Creators of 'Summer Love' unpack the new series!

It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast last week. They might welcome back guys to TV Reload. My name's Benjamin Norris, and on this podcast, I go behind the scenes with the biggest players in television. Each episode you will get a front row seat with content makers like executive producers, writers, editors, and casting agents, plus the talent that we see on

Inevitably, human beings get together and go you know, oh yes, it's great and lovely, but you shit me a bit.

One beach House.

I was here first.

I think there's a similar sense of bubbling turbulence.

Eight Love Stories.

I love you. I'm so glad you said that it will be worked very hard on the aesthetic.

Sit back and relax.

You'll be glad you came.

It was very important for us not to speak for everybody.

So All Love Stat's August thirty one on EBCTV and on EBC. I here.

Those stories are coming from different perspectives, but that's another thing that ties them together.

Hi, Robin and Wayne, how are you both excellent?

Thank you?

Then I have to say some of Love is fantastic. Are you excited for audiences to finally see it?

Well, I'm excited that you've seen it. With that response, that's for sure.

They all think that. Then yes, please.

I think there's something, particularly having developed the project in lockdown mostly and across the pandemic, that to feel come out the other side of that feels particularly gratifying and exciting.

And yes, so we are excited.

I feel like it's a bit like an Australian white lotus in some ways, mixed with some round the twist. I don't know if.

I'd love to pitch that to a network as a thing. It's white loadus with Round the Twist, and just to see the response on potential buyers faces when they hear that no old will take that. I think the obvious Round the Twist references because it is the same lighthouse that appears in the show in the show's opening tired and within the house that we set the holiday house that the series is set in, you can see out one side of the house you can see the lighthouse.

On the hill, which is the lighthouse from a Round the Twist for people who might not know Arias inlet you know, was where they filmed Around the Twist over many different seasons of that, which did one of you, well, what if you in Round the Twist? Or am I making that up?

You're not making that. I was Ronnie the Rat in Around the Twist three hundred and fifty five years ago. I have fun memories of going down there and shooting and getting up and being on set, having breakfast on the cliff face as the sun came up over the ocean, and I thought, what a gig this is? Yeah, And we got to do that every day and Summer Love is have the same experience, which was magical.

Well, maybe I'm tapping into that, Maybe I'm tapping into a past experience, and maybe some a love has nothing to do with Round the Twist at all, you know. But you know, the White Lotus thing for me was sometimes the music at times had the dry to sort of build tension in the same way that that happened in Whiteladus. So I wondered whether or not was there any inspiration or have I just completely made that up. There's no correlation.

We've written o as before we saw Whiteloadus obviously, but we absolutely loved and we are obsessed with Mike White as well, which.

Is assessed everything he does he.

Does, from School of Rock to Enlightened Like it's just he's just so incredible.

And shares we think. No often you watch other international artists and you go, I'd love to have them over for dinner, even though you can't, but there's something in their work that you sense. I think we get along, and we've always pictured that he'd be one of those people that we should be having for dinner.

But I think you're.

I think there's a similar sense of bubbling turbulence that happens when you are away from home, that things come to the surface. I mean, obviously in White Loatus there's a lot of staff involved there as well, that things are bubbling to the surface therefore, but I think White Lotuses kind of darker than our show, but we certainly don't shy away from dark elements, I.

Guess, and you picking up on the soundtrack, it was definitely a conversation we had with our composer, Craig Pilkington, who's been the composer on all of our or nearly all of our work over the years, as an example of how dominant the soundtrack is in White Lotus and how much of a feature of the drama it is.

But also the soundtrack did have there was a real warmth to it as well, So like whilst whiteladus used the drums to build tension, which I think you've leaned into a little bit. You know, there is a warmth that comes from the composer who put this music together. It was a feature. It's something you walk away from the show and you kind of remember the music.

I'm so glad you've you've said that, And we won't tell Craig because it goes straight to his head.

He's not good with.

Compliments, so we're going to keep We'll just keep that to ourselves and everybody listening if you could keep that to yourself. But no, his work is just beautiful in this and it's and it also the other reason I think it's important is because it is a unifying sound for the series when you keep needing to you need that connectivity all the time between the episodes to make it the same show, to make sure people are watching the same show.

Each week.

Yeah, I think it does. It pulls the tapestry toga, which is great. This isn't a podcast just about music. By the way, We're now going to go into something else.

That's good because I'm out. That's all I.

