Talk of the town
Rosehaven became one of the surprise comedic hits on the ABC last year. Now back for a second season, Luke McGregor, who co-writes and stars in this buddy comedy alongside Celia Pacquola, tells DANIELLE McGRANE about its return.
Luke McGregor and Celia Pacquola had a plan to create a show where they could basically translate their off-screen conversations onto TV.
“We just really liked talking rubbish to each other, basically. And we thought the banter was so good that the world needs to hear it,” McGregor said. The comedian’s false confidence is all just part of the act. The truth is, neither he nor Pacquola knew if it would work.
The pair, who met on the stand-up circuit but solidified their friendship when they were both appearing in ABC show Utopia, set themselves the task of writing a comedy about small-town life.
“We just wanted to see if we could actually make a TV show that we liked, which we had many doubts about many times so we were just wondering if we could pull it off,” he said.
There was an offbeat charm to this place the pair created, Rosehaven, a place where there was a supposed 24-hour emergency butcher and plenty of interesting characters. At the centre of it all was this friendship between Daniel and Emma, McGregor and Pacquola’s characters.
“At first we wondered should we do it as best friends or should we do it as a married couple? In one idea, I think Celia worked at a call centre and I was someone calling in as a customer. There was another idea that we were a married couple in space, or if we were in the police force, are we partners?” he said.
They decided to become real estate agents, a ploy to give them the opportunities to interact with the town’s quirky inhabitants, and McGregor knew the business first-hand. “My parents were real estate agents and Celia was from a small town, so we sort of joined those together as being the best vehicle to talk nonsense, I suppose,” he said.
Once the premise was established they forged confidently forward with plot, motivation and character development, and now, here they are, with season two ready to air. But this time around they’re confident they know what they’re doing.
“It wasn’t until season two that we really had fun playing with it,” he said.
“A lot of season one was spent trying to introduce these people and also getting our heads around what are these people like. One of the hardest things about writing that I didn’t realise was writing about two characters and how they would interact if they were stuck in an ele- vator, for example. When we first started we had no idea how anyone talked to each other, so it was really hard to write conversations that didn’t just sound like it was Celia and I talking.”
Now, with a solid base established, season two has a new premise. It’s no longer about Emma and Daniel moving to Rosehaven, it’s now about their attempts to stay there.
“Season one was about Emma and Daniel trying to find a home in Rosehaven and now that they’re in Rosehaven, season two is all about whether they can make it there,” he said.
The pair are both working at the real estate agents they helped run while Daniel’s mum Barbara was sick on the first season. However, Barbara has recovered and is back to take charge.
“Barbara’s back to full health and she doesn’t necessarily need them there any more, so it’s kind of up to them to prove themselves or there’s no point in them staying there any more because Barbara can run it by herself. So this season Daniel and Emma know they want to live in Rosehaven but now they have to see if they can make it work and sustain a living there,” he said.
Rosehaven Wednesday, 9.05pm on ABC