New Australian comedy horror asks if we can still laugh at Nazis

Australian killer gnome series rides the horror-comedy wave After spending ten years developing her horror-comedy series Gnomes, co-writer Tegan Higginbotham had a concern plaguing her mind. Can we still laugh at Nazis? "We grew up on Mel Brook's comedies where Nazis are funny," she says. Created by Joel Kohn (The Mirror), Higginbotham co-wrote the series with her husband Paul F Verhoeven, as well as pulling double duty as one half of a ditzy police duo, the other half being fellow comedian Matt Okine. Gnomes might be set in a small Australian township but its set-up hinges on a deadly but petrified European gnome queen who was stolen by the Nazis in the final whiffs of WWII as Hitler's last-ditch attempt to regain power. "We really enjoyed playing into genre and have the bad guy Nazis, and we wanted to evoke that straight from the get-go," Higginbotham says. Hitler's bumbling Nazi guards fail to activate the gnome queen's power, inadvertently tipping the first domino that results in a plague of killer gnomes terrorising the tiny fictional town of Nompton. "There is also, of course, that very known history that Hitler had that side where he's interested in the occult and would try to capture artefacts," Higginbotham says. "And, you know what? I still want to exist in a world where Nazis are funny. It's really concerning me that we're back to a place where they're being taken seriously." Screams of laughter From Resident Evil's box office smash to Widow's Bay's near clean sweep of the Emmys, horror-comedy is having a moment in 2026. It was the heady combination of genuine over-the-top, B-movie horror and smart, quippy comedy in Gnomes which secured its leading man, British actor Asa Butterfield. "What attracted me to the project was the writing and comedy, and the sort of absurdity of it. There were great characters, some great gags, and some really funny references to some classic horror movies," Butterfield says. The Sex Education star plays Senior Sergeant Arnold Kipps who is having one of the worst days in his career. His ex-partner and former flame Ellie (Megan Smart) has long moved up in the police ranks but suddenly returns to Nompton's minuscule station to break the news that the town is just too darn boring to justify a full police staff. The powers that be are closing up shop and Arnold and his sergeants are most likely getting the can. As if this isn't enough to deal with, Arnold is stuck babysitting the aforementioned gnome queen, the star attraction at Nompton's Gnome-a-palooza festival. An unfortunate accident involving Arnold reawakens the queen who animates all the garden gnomes in town to do her deadly bidding. "It's been really fun to empower these gnomes with genuine fear and terror, but also knowing they are just garden gnomes," Butterfield says. Creating the army of gnomes was a challenge for the production team, which brought the cursed creatures to life with a mix of puppetry and special effects. "We had a great SFX team building hundreds of gnomes, some made of foam, some that could smash, some that can run," Butterfield says. "Having natural puppets to react to really helps because you don't only have to imagine it. Like there's a vampire gnome there, it's stalking you on the top of a dresser. Or a wizard gnome shooting actual fire out its wand. "It's the sort of a thing which, honestly, brings out the big kid inside me." Higginbotham is still shocked that the movie star agreed to sign onto a tiny Australian show about killer gnomes. "I can't believe he said yes. When they first mentioned that Asa was even considering the role and reading the script I was like, 'That's great. But this is never going to happen,'" she says. "I've never quite worked with a performer like him. This is somebody who's been doing this since he's a kid. He's just a class above. "The way he conducts himself on set, the love that he has for every single person on set and for their craft and what they individually do. I mean, I've never seen the man do a bad take. "He's truly a remarkable actor and we've been so lucky to have him." Quiet on set While Butterfield might have been able to micro-dose a Melbourne lifestyle (read: get very into coffee) in his seven weeks filming the series, what impressed him most during his time in Australia was the quality of the local screen industry. "We moved incredibly quickly, which is credit to the crew and the team to be able to pull off a show that's this ambitious. You couldn't do that back home or in the US, there's no way," he says. "You would have thought that in doing that people would be more stressed. And yes, it's stressful. But everyone always has a smile on their face, which I really appreciate. "Everyone says, 'Yeah, we can do that.' I wish our crews back home had a bit more of that energy." It might have taken 10 years for Higginbotham to get anyone to jump on board with Gnomes, but for the writer the wait was worth it. "I know 20-something-year-old me, who wanted it all to happen right away, wouldn't agree with me saying this, but I do believe that things happen when they're meant to," she says. "It's the right time for this sort of entertainment. It was meant to be now. For whatever reason the universe wanted me to have that lesson, for all of us to have to be patient." Gnomes is streaming on Stan now. [Image text:] STAY BACK! OFFICIAL GNOME RUISINEO