Got tapped out. I've tapped out. Where did this idea come from? Because I mean, I'm a big fan of a lot of your work, and tonally, there's some elements that you know is always a part of the creative that you guys put together. But for this show, where did this idea come from?

It was born out of the dark and gloomy Lockdown in twenty twenty, the first one and when, and I think have been moving just tonally a little bit into different areas. We still love we still want to make hard comedies and do that kind of end of the spectrum, but we also have been.

Moving into drama.

The thing we were working on at the beginning of twenty twenty was quite complex and quite dark, and after a couple of months, we just felt it was just not what we wanted to be working on, and we didn't think anybody would want to be watching it either at the end.

Of this period, and so so.

I had come up with this idea of an anthology set in a holiday house twenty four years ago. That was basically just the bones of it, just different people hire the house, and probably we all acted in it and took turns in playing the parts of the different visitors, and we said, why don't we just think about that again, Let's think about some warmth and hope, and if it weren't for the pandemic, we wouldn't have brought this show.

Back to life.

No, And then putting on top of that, if we have an overarching theme of love, is that sits within all of these stories. So for those that don't know, it's eight episodes set in a holiday house. Each episode somebody different high as the house and with a theme of love, which could be anything. It could be sisters, it could be friendship groups coming together, that could be romantic, could be however that takes place. And we really liked

Love that's music again.

And the other important thing I think, Ben was that we had an opportunity to put different voices into the show and different perspectives. And the thing that we really love about the idea that I love twenty four years ago was the idea of the visitor's book And who are all these people who stay in the place that you're staying in, But they've got a completely different set of circumstances and backgrounds and personalities and everything else. What's

Absolutely? I mean the humor, I mean it is a dramaedy, and so it is a drama comedy, and I mean you really do laugh out loud as much as there's some awkward tension that gets created and some fantastic performances. But I felt like the humor is so accessible and so accurate for our time. I guess is that the goal that you were trying to do was you were trying to reflect or give someone, give everybody something that they felt seen by.

Absolutely that was and not only that, but feel ultimately some form of connection within that. You know, That's what we're interested in, is people, even if it is dramatic or it is painful emotionally, people are ultimately connecting. Those stories are coming from different perspectives, but that's another thing that ties them together.

You might feel seen, but I might not know what that experience of you that you're connecting to is. But I'm getting an insight into that. I'm feeling like, oh, I'd did't know that.

Was the way life was for you. I didn't know. That was privilege.

It was an absolute privilege to sit down and work with the different writers to kind of go, what do you want to talk about? And our special skill I think as sort of story editors and showrunners across it was to be able.

To go that's interesting what you're saying.

But I think the thing that you're trying to actually talk about here that we're going to bring to the front here is this thing and being able to help guide their points of view to the front, you know, which it was fascinating for us, wasn't it.

We loved that part of the process.

I feel like the show really unpacks the way in which we currently struggle to be normal when interacting with people socially.

That's interesting.

It's a really interesting take.

I mean, we also thought that it's embedded in the idea too, is that holidays hold such high hopes for us all like it is our we pin our hopes on these times times. You know, in January, I've booked a house for three weeks and you know, my friends are coming down and it's going to be the best, and the weather's going to be unreal, and I'm going to be skinny, and we're going to eat well and it's going to like the steaks just go up and up and up, and of course we're human and it's

And I think that's that's true, particularly after the pandemic, because the steaks couldn't be high.

You're putting so much into it. I remember we had.

One Zoom with Cody Bedford and Beyond Stuart, who have written Charlie and Zeke one of the episodes, which is gorgeous, but we were laughing together because we were all sharing stories. When we go on a holiday, we get an AIRB and B or something and you walk in and you go, well, this isn't as good as the picture, and of course you know, half an hour lady, you go, of course it is. It's wonderful, it's fantastic. But the stakes are you know, impossibly impossibly high.

But also in life, you know, we plan a holiday and then we run over our own dog on day one. You know, you can't foresee the mentalness that happens in our lives, do you know what I mean? Like we just want to plan a to B and that it never works out like that. It's the perfect setting for people to behave selfishly. If you ask me, you know, an upmarket seaside rental where you know, sort of compromise and common ground are. Ultimately it's a two way streak.

So I think that's.

