David Farnor | On 28, Aug 2023

It’s been almost 20 years since Kitty Flanagan was on ITV’s short-lived comedy series The Sketch Show – alongside Lee Mack, Tim Vine and others – and now, she makes a welcome return to our screens in the sitcom Fisk. The Aussie comedian, who has been at the Edinburgh Fringe on numerous occasions, gets a welcome leading role in the six-part series, which has landed on both ITVX and Netflix UK, hot on the heels of Colin from Accounts on BBC iPlayer.

The comedy follows Helen Tudor-Fisk, a lawyer who moves from Sydney to Melbourne. Hoping to start afresh after a divorce, and also trying to escape the shadow of her legal legend father, she takes a job with a small suburban law firm. Impressed by her name, they expect big things from her, but we soon learn that nothing of the sort is on the cards – and that, as far as Helen’s concerned, that’s everyone’s fault but her own.

It’s always a treat when a character has been tailormade to a performer’s strengths, and when they know their character inside and out, and that kind of minute detail abounds in Fisk, as Flanagan mines every line of dialogue and each tiny gesture for laughs. She’s brusque, rude and abrupt in equal measure, and her sharp edges rub off on the script, which matches her awkwar precision. From an opening gag about her brown work clothes to a running joke about her talking loudly in a cafe, she’s at once incapable of adapting to be considerate to others but also unable to tolerate anyone else being similarly self-centred.

The result is an enjoyably spiky portrait of someone at odds with the world around them, not just professionally, as she has to both live up to a company’s high standards and blend in with its smalltown quirkiness, but also personally, as a middle-aged woman trying to comprehend a rapidly changing society. What’s the line between an Airbnb and a rented apartment? Why does she need to smile on a mobile phone video? Why don’t the people around her respect her or her privacy? Why is her financially dependent ex-husband William (Bert La Bonté) treated as a successful role model?

All these tensions simmer largely unspoken, giving the script more depth than you’d expect without becoming a distraction. But that’s mainly because Flanagan – who co-writes with producer Vincent Sheehan and her sister, Penny Flanagan – is too busy dealing with the absurdities of her coworkers and clients, as Helen just tries to get through the day. Her customers are a veritably ridiculous bunch, from a kleptomaniac to someone who wants to force a relative to have very personal surgery. Her colleagues are even more so, from her incompetent boss, Ray Gruber (Marty Sheargold), to her passive aggressive predecessor, Roz (Julia Zemiro), with the office held together by Gen Z receptionist – and self-proclaimed “webmaster” – George (Aaron Chen). Intimate painters, lucky gold cats, “hacked” desks and $1 coffees from the corner shop all collide in a very unassuming web of chaos and forced politeness that never escalates into hysterical farce but finds its own rhythm in a quiet groove of eye-rolling cynicism.

Add to Watchlist