Sam Pang’s New ABC Comedy: Not Mocking Tassie

A New Comedy About a Controversial Subject

The ABC’s new series Ground Up is a workplace comedy that explores the establishment of Tasmania’s new AFL team and the construction of the stadium. The show tackles a subject that many Tasmanians find difficult to laugh at, given the controversy surrounding the project. The development of the stadium has sparked division across the Apple Isle, with the state’s independent planning commission condemning the project. A 2025 poll by the Australia Institute revealed that over two-thirds of Tasmanians did not want the stadium at all.

Despite this, the executive producers of Ground Up, Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler, along with star Sam Pang, believe that Tasmanians will eventually see the humor in the situation. Hope, who also directed all six episodes, notes that people are often cautious about new shows, especially when they involve sensitive topics. “It’s very common with our shows that people are, ‘Oh, what are they going to do with Upper Middle Bogan? Are you having a go at bogans?’ They’re always worried beforehand and then when you see it … it’s an equal measure and it’s having fun with people’s take on things and the behaviour and the extremes that we all go to around issues, and kind of celebrating that.”

Butler sees the topical nature of the show as a strength. “It’s a corporate juggernaut coming into a place, so there’s a point of friction, which I think is ultimately what creates a good workplace comedy,” she says. “And then you set the characters in it, there’s these opposing forces, and in this case the real-life current affairs had just presented themselves as the sources of friction: the state versus this giant corporation, which is the AFL.”

Pang adds that the show is not making fun of Tassie or Tasmanians, but rather focusing on bureaucracy, corporate versus community, and the challenges of setting up the club. “If anything, there’s more fun to be had in the bureaucracy and all the things that have to be done [to set up the club].”

The Characters and the Storyline

Written by Gary McCaffrie, who worked with Shaun Micallef on Mad as Hell for 15 seasons, Ground Up follows AFL administrator Hugh Shen (Sam Pang), who is sent to Hobart to establish the Great Southern Football Club. Working with Destiny Pitt (Emma Harvie), who tracks every government dollar spent, Shen faces a divided city, hapless co-workers, and an overbearing boss in AFL chief Alistair Penfold (Josh McConville).

When asked by the club’s head of marketing if he can address people’s concerns about the stadium, Hugh is blunt in his reply: “We’ll build the stadium and shut them up.” While not everything works—our reviewer was not a fan—it is clear that McCaffrie’s experience on Mad as Hell shines through, particularly in the ridiculousness of finding a team mascot, a club song, and corporate sponsors.

Sam Pang’s Lead Role

Ground Up marks Sam Pang’s first lead acting role, after guest appearances in comedies such as Fisk and Urzila. He is self-deprecating about his abilities on screen, joking that “this is not Daniel Day-Lewis sort of stuff. It’s still a big leap [but] … all I’m doing is waiting for the other actors to finish their lines so I can say mine.”

Hope, however, is full of praise for Pang. “He was incredibly respectful of the process,” says Hope. “You would think with someone who’s done as many flying hours in front of a camera as Sam has that he could take a position and go, ‘I’ve got this’, but he was very deferential to the process and saying, ‘OK, I haven’t done narrative before, so break it down for me’.”

Pang spent time with Hope and Butler long before filming to understand the tone of the show and how to approach it. “He really had made the decision that this is something creatively he wanted to do and he immersed himself in the process and he immersed himself with the ensemble cast and spent lots of time with them, which was such a generous and smart thing to do.”

Casting and Criticism

As for whether a comedian with limited acting experience has the capability to lead a show, Butler and Hope only see positives. “I understand that and I think we’ve got a really big history across all our work of putting actors in [our shows],” says Butler. “But you’ve got to work from the place of, well, two things. I read the script and went, ‘That’s Sam Pang’. I didn’t go, ‘What’s a name? Who’s a name that we can put in here?’ It wasn’t working backwards. It was seeing somebody in the part, which we always do first and foremost.”

Hope adds, “I also question the kind of compartmentalisation of performers. We’re in a tiny country as it is. If we need to segment even more and go, ‘OK, you’re in that corner and you’re in that corner’ … Plus we have a great history of comic voices in this country, shows are led by comic voices that come through and they build the shows around themselves. I think it would be silly to deny that this is a great ensemble of really fine actors in this show.”

Pang remains unbothered by the criticism. “If Sam Neill or another actor was asked to do it and they went with them I would have completely understood.”