New comedies from Sam Pang and Kitty Flanagan announced as ABC reveals 2026 line-up

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Sam Pang will star in Ground Up, a new scripted comedy series for the ABC, as a football administrator who is sent to Tasmania to oversee the creation of the state’s first AFL team, and the construction of a dedicated stadium.

The show was unveiled as part of the national broadcaster’s annual upfront presentation in Sydney on Thursday afternoon as part of a line-up that leans heavily on familiar faces.

Sam Pang will star in a comedy about the AFL’s efforts to launch a team and a stadium in Tasmania.

There will also be new shows from Fisk creator Kitty Flanagan, former Q+A host Hamish McDonald, documentarian Marc Fennell and Gruen regular Todd Sampson, as well as documentaries about comedy great John Clarke and disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris.

Ground Up, a satire firmly anchored in real-world sport and politics, is created by Gary McCaffrie, a key writer on Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell. The six-episode series will be produced by McCaffrie and Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope, the powerhouse husband and wife team behind Upper Middle Bogan, The Librarians and Little Lunch, with Hope directing.

While Tasmanians would welcome a team in the AFL, the proposed stadium — which could end up costing as much as $2 billion — has been hugely controversial, even triggering a state election (the Liberals, who back its construction, were returned to government).

“What I love about it is that it’s a current affairs story,” says Butler. “The AFL trying to mount their 19th team in Tasmania, on the condition that the state builds a stadium – that’s just a really funny premise to dig into.”

The show will have echoes of Utopia, Butler predicts, because “it’s a government department trying to do something, so it’s got that definite bureaucratic streak”. It will also have echoes of The Games, on which McCaffrie worked as a writer alongside the late, great John Clarke.

A pregnant Lorin Clarke with her father, John Clarke, in 2011.

A documentary about the ABC comedy favourite, But Also John Clarke, will also screen on the broadcaster next year. Written and directed by his daughter, Lorin, and drawing on a series of interviews she conducted with her father for a planned podcast that never eventuated, the film is sure to resonate, says ABC director of screen Jennifer Collins.

“This is a passion project for Lorin, obviously, and it has just come together so beautifully,” Collins said. “And I think with the ABC’s connection with John via The Games and Clarke and Dawe and so many projects, you know this is going to be a really special event.”

Another legend of Australian entertainment will get the documentary treatment, but to rather different effect, with the two-part series Rolf Harris: Can You Tell What I Am Yet? examining the secret life of the man with the wobble board and the abstract paintings (which give the series its title).

A co-commission with Amazon UK, it will, says Collins, “explore the idea of the power given to celebrity, and how you can hide in plain sight” as it probes beneath the avuncular demeanour to the decades of sexual abuse of women and girls that eventually led to Harris being jailed in Britain.

Fisk star Kitty Flanagan will join fellow comedian Anne Edmonds in Bad Company, a comedy series about the clash of cultures that ensues when a corporate executive (Flanagan) is brought in to sort out the financial mess created by a freewheeling artistic director (Edmonds) who has brought a famous theatre to the brink of collapse.

Kitty Flanagan and Anne Edmonds co-star in comedy series Bad Company.

On the drama front, The Newsreader star Anna Torv will lead Dustfall, a “tropic noir” about a detective investigating a spate of drink-spiking assaults, while Michael Dorman stars in Treasure & Dirt, a detective series adapted from Chris Hammer’s best-selling novel, which is set in an opal mining town.

The already announced three-part biopic Goolagong, directed by Wayne Blair, a look at the early career and life of one of Australia’s most legendary sporting figures, is set to be aired early next year. Shakedown, meanwhile, will give the drama treatment to the robo-debt crisis, which was also recently examined in a documentary series on SBS.

Lila McGuire plays Evonne Goolagong in the highly anticipated three-part biopic.

Marc Fennell will examine masculinity in the age of the “manosphere” in The State of Man and Hamish McDonald will look at what happens when the very concept of truth is under assault in The Matter of Facts. Sarah Ferguson will probe the eight days in 2001 that have done so much to shape the debate on immigration and politics, both locally and internationally, in the 25 years since in Tampa: The Boat That Turned the Tide.

Todd Sampson’s Why? will grapple with a range of topics, including donor dads, doomsday preppers, and base jumpers, asking of each the most fundamental question: why do it? Shaun Micallef also returns with another documentary, Shaun Micallef’s Going for Broke, which looks at Australia’s passion for gambling.

Tony Armstrong will host Always Was Tonight, billed as a “sharp satirical show where the news gets decolonised”, while popular band King Stingray will lend their talents to the animated children’s series Gurtha Nharana Lullaby, a Dreamtime story from Arnhem Land.

In the entertainment space, Julia Morris will host Class Clowns, in which comedians are sent back to the schoolyard to tackle assignments based on classic school subjects.

Claiming next year’s line-up will contain “60 premium television series … the most content we’ve delivered in recent years” and had something “for all Australians”, Collins says ABC viewers are hungry for local content.

Hamish McDonald examines the decline in the status of a commonly agreed “truth” in The Matter of Facts.

“Australian audiences are really choosing to watch Australian shows over our international offerings,” she says. “A lot of our acquisitions are doing really well for us, but it is the Australian titles that are always up there in the top 10. So I think in years to come, we will do more children’s, we will do more documentaries and scripted drama.”

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