A really interesting observation too, because you have you behave differently, and that's one of the attractions to the concept you behave differently when you sort of feel like no one is watching or Yeah, there's an anonymity that comes with going away, And it's interesting what you're saying that we felt like too. There's a real pressure in that half hour standalone episode for something to happen because you can't just have the one where they go to the holiday house.

But you do, and it's in thirty minutes, Like that's what I loved. I mean, it was just it's one of those shows where I feel like I've got to rewatch that scene where Sybylla Budd says this or that look that Stephen Curry has. Just so much of it is rewatchable.

It's complex, it has to be complex, So I think there's something in that. There's a lot of depth. Can we just take a moment, though, to talk about Sybylla Bud.

How funny and wonderful is she?

Oh?

My god? Talk about he says, we're obsessed with her?

But how different was this character to Gabrielle who we knew from Secret Life of Us, who we felt like we had ownership over because that character really lifted back in the day. So she's in the zeitgeist as that character and for so many people. I mean, I've seen her at the MTC Theater productions, and you know, I've been in Sybilla Bud's audience as we all have, but more so for me as a bit of a super fan. She was really different and she was really funny.

We had the gorgeous feeling we'd never worked with her before, and we had that feeling when she walked on set, was like we've just known her forever.

It's just one of those things.

Yeah, it was so good. What you said too about watching them, watching them through, because one of the big challenges with an anthology is you are starting a new story each week, and you do need to The challenge is I know these characters, I'm coming back next week to see them. You're trying to get people to come

It's like buying a six pack of beer as far as I'm concerned, because I have one, and then I drank them all when I was drunk. So I'm hoping that that's how.

Our quote on the poster, What did you make of Luke and Olie that episode written by Nath Valvo and Jade Masureley.

Well, I love nath Valvo's writing. I love his comedy, and I could feel his comedy in it. And the weird thing was that I didn't know that he was writing for the show. I hadn't done the research, so it wasn't until I spoke to a friend of Todd Abbots who said to me, oh, you know that Nathan wrote the gay episode. And I was like, I thought of him, like I thought of that humor. This is surreal, So well done to him and being able to have his magic transcend into this format.

There's a couple of things for people listening.

It's, you know, a gay couple are kind of struggling with societal expectations of what they're supposed to be as a gay couple, who they're supposed to be as a gay couple. But I think, what we strove to do. We thought, you know, we have a Muslim episode, and we have an episode. We have two Aboriginal writers written episodes written that came out clumsily. We have two episodes written by Aboriginal writers, and it was very important for us not to speak for everybody when we wrote those things.

You know.

But it's interesting Miranda Tapsul has written an episode which is so far away, so different from what Cody Bedford and Beyond Stewart have written in their episode. It's just like, because they're all just writers with imaginations and things to say, So the idea that you can just speak for everybody is ludicrous.

These episodes don't really hold back in a lot of the conversation that we're having at the moment. Do we want to have kids? Have we lost ourselves with our kids? Who are we in this relationship that we've been in for four years or twenty years? You know, a lot of those conversations that these characters were having felt to me like they're the conversations I'm having in my life, and I feel like a lot of people are having.

It's really good to hear. I loved in Randa Tapsl and James Collig's episode that discussion that they have around the kind of micro racism that Miranda expressed that's felt that and with her partner in real life. Yeah, that they were discussing that, and it was fascinating and it was a real insight, but it was felt really relevant. It's at that level of a discussion that I felt, yeah, I know this, this feels like something I know, but

Yeah, I'm sure they have expressed it, but.

It hasn't come to life. No.

It is a show that I think people should watch with other people because there's a lot of looks that you can give that person like, oh god, I've said that to you. I love the community element of shows where you can watch something and then I unpack up with someone and this series is a lot like that to me.

I mean that's the goal.

I wonder why ABC was the home that you took this to. Was there a reason why you thought ABC was the right home for this sort of content.

Look, we've had such a long relationship with the ABC. They've supported our ideas for a long long time. So it has been for us a place where we felt tonally was right. We've had nothing against any of the commercial networks at all, but realistically what the shows that we've created don't necessarily fit on those places. So it's

I would just jump into and just say that Todd Abbott, who is the executive producer from the ABC this show his Head of Comedy, that's his actual title. Apologiest to Todd for not remembering. He just got this from the word go. He hadn't been long there.

No, it's only new to the job when we took this.

To him, and he got it and understood what we were doing. And I think it appealed to the broadcaster in you know, in the authentic representative representation of diversity. I think that was a real bonus. But I think he and he's just been terrific the whole way through as our executive on this, he's been great, So I think that was a huge part of it.

