Launched in 2012, the series interviews participants, mostly individually and in domestic settings, in a style similar to the UK's Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women. Like the Grumpys, the Agonies have strong views that they express with flair.

"It's a deceptively simple format," says Steve Vizard, one of the recent inclusions to the screen family, who appears alongside Lawrence Mooney, Julia Zemiro, Dave O'Neil, Sam Pang, Hannah Gadsby, Samantha Lane and many others as part of the lively line-up in The Agony of Modern Manners.

In a six-part series that begins by looking at workplace, domestic and online etiquette, the interviewees tackle a range of topics: appropriate work wear; acceptable use of the office fridge; bathroom habits; control of the remote control; text-message shorthand.

It's produced by High Wire Films, the company created by actor and writer Adam Zwar with his wife, actor, writer and director Amanda Brotchie, and Nicole Minchin. Zwar asked Vizard to join the uncles for last year's Christmas special and Vizard recalls the invitation as "Do you want to play?"

Zwar says, "Amanda, Nicole and I are all big Steve Vizard fans. I was obsessed with Tonight Live as a teenager and, embarrassingly, had Steve's cover of Time magazine hanging up on my bedroom wall next to the poster of tennis player Gabriela Sabatini. I worked with Steve on The Wedge (2006-07) and saw that he was a voracious consumer of media and had strong opinions. So I always wanted him to be part of the Agony series, but had to wait for a topic that would suit him. I thought manners would be in his wheelhouse and it turns out I was right."

Vizard was happy to play, partly because he likes Zwar but also because he admires the series. Watching its early episodes, he recalls marvelling at its simplicity and then realising the half hour had flown by "because it was so captivating''.

''It's kind of a sleight of hand because what seems so simple is actually made simple by very clever questioning and selection of topics and clever post-production: finding a narrative of all the answers and weaving them together so that it looks like a conversation across different people. It looks simple, but Adam's cleverness makes it so."

Vizard knows his stuff when it comes to assessing the intricacies of TV production and the mechanics of comedy. He has a substantial track record as a producer, writer and performer stretching back to the popular early-'90s sketch comedy series Fast Forward.

With Andrew Knight, he headed Artist Services, the production company responsible for Fast Forward, its successor, Full Frontal, and a crop of series, mini-series and films. The comedies offered early opportunities for a host of writer-performers including Jane Turner, Gina Riley, Magda Szubanski and Shaun Micallef.

"If Australian comedy had an ATP tennis-style ranking system, Vizard would be at the top," says Zwar. "He's revered in comedy circles and stories about Artist Services are the stuff of legend. It was a dream factory that gave so many people their start. Together with Working Dog, they were responsible for the renaissance of Australian comedy in the '90s."

From 1990 to '93, Vizard also hosted his own Tonight show, a late-night variety and chat show unashamedly modelled on David Letterman's. He won a Gold Logie in 1991 and for a heady period was one of the most prominent on-screen personalities and behind-the-scenes forces in Australian television. Trained as a lawyer, he was entrepreneurial and energetic, excited by ideas and talent. He also expanded his interests beyond the small screen, as a businessman, company director, philanthropist and art patron. The father of five was named Father of the Year in 2002 and made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1997.

But the purple patch came to a dramatic and ignominious halt when Vizard was the subject of legal action. Settling a protracted civil case in 2005, he admitted that, as a Telstra director, he had contravened corporations law by improperly using Telstra information to gain advantage in share trading. He was fined $390,000 and banned from boardrooms for 10 years. It was a humiliating fall from grace.

Since then, he's emerged gradually back into the media, initially through radio: filling in on Triple M's Hot Breakfast show in 2010; hosting a morning show on the short-lived Melbourne Talk Radio (MTR) station and working as a fill-in host on 3AW. In 2012, he played journalist Richard Carleton in the telemovie Beaconsfield, and he's become a regular guest panelist on The Project.

Vizard says his current level of engagement with TV suits him. "I'm enjoying what I'm doing at the level I'm doing it. The fun is doing it with people I like. It's sort of like the media version of having a really good lunch with someone, catching up with people whose company I enjoy."

He's also enjoying not having the producer role: "It's all care and no responsibility. I go into The Project and watch people rush around … And I sit there, sipping a cup of coffee and thinking, 'oh those poor bastards'. It's their responsibility: all I have to do is make some wisecrack in five minutes."

Zwar says Vizard brings "eloquence and a touch of class" to the Agony experience. "As soon as he sat down in that big chair, I knew he was going to knock it out of the park.

''He's brave, honest, funny and sometimes angry on the show. Every one of his statements has a point and a tag. That might sound like a strange thing to say, but it's vital when I'm editing a show like this that people finish what they're saying strongly.

''And to do that consistently over a long shoot takes a certain amount of intellectual rigour."

For his part, Vizard says, "at this stage, being a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none is almost a perfect way to be".

The Agony of Modern Manners, Wednesday, 9pm, ABC1.