Australia’s ABC revisits Small Business

The ABC in Australia has ordered a sequel to the 2008 six-part comedy Very Small Business.

Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler’s Gristmill will produce Back in Very Small Business for the pubcaster, with the show following further misadventures of Don Angel (Hope), a dodgy small businessman who runs the grandly titled World Wide Business Group.

In the original, Angel’s one-man publishing empire was hurtling towards liquidation, his wife had left him and he suffered from an irritable bowel condition.

In the new series the still-dysfunctional company has an ethnically diverse and psychologically fragile workforce, for which Don receives government subsidies.

The cast will include Kym Gyngell, who played Ray, the company’s sole employee, a journalist who had battled depression for six years, in the original.

Hope and Butler will produce and the latter will direct the show, which is due to start shooting in Melbourne later this year.

Gristmill previously produced Upper Middle Bogan, a sitcom that starred Robyn Malcolm, Glenn Robbins and Robyn Nevin and ran for three seasons on the ABC in Oz and screened in the US on Hulu, retitled Bess of Both Worlds.

Katey Sagal and John Carroll Lynch played the leads in a US pilot remake coproduced by CBS Television Studios and ABC Studios in association with Dark Toy Entertainment.