The Sonny Disposition ★★★★
If you’ve ever despaired about the fractured, ethics-challenged, content-gorged landscape of modern phone-focussed media, The Sonny Disposition is for you. It fulfils every fear of what’s behind a podcast, particularly if it’s a successful one focused on interviewing celebrities, and most of those celebrities are schlepping their film/TV show/range of dubious merchandise (rear-end health product Anal Bliss anyone?). You know the ones. The hosts laugh and rib each other maniacally and the celebrities chat with a sincere and winning manner, just like they did on every other podcast. Cynical, moi?
The Sonny Disposition is also a new six-episode Australian sitcom airing on Stan* and Nine*, which is a sentence you don’t hear very often. Original comedy, made here, aired on an Australian-owned commercial TV network and streaming service. More of that!
The show, a workplace comedy, is created by comedian and digital creator Simon Taylor with writer-producer Josh Samuels. It follows Taylor, who also directs the series, as Sonny Tyler, a podcast host desperate to move his show from third to first place in the podcast rankings. His podcast team, including a co-host, a sound and video producer and a boss, are a dysfunctional lot. His obsession with the podcast’s success means his relationship with his fiancée, Beth, is looking increasingly shaky.
The best thing about The Sonny Disposition is how quick it is, in humour, subject, acting pace and editing. Scenes ping between characters and there is excellent comic timing. No joke or set-up is laboured.
The script is peppy. Much is made about the worthiness of a doing a podcast versus how much attention you can garner to make people tune in. Here is a world brimming with reality TV stars hawking their rapidly diminishing celebrity, film stars trying to be just like ordinary people and podcast hosts starting second podcasts every other day.
Characters combine a cartoon-like moxie with extreme believability. Even if you haven’t worked in a share office, or been near content creators, everyone from Toby, Tyler’s co-host, scootering or rollerblading between meetings, to Maddie, the over-cheery receptionist extolling the fast-typing support guy “AI”, and management leading an endless idea process meetings rings true.
There are in-jokes. World-weary boss Angie, talking on a call about one simple sexist comment getting you cancelled, ends the conversation with, “You tell Marty I said, ‘Hi.’” Those frequenting the share office background look askance at anybody else for daring to disturb their desk/vibe/path of movement. This is real life.
An abundance of cut-away visual jokes meant pausing to read signs on walls and desks. “A Grapple A Day Keeps the Loses Away” is a spelling triumph in a gym. A whiteboard podcast wish-list includes five Hemsworths including “Lachlan” and “Gus”.
The Sonny Disposition is also a tale of initiative. Taylor, an established comedy writer and stand-up who has written for Jay Leno and Shaun Micallef and was the first Australian stand-up to perform on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, came up with the show in 2025 when he gained access to an empty office space that year. In six weeks, a pilot was written, cast, filmed and edited. The full series was filmed in February.
The Sonny Disposition is fun stuff with potential for even greater things for Taylor and collaborators. It’s the sort of thing the TV industry should be making more of.
The Sonny Disposition premieres on 9Now and 9Go from November 11 and is now streaming on Stan.
*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
