Fans of bureaucracy-themed workplace comedies such as Utopia and The Hollowmen will feel right at home watching Ground Up, an easily digestible and well-paced series that feasts on the genre’s familiar staples: pointless meetings, labyrinthine approval processes, mountains of red tape and endless rounds of buck-passing. Like the Sydney Olympics-themed The Games – my favourite Australian show in this genre – Gary McCaffrie’s series is about the management of a major upcoming sports project: the launch of an AFL team in Tasmania.
As part of the AFL licensing deal, a new stadium must also be built, which is controversial for various reasons, not least because it’ll cost a pretty penny. This is all rather topical: while each episode (this review encompasses the first four) begins with text declaring that “the following events never took place”, many viewers will recognise its real-life scaffolding. After years of debate and hullabaloo, the Tasmanian parliament finally approved a $1.13bn Hobart stadium late last year, allowing Tassie’s team – the Devils – to enter the AFL and AFLW.
