My video call with the creators and stars of hit Australian sitcom feels rather like a sitcom in itself. Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer are at home in Los Angeles, where their toddler Joni has chosen today, of all days, to drop her regular lunchtime nap. At first I can talk to only Brammall, then only Dyer, then both for bit.
Then Joni joins us just long enough to inadvertently terminate the call. When it resumes, the camera isn’t working any more. It is merry chaos.
The now-invisible Dyer says that when the interview began she was on potty duty. “I couldn’t stop laughing. It felt really on-brand.
” It’s that kind of show. follows the blossoming of an unlikely relationship between millennial medical student Ashley Mulden (Dyer) and gen X microbrewery owner Gordon Crapp (Brammall) after they are accidentally complicit in injuring a dog and have to take care of it. In one indelible early set piece, Ashley wrestles with an unflushable toilet in Gordon’s house, with unsavoury consequences.
When a foreign broadcaster wanted to cut the whole sequence to make room for ad breaks, the couple put their collective foot down. “We said – and this is anathema in Hollywood – maybe let’s not make this sale,” says Brammall. “It sounds like it’s not for them.
” No toilet gag, no deal. “It’s just not a broadcast show,” reasons Dyer. “I don’t even know what they were going to do with a load of fucks and the odd C-word.
” I hate being in hair and makeup for.