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Aunty Donna is an Australian surrealist comedy group formed in Melbourne in 2011. The group consists of performers and writers Mark Bonanno, Broden Kelly and Zachary Ruane, alongside writer and director Sam Lingham, director Max Miller and composer Thomas Zahariou. Their work spans numerous live shows, a YouTube channel, a podcast, a studio album, the Netflix series Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun, the ABC Australia series Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe and the picture book Always Room for Christmas Pud. Members of the group have cited comedians Monty Python, Shaun Micallef, The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Fielder, and Tim & Eric as influences, as well as television series such as Mr. Show with Bob and David and Stella, and programming block Adult Swim. They have frequently collaborated with other comedians such as Michelle Brasier. History 2011–2014: Formation and live shows Aunty Donna was formed in 2011 after its five original members (Mark Bonanno, Broden Kelly, Joe Kosky, Sam Lingham, and Zachary Ruane) met at University of Ballarat's Arts Academy. Trained as actors, the group saw a lack of demand for independent theatre and decided to attempt comedy instead, beginning as live performers. Their first live show, Aunty Donna in Pantsuits, debuted in 2012 at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) and was nominated for a Golden Gibbo award, which pushed the group to continue making comedy. Kelly also recruited his high school friend, composer Thomas Zahariou (née Armstrong) soon after its founding. To perform at the festival, MICF required the group to film a selection of comedy sketches, for which they recruited director Max Miller, who Kelly and Zahariou knew from high school. They created sketches for C31 Melbourne, and began their YouTube channel in 2011 to upload the sketches from C31 and their MICF online. Joe Kosky and later Adrian Dean departed Aunty Donna to pursue other ventures, bringing the group to the current six members. Their second live show, Aunty Donna and the Fax Machine Shop, debuted at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2012, and won its People’s Choice Award. 2014 saw their third live show, World's Greatest Showbag, at the MICF, as well as a Best Of live show that debuted the group internationally at both the SF Sketchfest and Edinburgh Festival Fringe. 2015–2019: Television pilots, YouTube sketches and The Album In 2015, the group created a self-titled half-hour television pilot for the ABC and Screen Australia as part of the inaugural Fresh Blood Pilot Season comedy initiative, but the series was not picked up. According to Kelly, the pilot was about the experience of Dean leaving the group. They released the sketch "Bikie Wars" on YouTube, featuring John Wood of Blue Heelers fame, which became their most popular video. The Sydney Morning Herald credited the group with successfully converting its online fanbase into "bums on seats" for their live shows, and Ruane also credited his group's YouTube following for their ability to sell out shows in London earlier in the year. In 2016, the group released the web series 1999, based on the Y2K panic and funded by Screen Australia as part of their $100,000 Skip Ahead talent development initiative. They were also selected by Comedy Central for its Australian Not for TV web series platform, and were the first to be launched on the site. The group began the weekly Aunty Donna Podcast. In 2017, the group released a second half-hour comedy pilot, Chaperones created with Australian online streaming service Stan and produced by Nel Minchin for In Films, in which the trio were entrusted with the care of a child star. The pilot was again not continued into a full series. In April, they starred in the music video for hip-hop duo Horrorshow's "Eat The Cake". They adopted the mantra "whatever's funniest", attempting to adapt their source material uniquely to different comedic formats such as their live shows and YouTube sketches. Their live show Big Boys was the group's first North American theater tour. April 2018 saw the release of the group's first full-length studio album, The Album, which featured Montaigne, Matt Okine, Michelle Brasier, and Joey Walker of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and was followed by a national tour in November and October. The Album debuted at number 30 on the Australian charts and received an ARIA nomination for Best Comedy Release. They released a version of a past live show, New Show, on YouTube, filmed at the Enmore Theatre. Their production company, Haven't You Done Well Productions, was established. The group also released the sketch "Always Room for Christmas Pud", which the Australian Financial Review later said had become "something of a Millennial cultural touchstone in Australia". The sketch would become a running gag for the group, later receiving a family friendly re-release in 2022. Making use of their production company, the group released the 16-part Glennridge Secondary College web series in 2019, which followed a fictional Australian secondary school. It was nominated for an AACTA Award for the best online drama or comedy. 2020-present: Big Ol' House of Fun, The Magical Dead Cat Tour, and Coffee Cafe In November 2020, Aunty Donna released their Netflix series Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun, produced by Ed Helms' Pacific Electric Picture Company and Scott Aukerman's Comedy Bang! Bang!, and featuring guest appearances from Helms, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Antony Starr, Kristen Schaal, Paul F. Tompkins, and others. To promote the show, the group erected a replica of the Utah monolith in Melbourne with help from YouTubers I Did a Thing and Aleksa Vulović. Neil Patrick Harris and RuPaul both praised the show. In March 2021, Aunty Donna hosted the Opening Night Comedy Allstars Supershow at the MICF. They made a cameo appearance on season 1 of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under in June. 2022 saw The Magical Dead Cat Tour, the group's first live tour in three years after it was delayed by COVID-19 lockdowns, covering Australia and New Zealand. Later in the year, the group released Always Room for Christmas Pud, a picture book published by Penguin Books and illustrated by James Fosdike, based on their popular YouTube video of the same name. They hosted the musical comedy gala at Sydney's Just for Laughs comedy festival in December. For Christmas, the group released a real "$30 Bottle Of Wine", in reference to their 2016 sketch of the same name. In August 2022, the group announced that they had been signed by ABC to create a new sitcom TV series depicting them running a café in the Melbourne laneways. The show was later named Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe and was released on the 12 April 2023. Alongside the main members of the group, the series starred Gaby Seow, Sally-Anne Upton, Michelle Brasier, Vidya Rajan, and Mish Wittrup, while several guest stars made an appearance including Richard Roxburgh, Pia Miranda, Nazeem Hussain, Miranda Tapsell, Shaun Micallef, T.... Discover the Donna Kelly popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Donna Kelly books.