I think it's for the ABC to you know, a serious set at a holiday house. It's such a common Australian experience. It's a global experience, but it's very very Australian, the summer holiday, that sort of thing, and they've got that they need to cater to a very broad audience on the ABC, and so the overall idea, I think Tod could very quickly see oh yeah, this is this is good. It's an idea that you can communicate very quickly,

Well, there's nothing better than collaborating with somebody who gets your work and it obviously understood it and protected it from the journey from the start of where you guys took it. I mean, you guys must be so proud of this, and so then to have someone support it. To get it to that place must feel pretty amazing.

Yeah, it does. We are incredibly proud of it.

We are. And Todd was terrific. He has been terrific to work with throughout the process he's made. He's been a producer himself, so he understands the bones of making a show and that really helps. Because's very far. It's got a great eye. It was a pleasure to work with him.

How did you find this house though? I mean, this house is like it's like something from the most beautiful looking house I've ever seen. And the lighting and the set design and everything that you created, it was just so every frame looked like it could be in a photo book. You know, it could win an award.

I'm so glad you said that. We worked very hard on the aesthetic. It's very challenging that to people listening. We're on in this magnificent house down on the surf coast of Victoria that is right on the water. It has a one hundred and eighty degree view of the ocean and it's stunning. You walk up the stairs of this house and you naturally just walk towards this huge pane of glass and stare and everybody that went into the house just dared and went silent and has that

Warm, and we wanted to really emphasize the epic beauty of the coats like not. You know, we use a lot of drone shots and we use a lot of those epic shots because that's how you feel when you're down there. You feel you know, that speck in the universe feeling you feel, you know, which is the reason all these things tumble out.

For you on holiday. So we tried to.

Be as truthful as we could in representing how that feels, you know, which is very challenging for the camera department, but they did well.

Well. Everyone's going to want to know, can you rent this place? Is it even possible? Can you go there on an airbanb?

I think not now, I don't think so. Yes, I think it's after we've had it.

I think they're a new owners since we've and so I think that they're quite happy to be just settling in.

For good, except for the fact that you've made it like a Ramsey Street location, because now everyone's going to want to drive up and have a look at it. Because I know that, no, you should.

Say that we did hire I think about twenty eight other houses in the area for the cast and crew to live in. So if any listener wants to go there, there are lots of wonderful houses in and around that house are.

The beautiful places, and lead those people that live there alone.

Please don't pester them.

You know, I can imagine just before you go. I can imagine having these eleven you know, before you go. How do you want audiences to feel about this show everything.

We've been talking about, I think having that feeling of warmth and.

Hope.

I mean, even there are some melancholy endings in a couple of the episodes, but you know that that's inevitable. You know that everybody's going to be better off because of the decision that people have made. It's not like, oh no, we never wanted that to happen. It was like, no, this had to happen and you're going to have better lives now. So we want people to walk away feeling sort of happy and hopeful.

Yeah, I look. We love watching I love getting to the end of something and looking at Robin and smiling, going I loved that. I love that that feeling. That's that's the ultimate goal.

Guys. I'm at a better mood this week from watching the show. I don't even know if that's possible, Like throw away your antidepressants whoever's listening to this, because all you need to do is don't throw away your antidepressants.

Do that well tightly as you watch the show.

The last thing I will ask you is something I ask everyone who joins the podcast. What is something from behind the scenes, something that we as an audience won't see, kind of a behind the scene secret, something that happened or went down that you can share from making someone up.

I was going to say that there were in the first episode, there were two mollies, not one, little twins that we had to snip around and move in and out, and there was quite a little bit of slicing and dicing.

In the ed is nobody knows that now you know that, So if you're watching, see if you can pick the two miles.

They're just I just have to say that conversation about do you want me to hit her? You know, I was just so funny. I just there's just so many funny moments in that first episode. And it's such a great first episode to have because I think people once they've seen that, they'll feel compelled to keep watching.

It's just so good. They are, all the four of it. It's like being in gold class with those four.

They're incredible.

You know that feeling when you go and see theater live and you're like, wow, this is so amazing and it feels so unique and I don't believe I've got to see that. That's what someone love is for me.

That's so great. Ben, thank you so much. That's so generous and kind. Really really appreciate that.

Well, thank you for your generosity, to the both of you for being here and talking about this show, which people will no doubt watch