the stereotypically delicate constitution of an actor to the concept of putting on a ridiculously long, foreign play without an intermission.<\/p>\n

The line between poking fun at the arts world and outright mocking it, \u00e0 la Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and his viral comments about the opera and ballet<\/a>, is a thin one.<\/p>\n

But the gags all land, whether about marketing strategies that boil down to disseminating “copious totes”, or Margie’s repeated declarations of herself as a “storyteller, a truth custodian, a disruptor, a witch, a feminist, a mother” \u2014 in Helen-Bidou-coded fashion.<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

The “copious totes” in question. (ABC\/Guesswork Television: Sarah Enticknap)<\/p>\n

Only someone who deeply loves the arts, but has also spent a significant amount of time looking in on it, could satirise it so perfectly.<\/p>\n

“I’m not someone who really grew up in the arts. I didn’t do youth theatre or anything like that. I wish I had, but I didn’t. I got into comedy when I was 28,” Edmonds says.<\/p>\n

After almost 20 years in the entertainment industry, she still thinks of herself as having “one foot in the arts and one foot in the real world”.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes in the artsy kind of left world, it’s easy to go, ‘Oh, everyone who works in banks is stupid and conservative, but I think that’s too easy \u2026 So I tried to show that side of things.<\/p>\n

“Theatres grapple with the line between making art and putting the lights on, and you have to talk about money, unfortunately. Julia’s point of view is relevant, too.”<\/p>\n

\"Bad<\/a><\/p>\n

By the end of the series, Edmonds hopes viewers love The Argyle Theatre and the people behind it as much as she loves the arts.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully I haven’t offended my theatre colleagues too much,” she says.<\/p>\n

“But the great thing about being in the arts is we have the capacity to reflect on ourselves.”<\/p>\n

Watch Bad Company free on ABC iview and ABC TV<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anne Edmonds was performing a show with the Melbourne Theatre Company when she was struck with the idea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[169930,306641,64,63,169931,306638,306637,134,36361,306642,36362,306640,306639],"class_list":["post-633080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-anne-edmonds","tag-anne-edmonds-tv-show","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bad-company","tag-bad-company-tv-series","tag-bad-company-tv-show","tag-entertainment","tag-fisk","tag-get-krakn","tag-kitty-flanagan","tag-kitty-flanagan-tv-show","tag-the-edge-of-the-bush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}