by FilmInk Staff

Central Coast mockumentary Gosford City Players wins Best Web Series at Hollywood’s Web Series Festival

The A$3,000 comedy is also nominated at Rio Webfest, an Official Selection of NZ Web Fest, and a contender for the 2027 AACTA Awards.

Gosford City Players, a five-episode mockumentary comedy web series made on the NSW Central Coast, has won Best Web Series at the 12th annual Web Series Festival, the Hollywood-based festival that announced its 2026 winners on 22 September. The series won ahead of 26 other selected web series from around the world.

In its winners announcement, the festival wrote: “A standout entry blending documentary style with community theatre chaos, Gosford City Players chronicles the fallout from a controversial production, a missing treasurer, and a desperate attempt to save the company with a ‘culturally diverse’ staging of Pirates of Penzance. Judges praised its unforgettable characters and heartfelt journey from ensemble to center stage.”

The win leads a growing international run. Gosford City Players is nominated in the International Digital Production Incentive category at Rio Webfest in Brazil, with the winner to be announced at the festival from 27 to 30 November 2026. The series is also an Official Selection of NZ Web Fest 2026.

At home, Gosford City Players is a contender for Best Online Drama or Comedy Series in the 2027 AACTA Awards, often called the “Australian Oscars”.

The series centres on community theatre director Kip Henry who, never one to let a crisis interfere with his vision, announces that the next production will not only save Gosford City Players but also be the most culturally diverse show the company has ever staged. Meanwhile the company’s videographer, Alan, seizes the moment to make a documentary.

Gosford City Players was created by Timothy Wilde, Carley Edmonds and Shane Emmett, all of whom live on the Central Coast. Wilde wrote and directed the series, Edmonds produced, and Wilde and Emmett co-produced, with Bob Fitzgerald as executive producer. Emmett leads the cast as Kip Henry, alongside Kristy Lee Hocking (Hayley Richmond), Kate Ryerson (Amber Benoit), Nick Byrne (Christopher Andrews), Andrew Steel (Samuel Samson), Joe Kalou (Luke Jackson), Amanda Benson (Bernie Jacobs), Carmel Mullin (Jan Smith), Chris King (Reg Fennesy), Jess King (Krista Lockwood), Kirsty Lee Allan (Cody Hammond), David Kerslake (David Rhodes), Tommy James Green (Trevor Dunstan) and Ben Ross (Dwayne Lina-Huisman).

The series is a completely independent production, self-funded and self-distributed. It was shot at Red Tree Theatre in Tuggerah and on the streets of Gosford with many Central Coast cast and crew, on an estimated budget of A$3,000, and premiered on YouTube on 1 February 2026. Its roots go back to a 2006 film school skit Wilde wrote about an ageing community theatre actor locked in his dressing room, refusing to take the stage as Hamlet. By 2009 it had become a short film starring Chris King, and over the years, Wilde developed it into a series.

“At its core, Gosford City Players is an absurdist piece about the unsung heroes of community theatre,” said director Timothy Wilde. “These are people who pour time, energy, and passion into their craft, with no fame, no pay cheque, often not even applause. They do it because it gives them purpose, it’s their will to power, and that’s profoundly engaging. These characters are me. I’m laughing at the absurdity of their need for purpose, not at them.

“Authenticity in story is essential. Story is a tribal ritual, and community theatre around Gosford and Sydney was my tribe for years. Carley and Shane too, we came up through it together,” Wilde said. “After two decades of working on other people’s productions, the three of us found ourselves back in Gosford where our creative journeys had started. We realised it was time to make something that was truly ours.”

The web series is a proof of concept for an ongoing television series planned to be shot on the Central Coast, and has attracted interest from several overseas distributors and broadcasters.

Watch

All five episodes of Gosford City Players (43 minutes in total) are free to watch on YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE8SutP4PK6zODJ4a9j3rK6X2cleVjmsc

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