If you think about it, Warren is a very good name for a man with a vortex to parallel universes in his garden shed. After all, a warren is a rabbit-hole. Though, as the co-creators of the new Wellington Paranormal-adjacent sci-fi time-travel comedy Warren’s Vortex explain, it could have been Kevin. There’s a funny story about that, which we’ll get to in the not-so-distant future.
Those co-creators are Paul Yates and Nick Ward, both blokes with a long screen pedigree as writers and other creative roles before their paths crossed on Wellington Paranormal. Yates had come up with the idea of a spin-off show about the cops who had appeared in the Taika Waititi-Jemaine Clement vampire spoof What We Do in the Shadows. Ward had come in as writer and storyliner on the hit series, which ran for five seasons – possibly a record for a NZ sitcom – and employed every funny person in the country in some shape or form.
Warren’s Vortex has one obvious connection to WP: Maaka Pohatu, who played police sergeant Maaka. He’s Warren Harrison, who lives in Lower Hutt with his wife, Hinemoa (Kali Kopae), and teenage daughter Lucy (Louise Jiang). Warren has never ventured into the wormhole that appeared in his shed some time back. But it has been useful for getting rid of his lawn clippings.
Paranormal fans will remember there was a time-travel wormhole episode set in the Hutt Valley in the final episode. The pair say it’s not consciously the same universe as their earlier comedy. Still, it’s going to get compared with their previous show. Would they like to get in first?
“Obviously, it’s very different in conceit,” says Yates. “It’s not a mockumentary, it’s a single-camera, narrative comedy. But, yeah, it’s a crazy comedy and it’s genre.”
Ward: “And we’re using that same understated Kiwi humour … we’re following a tried-and-true formula. That we already created.”
Judging by the first two episodes seen by the Listener and the storylines of the other four, the show is doing some time travel to other eras in Kiwi comedy. Pohatu seems to be wearing the Billy T James memorial moustache. The family’s neighbour was possibly Lynn of Tawa in a former life. Yates: “Yeah, we definitely wanted to get Ginette McDonald involved in the show. She’s a comedy legend.”
There’s a sketch-comedy satire feel to some of it – with the supporting cast, which includes Cohen Holloway and Millen Baird, playing variations on their same characters in different multiverses. The episodes include a world where houses now cost trillions of dollars and everyone lives in cardboard boxes, or everyone has a reality show in the backyard, or life in New Zealand has somehow continued to exist without the invention of rugby.
Yates worked on 1990s and early 2000s satire shows such as Issues, More Issues and Facelift. “I miss the sense of satire that those shows had. We don’t really have a political satire show, which to me is a shame, because there’s tons of stuff that we could be taking the piss out of right now. But I guess it’s seen as a little bit archaic.”
In one episode, Ward, whose many prime-time drama writing credits include a short stint on The Brokenwood Mysteries, gets to send up the neverending wave of cosy crime shows.
“Yes, the writing on that one is extraordinary,” Ward deadpans.
The six-part half-hour first series got $1,465,000 in New Zealand On Air funding. It’s about what the first series of Wellington Paranormal got back in 2016, before increases in subsequent seasons. The pair are hoping the same happens with the new show.
The lack of money on season one was challenging, though the handmade Doctor Who/Thunderbirds feel of the backdrops and the 1980s-toned visual effects were more a design choice than a financial one.
The budget did restrict them to one main location – the Harrisons’ humble house in Fairfield, Lower Hutt, where, Yates says, the neighbours were wonderful.
Yates lives in Lower Hutt, while Ward lives on the Kāpiti Coast but grew up in the Hutt.
“It was very important to us to set it in good old Lower Hutt, New Zealand,” says Yates, patriotically.
It’s not the only time-travel series that has filmed in the area in recent years. There was that other one called The Time Bandits for Apple TV+ made by … Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement.
“We had about 5% of their budget. Jemaine Clement and I are both kind of genre time-travel nerds and when we decided to take what I’ll call a pause from Wellington Paranormal, we had other projects that we wanted to do. When we met up, I’m like, ‘So what’s the big thing that you’re working on?’ And he’s like, ‘We bought the rights to Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits.’ I was immediately jealous because it’s one of my favourite films. He says, ‘What are you working on?’ ‘I’m working on a time travel show as well.’
“It was just a coincidence that we ended up doing something similar. So similar that the original title of Warren’s Vortex was actually ‘Kevin’s Vortex’, and the protagonist in Time Bandits is a kid called Kevin. So we decided to change the name for fear that people such as yourself might notice similarities.”
Still, it’s likely more Kiwis will watch Warren’s Vortex. After all, it’s on TVNZ 2 at 7pm on Sundays, even if it is up against the nation’s highest rating non-news programme, Country Calendar.
“But if watching the making of bespoke honey and a new modern way of shearing sheep doesn’t really light your candle,” says Yates, “then Warren’s Vortex is just a click away.”
Given that timeslot, Warren’s Vortex skews more family than Paranormal did.
Yates: “I love that we make some fantastic, very serious dramas about who we are as a culture. But Nick and I prefer comedy. We like the escapism of it. This is going to play at seven o’clock on a Sunday night after an hour of 1News. If the parents are watching that, where god knows what’s happening, the whole family can watch a show that’s about New Zealand. It’ll give them a giggle and it’ll take them to a different world.
Ward: “Yeah, escape into our vortex.”
Warren’s Vortex, TVNZ 2, 7pm Sundays from August 24. Streaming on TVNZ+
